Five things to know as the Safe-T Act goes to the Illinois Supreme Court – WBEZ (Chicago)
There is not a timeline for when the case will be decided.
There is not a timeline for when the case will be decided.
The FBI’s Chicago office received about 84 reports of “incidents,” meaning reports of some type of school-centric threat, whether founded or unfounded, between October 2021 and September 2022, said FBI spokesperson Siobhan Johnson. Between January 2023 and March 3, they have received approximately 10 incident reports per month, Johnson said. For students, parents, and school staff the situations generate a “high degree of anxiety and ambiguity to what already exists” said one school security expert, referring to the already-looming awareness of mass school shootings.
“These are not little sparklers,” Tom Styczynski, the fire chief of the Alsip Fire Department, said. “The pyrotechnic devices they are trying to legalize contain 500 grams of pyrotechnic component, which is the highest potency before needing a professional pyrotechnic operators’ license to handle.”
“Chicago shows the utter meltdown of a multicultural society. Even one-party rule cannot bring its disparate factions together. Lori Lightfoot, the would-be reformer who checked every diversity box, did not have the backbone, skill, and courage to redirect the energies of the city’s mutually hostile constituencies. Perhaps no one can in today’s Chicago.”
While there is a consensus the aging offices need to be repurposed and more housing is needed in the district, especially to serve the 2,500 Google employees that will be moving to the Thompson Center by 2026, some say the city might be better served looking at market-rate apartments and hotel projects.
U.S. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said, in part, “By protecting and strengthening the bedrock promise of Medicare and Social Security, the President understands how crucial these programs are for the security and safety of millions of Americans.”
Data by the Illinois State Board of Education shows that schools in Illinois reported 3,558 unfilled teaching positions as of October 2022. In 2022, the Teacher Retirement System’s total unfunded liability increased to $80.6 billion.
In Illinois, Gov. JB Pritzker just signed a 10-year extension for the state’s film-friendly tax incentive program, which guarantees productions 30% back on eligible expenses through Jan. 1, 2033. There is an additional 15% incentivized bump for hiring crew from underserved areas in the state as determined by census data.
Nearly a third of Illinois’ $1.6 billion in recreational cannabis sales in 2022 were to residents of other states, according to the state’s Department of Financial and Professional Regulation.
“The new law would allow police officers to pull you over if they see that you are driving with an animal in your lap, whatever the animal may be,” the bill’s sponsor, state Rep. Jawaharial Williams, said. Pets aren’t covered under distracted driving laws.
“People who are denigrating her are aggrandizing themselves,” said Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who has looked at a post-Biden White House run himself, speaking generally of Harris’ critics.
She is seen as relatively dovish on Fed policy, analysts say.
While total proposed FY2024 expenditures are nearly flat from the prior year, agency expenditures are actually proposed to increase from FY2023 by $2.7 billion, or 8.3%. With fairly conservative revenue projections for FY2024 anticipating a potential mild recession, a question going forward will be how sustainable these the proposals for increased agency spending are for future years.
“This bill is designed to modernize Illinois law regulating the home-delivery of purchased vehicles, to ensure customers don’t have to go to a physical facility just to sign some paperwork,” Will Munsil, Senior Corporate Counsel for Carvana said. He said the bill would clarify what has become common practice across the state, but is not explicitly allowed in Illinois.
The group’s proposal would raise the real estate transfer tax by 1.9% on homes sold for more than $1 million to pay for housing, job training, mental health support and other services for the city’s homeless population, which members estimated will hit 12,000 families in the next decade.
A report by BPI and the Free2Move Coalition found that from 2015 to 2021, the average Black Chicago driver was six times more likely to be stopped than the average White driver. Latino drivers were twice as likely to be stopped than White drivers. The report also found that CPD has increasingly been doing more traffic stops over the past few years, jumping from nearly 85,965 traffic stops in 2015 to 598,515 traffic stops in 2019.
The push from Illinois Realtors comes amid concerns over several prospective changes to the city’s real estate tax plans. Among them: a proposed special transfer tax on sales of high-end residential property, the possible continuation of Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s property-tax hikes and, generally, the state of the city’s tax-increment financing program.
“The purpose of the land bank was to come in, clear those back taxes that no one was paying, clear the title to the property, find developers. And now we’re about 1,500 properties in, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars of added value,” Cook County Commissioner Bridget Gainer said.
The February 2023 numbers represent an 18% increase over February 2022.
State Rep. Ryan Spain said campaign spending is growing, but there are other issues of fairness like the judicial redistricting Democrats approved in 2021. “Let’s remember, 600,000 voters said we need to change how we deliver redistricting in the state of Illinois…”
The massive sum surfaced in a federal lawsuit against the city of Chicago by officers whose overtim pay was calculated incorrectly.

Calvin Miller, associate director of the Illinois Council on Problem Gambling, has heard some heartbreaking stories in his work on the council. “People can lose their life savings in a weekend,” Miller told The Center Square. “But there is always a way out. If you are
One person involved in the confrontation pulled out a baseball bat and hit the other vehicle. An occupant of that second vehicle then opened fire, witnesses said, striking a man who was walking outside the Goodman Theatre, 180 North Dearborn.
“Though shocking, SVB’s collapse isn’t likely to lead to additional failures in the Chicago market — at least not anytime soon.”

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