“To return money to the people of Illinois, we need to prioritize property tax relief and direct excess income tax collections to taxpayers instead of funding politician pay raises. With these rudimentary budget priorities, we can prepare our state for an upcoming recession and mirror the actions of our constituents at their kitchen tables.”

The findings of inadequate inventory control were the most extensive. Sixty missing items were computers and other storage devices that may have contained confidential information, but there is no record of the data they contained. In the 2022 inventory, there were 719 missing items worth $1.5 million, and in 2021 the inventory reported 1,413 missing items worth nearly $2.5 million.

Hundreds of bills advanced in committee will go to a full chamber vote before the scheduled General Assembly adjournment on May 19. House and Senate committees moved on a combined total of 212 bills over a three-day stretch before a Friday deadline.

“We go through the normal procedure of advertising on social media, in newspapers and wherever we can get the word out. I also attend career fairs like the one at Western Illinois,” one police chief said. “The problem is, I was not the only one there. There were 85 departments there, some from as far away as Richardson, Texas. They are all trying to grab the few people who were there.”

Jim Dey: “This is not a traditional bribery case where the parties work out an unlawful trade — like money for votes. In fact, there is no quid pro quo — if you do this, I’ll do that — alleged. That distinction is one that may prove decisive, if not in this trial but perhaps in the future when or if the legal issue is presented to the U.S. Supreme Court.”

There are additional advisories in place for more than 100 bodies of water across the state, all related to methylmercury and PCBs.

A statement from U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin reads, in part, ” Right now, women all across America are living with the reality that their fundamental freedoms are under attack. And without the ERA’s protections, even more rights could be on the chopping block.”

“Why is the Secretary of State’s Office implementing their own health criteria, when they are not even a health agency?” state Rep. Jed Davis said. “You can’t even make up this stuff that happens in this state, it is just pure insanity.”

Before Friday’s order blocking the state law was issued out of the Southern District, Hannah Hill with National Foundation for Gun Rights said Naperville plaintiffs are now asking for the U.S. Supreme Court to block not just the state’s ban, but Naperville’s ban while their case continues on appeal. “If they can prove that the law is trampling on a constitutional right, you are creating an irreparable injury every day that unconstitutional law is in effect,” she said.

The Washington Post published a story digging into how the platform “offers the potential for a new level of collaboration between political operators and certain media outlets — one in which candidates can easily seek to customize news stories without the public’s knowledge.”