The top sectors with job growth for February include Government with 5,900 new job gains, Hospitality with 5,100 job gains, and Transportation, trade and utilities with 2,700 job gains.

“In Springfield, we spend a lot of time debating and passing meaningless virtue signaling legislation that helps no one and there are really no solutions to help the taxpayers,” ate Rep. Chris Miller said.

The bill’s sponsor, state Rep. Lance Yednock, said the bill also would make it illegal to place objects in the public way.

The Democratic Party of Illinois is spending $300,000 on mailers and online campaigns for local school and library board races early next month. “There are lots of candidates who are running, Republicans or Democrats, they’re not listed on the ballots as such. What we’re trying to do is to raise awareness about the extremists that are running,” Gov. JB Pritzker said.

Illinois law already allows for single-occupancy bathrooms to be designated for all genders, but state Rep. Katie Stuart’s bill would allow an all-gender designation for bathrooms that accommodate two or more people. The bill sets out standards that all-gender bathrooms would have to meet, such as “inclusive signage” that does not indicate any specific gender and stall dividers with functioning locks controlled by the user.

In 2022, the Attorney General’s office was able to bring in $304 million through collections litigation, including cases involving the collection of funds for damage to state property, child support enforcement, fines and penalties. The Attorney General’s office also collected more than $807 million through tobacco litigation and more than $456 million in estate tax revenues.

The funding – $175 million for restaurants, hotels and creative arts businesses and organizations – comes from the American Rescue Plan Act and is determined based on revenue declines and tax returns.

The spirits industry supports nearly 80,000 jobs in Illinois and has an economic impact of over $7.8 billion. “There were zero craft distilleries in the state of Illinois until the mid-2000s and today there is about 50, so we as distillers and our customers and consumers just haven’t had a chance to really establish the need and make enough noise and tell the story that this is something we want,” said Nick Nagele, of the Illinois Craft Distillers Association.

Asked to describe the policy platform of the Sustainable Investment Caucus, Rep. Sean Casten said, “Pro-capitalism. We’re not saying everybody should invest in ESG. We’re saying ESG is a tool. There’s a huge market demand for it. We need to quantify what the rules are. And we need to make sure that investors who want to participate in a free and unfettered market are protected from people who have some more

The Illinois House of Representatives passed a bill with near-unanimous support on Wednesday that would designate the black walnut as the official state nut of Illinois.

The legislation at issue was the Energy Infrastructure and Modernization Act or EIMA, which passed in 2011, and the Future Energy Jobs Act or FEJA, which passed in 2016.