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Gov. JB Pritzker said challenger Darren Bailey “doesn’t know what he is doing and shouldn’t come near the governor’s office.” Bailey had said his strategy during a pandemic would be to educate the public, not issue unilateral mandates.
They say along with more than a million dollars in spending, the race will bring nearly 900 jobs.
Said Chris Davis, president of the Illinois Chapter of the National Federation of Independent Businesses, “It would put what is decided at the negotiating table ahead of state law itself. We’re extremely concerned that whatever benefits are negotiated will then be constitutionally protected, and that legislators have abdicated financial regulatory responsibility.
The state’s Line of Duty Compensation Act currently provides benefits for families of law enforcement officers, firemen, paramedics, and other first responders killed in the line of duty. But the funding for the benefits sometimes is exhausted prior to the end of a fiscal year, requiring the legislature to approve additional appropriations.
PTELL referenda are fairly common in Cook County and the Collar Counties, especially for school districts. However, the countywide referendum for the Forest Preserve District is a first for City of Chicago voters. The Forest Preserve District of Cook County is asking taxpayers for a larger levy to pay for pensions and a large backlog of land restoration and maintenance needs in the upcoming general election.
“Despite what we’ve seen across the country, despite the attacks on our democracy, the elections that will take place here in Cook County will be open, fair and safe,” Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx said, promising that anyone making threats of violence or intimidation “will be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law.”
Major General Richard Neely, the adjutant general of Illinois and commander of the Illinois National Guard, said recent history in Illinois makes cyber security an important issue.
Incumbent U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth faces Republican Kathy Salvi and Libertarian Bill Redpath. Salvi said to address record inflation under the Biden administration, Duckworth has to go.
On Nov. 8 voters in Illinois might make it even harder for businesses to make rent if Amendment 1 at the top of the ballot is passed. It is expected to lock in a $1.8 billion commercial property tax during the next four years. Those tax hikes are factored into rent by landlords.
A national republication of our Wirepoints column.
In Chicago, where the city’s rampant violent crime has become an ongoing national story, Cook County State’s Attorney Kimberly Foxx has presided over an office in ruins. Former Assistant Cook County State’s Attorney Jim Murphy publicly stated that Foxx’s office was “more concerned about political narratives and agendas than with victims and prosecuting violent crime.”
While the racist attack has drawn criticism on conservative sites, there has been no opposing statement or protest at the university. The media has also been largely quiet. The contrast to past controversies involving conservative faculty members again raises the concern over a double standard applied by colleges and universities as well as the media.
East Garfield Park had 14 homicides and 80 nonfatal shootings through Oct. 28. That doesn’t include Halloween’s mass shooting, when 14 people, 10 of whom from the same family, were shot at the intersection of Polk and California.
CPD Supt. David Brown said they will assign officers to fixed posts in some areas but that they will give special attention to all 2,000 voting sites, each one of those sites getting checked during officer’s shifts. Police will also be stationed at the warehouses where voting equipment is stored.
The worst site in Illinois is the Southern Illinois Power Cooperative Marion Power Plant in Marion, where groundwater monitors found cobalt in the groundwater at 63 times safe levels, thallium at 46 times safe levels and arsenic at five times safe levels.
New research from the Loyola University of Chicago Center for Criminal Justice suggests that the old cash-based system “results in much less pretrial detention than is generally assumed.”
In fact, there are more than 350 state laws government union leaders could override through collective bargaining agreements if Amendment 1 passes.
“For as long as there has been American politics, there’s been a nonsensical strain of commentary, meant to underline the absurdity and big personalities of politics itself…Indeed, Twitter offers Anarchists for JB Pritzker, Real Housewives for JB Pritzker, Swiss Farmers for Pritzker, Frat Bros for Pritzker, Post-Impressionists for Pritzker.”
Natural gas prices have skyrocketed over the last two years, driven by supply disruption, an extreme cold snap in 2021 and the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February, according to industry analysts. For many Chicago-area customers, added delivery costs baked into the bills for infrastructure work have exacerbated the price increases for natural gas.
“States’ biggest competitors are each other,” Janelle Fritts, policy analyst for the Tax Foundation, said. “As the economy is becoming increasingly mobile, tax competitiveness matters more than ever before. So people are looking at those tax codes. They do make a difference for both businesses and residences. So states do need to be aware of how they compare.”
CTA President Dorval Carter was slammed by aldermen for skipping a council hearing in September about increasing complaints. He also bailed on a budget meeting for his agency in January.
The terrifying stories of carjacking victims helps to put a face on a vexing violent crime problem that has worsened dramatically in recent years. Until local politicians decide they’re willing to spend their political capital on a hard line against crime, carjackings and other violent felonies in Chicago will continue almost at will.
The Wall Street Journal cited Wirepoints’ labor research in its opinion section this week.
Ted joined Jeff Daly of WZUS Decatur to talk about the six facts Gov. Pritzker doesn’t want you to know about Illinois’ 2022 Report Card, why Cook County’s failures with its electronic monitoring of criminals could find their way to your area thanks to the SAFE-T Act and why Illinois now has the worst unemployment rate in the nation.
“Amendment supporters say that this will prevent “right to work” laws (which forbid requiring union membership as a condition of employment) in the state, something which is currently not even on the table in Illinois. The amendment would be bad enough if that were a true description of what it did, but it goes so far as to prevent the passage of any law that touches on a topic that unions want to negotiate. The amendment, in reality, would give unions veto power over lawmakers.”
Since the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020, arrests for possession of small amounts of drugs have plummeted in Chicago as officers focused on a surge of violent crime. In 2019, through mid-October, Chicago police officers arrested more than 6,400 people on Class 4 drug-possession cases for which that was the most serious crime involved in the arrest. Over the same period this year, about 1,300 people were arrested.
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