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Beatriz Ponce de Leon is the first person to hold this role. She most recently served at the Illinois Department of Human Services. Notably, she is also the daughter of immigrants.
Mayor Brandon Johnson, who toured damaged homes on the city’s West Side Monday, called Sunday’s storms “unprecedented,” and pledged to help residents recover. In addition to disaster relief funding, he called for additional funds for flood prevention, saying that climate change will only cause more severe weather events in years to come.
The original deal that NASCAR signed with the city was a three-year pact, according to officials. But Mayor Johnson said that the process on deciding whether to have the race again next year will involve a lot more community input. “Like everything else I inherited, I’m a teacher, so I will assess it and grade it and it will be an open process where other folks get a chance to weigh in.”
Chicago Police Department data show there were 66 murders in June, down nearly 1.5% from June of 2022. Overall, shootings were down more than 6% month to date. Violent crime on the Chicago Transit Authority system is also down 22% from last June.
Head researcher Chuck Casto said 42% of Illinois small businesses could not make their rent payments in June, with lingering inflation and a lack of revenues also taking a toll on businesses nationwide. “Fifty-three percent told me that they’re only making half or less of what
State Sen. Tom Bennett’s legislation waives the required video clips of lesson plans – and it’s $300 fee – for two years. It would require a Teacher Performance Assessment Task Force to come up with a new evaluation system to replace the current performance evaluation.
State Sen. Jason Plummer said the issue goes further than the impacts on hospitals and taxpayers that will have to cover the costs one way or another. “It’s to what message we’re sending to various populations and the message Illinois has consistently sent is ‘come to Illinois, we’ll pay for everything,’” Plummer said.
Before Sunday’s race, Mayor Brandon Johnson applauded NASCAR’s commitment “to bringing the industry to the neighborhoods, like the West and South Sides … neighborhoods that have been ignored and neglected for too long.” Johnson also joked that fans should stay after the race and “spend as much money as you possibly can.”
Robert Reed, former editor of Crain’s Chicago Business: Brandon Johnson” is demanding for-profit industries pony up more tax money. So why not ask great, successful and tax-exempt nonprofits — many of which run like corporations anyway — to start pitching in, too?”
A student objected to a class, “The Problem of Whiteness,” and tweeted the lecturer’s photo and email address. Hate mail poured in. What should the school do?
“I guess it doesn’t make anybody in the governor’s administration to actually do anything but if you want to do something, we’re giving you more tools,” state Rep. Dan Caulkins said. Not clawing back the fraud will cost employers higher unemployment taxes, he continued. “The General Assembly recognizes this and is trying to give the governor some power to go back and to reclaim this money if they can find the perpetrators,” he said.
Existing law prevents hotel managers from removing customers who verbally abuse staff. Sponsors of the bill said the measure gives hotel managers the authority to deal with troubling behavior and maintain a safe working environment.
Chicago-area corporations have been voting with their feet and vacating their massive suburban headquarters properties.
“The pandemic clearly accelerated this process, impacting dense transit oriented urban centers…The lockdowns, and the ensuing riots over the murder of George Floyd, generated a devastating rise in crime and lawlessness in London, Paris, Washington, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia, and Chicago, further accelerating flight from dense urban areas. In some parts of Chicago and Philadelphia, young men now have a greater chance of being killed by firearms than the American soldiers who served during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.”
They allege that the EPA’s current standards aren’t good enough and that even if they were, the agency’s testing and certification program is so ineffective that it has failed to ensure those standards.
Illinois Republican Party Chairman Don Tracy: “Shame on Mayor Brandon Johnson, Barack and Michelle Obama, Governor Pritzker, Speaker Welch, and every other Illinois Democrat who tolerates the appalling failure of Chicago’s schools while also decrying the Supreme Court’s decision to end affirmative action at elite colleges. You are all hypocrites.”
Chicago and NASCAR, an Odd Couple With High Hopes, Take It to the Streets
Last weekend, at least 29 people were shot, eight fatally, in shootings across Chicago, police said.
Just before 1 a.m. May 26 in the waning hours of the Senate’s session, lawmakers hurriedly passed an amendment extending by nine months the deadline they’d given themselves to pass a map of 20 districts from which the new school board will eventually be elected. In the moment, the deadline extension brought relief to many who took issue with the proposed maps. But it shortens the time candidates realistically have to spread their message, raising questions about whether the elected school board will be able to achieve its goal of better representing the interests of the community.
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