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The Reparations Committee chose to fund reparations through the real estate transfer tax because of its relatedness to real estate discrimination and redlining, which have contributed to the racial wealth gap.
In a statement after the court action, state Rep. Deanne Mazzochi said, “The Court rightly recognized that using a Vote by Mail application to qualify signatures on the Vote by Mail ballot itself would be an obvious way to commit ballot fraud,” and that restraining the Clerk from following this process immediately will protect the integrity of the election process to the benefit of both candidates.”
Flanked by members of unions who would build the extension of the train line, Lightfoot noted that the city’s first Transit TIF was created in 2017 to fund the reconstruction of the Red, Purple and Brown lines on the North Side with little controversy. She said the Far South Side deserves the same kind of investment that North Side neighborhoods have taken for granted.
“We’re about making sure we can do the work and prepare for every contingency, so we looked at a number of different locations all over the city – and obviously, vacant schools were on the list,” Mayor Lori Lightfoot said.
Cynthia Riseman Lund, who represented the state’s public schools teachers’ unions, expressed her opposition to the program during a House Revenue and Finance Committee meeting. “[The teachers’ unions] support elimination of the Invest In Kids program. It is set to sunset … and we will call for the elimination of the program even sooner,” Lund said.
State Rep. Lindsey LaPointe’s bill, first introduced in the Spring, would require divestment from Russian stocks, along with those from Russian ally Belarus. It names the Teachers’ Retirement System and urges public systems not controlled by the state to do the same. Gov. J.B. Pritzker called on state employee pension systems to review their portfolios for divestment possibilities.
“I will say, when it came to the idea of gutting it, that was a bipartisan thing that was real, and I will acknowledge that,” Sen. Robert Peters said at a news conference Tuesday. “But what I will say is that, after Tuesday (Election Day), the main thing is to make sure it’s technical and we can implement it the right way.”
When the newest executive order ends, the governor will have held emergency powers for 1,003 of his 1,426 days in office, or 70% of his term.
“To further illustrate the SAFE-T Act’s animus with police, lawmakers who authored the bill stepped over a sacrosanct line to allow the submission of anonymous complaints against officers. A flagrant infringement on an officer’s Sixth Amendment right, harboring, as the sponsors of the new law apparently do, a myopic prejudice against policemen, lawmakers who engineered the SAFE-T Act must believe complainants should enjoy a special sort of immunity, and officers should not have the benefit of facing their accusers.”
“It is lucrative to be in political leadership in Illinois,” said Adam Andrzejewski, editor of Open The Books. “In the Illinois state legislature, there are 8 retired lawmakers whose retirement pension – funded primarily by taxpayers – exceeds the top salary of Illinois statewide public officials.”
The Chicago Transit Authority’s Board of Directors approved Tuesday a $1.8 billion operating budget for 2023. But with ridership still down from pre-pandemic levels, the budget relies on nearly $400 million in federal stimulus money to make up for lost fare revenue — stimulus money the transit agency estimates it’ll use up by 2025.
“There is no mention in the economic report or the press release that the pension report, while the picture is rosy, is going to be shorted by four to five billion dollars a year,” said Sheila Weinberg of Truth in Accounting. “If [Pritzker] properly funded those systems, it would be all of the quote ‘surpluses’ that he’s reporting.”
House Republicans selected Savanna state Rep. Tony McCombie to lead the caucus after Jim Durkin said he wouldn’t seek the position. Republican senators also changed leaders, selecting Downers Grove Republican state Sen. John Curran to replace Dan McConchie.
Jim Dey: “Here’s one statistic that will get readers’ attention: Gasoline sold for $1.54 a gallon in April 2020, shortly after the first pandemic lockdowns went into effect. By July 2022, the average price in the Midwest for a gallon of gasoline was $4.88. For diesel, it was $5.75.”
The court filing fee, cut from $265 to $89, now matches that of DuPage, Will and McHenry counties. Cook County has seen a steep drop in adoption filings, from 1,085 in 2014 to 628 last year, while the collar counties reported a 9% rise in filings over the same period.
The Leapfrog grades are based on more than 30 measures of patient safety from the federal government, including falls and trauma, hand hygiene and death rates among surgical patients with serious, treatable conditions. Illinois’ overall ranking for hospital safety is 28th in the country.
At the top of today’s agenda is an effort to introduce legislation requiring Native American history to be taught in Illinois public schools beginning in the 2023-2024 school year. Though there are currently 104,386 Native Americans living in Illinois, a spokesman for the Chicago American Indian Community Collaborative said, Illinois does not have any federally recognized tribes, unlike most Midwest states.
Illinois education officials are passing hundreds of thousands of children from one grade to the next even though those students can’t read at grade level. What’s incredible – and infuriating – is just how long this policy has gone on in Illinois. An alert Wirepoints’ reader recently pointed out to us that Chicago Public Schools’ pass-along policy was the subject of a Good Times episode that ran in 1974 – almost 50 years ago.
Ted was on Chicago’s Morning Answer with Dan and Amy to talk about the coming potential changes, or rather lack of them, to the SAFE-T Act, the damage done to Illinois Republicans during the election and the direction of Illinois going forward.
To stop what Planning and Development Commissioner Maurice Cox calls “the bleeding of Black and Brown families” leaving Chicago, the plan calls for “in-fill development” on 5,600 city-owned vacant lots in Invest South/West communities. “How do we grow equitably? How do we do it inclusively without displacement? You do it very incrementally,” Cox said.
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