U.S. Senators Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth, along with U.S. Reps. Mike Quigley, Eric Sorensen and Nikki Budzinski, wrote to Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, urging him to reconsider his decision to eliminate the Processing and Distribution Centers in Champaign, Peoria, Milan, and Springfield. In 2023, they noted, the average on-time delivery of First-Class mail nationally had already dropped to 85.4 percent, down from an historic low of 91 percent the previous year.

There are reports that many workers, especially in the health care sector, are experiencing long delays in getting their licenses approved or renewed. “These are highly compensated, highly trained individuals that we are losing to other states,” said state Rep. Bill Hauter. “Why? Because we can’t get our licensing act together.” House Bill 1572 requires the agency to issue licenses and temporary licenses to health care professionals on an expedited basis.

The total tax burden as a percentage of income in Illinois for low-income earners is nearly 14 percent, according to personal finance website WalletHub. That is compared to less than 7 percent in Alaska. It’s not much better for middle or high-income earners. Illinois ranked 49th in the country for middle-income earners and 45th in the nation for high-income earners.

Illinois’ 12 public universities received nearly $530 million less in operational funding in the 2024 state budget than they received 15 years ago, thanks in large part to pension payments increasing more than seven-fold during that time.

A federal judge has blocked a major portion of Illinois’ new temporary worker law, as the judge agreed with staffing agencies that federal law overrules the state’s attempt to bring a heavy and costly new regulatory burden, which staffing agencies said would gut their industry and hurt hundreds of thousands of Illinois temp workers in the process.

Sheriff Dustin Heuerman said that since the Pre-Trial Fairness Act took effect in September, that they have seen a decrease in the inmate population at the Champaign County Jail, and he expects that decrease to continue throughout 2024.

“Every day we don’t make progress, I get more messages. One student wrote to tell me, ‘We are tired. We are exhausted. We are sick of going to class and any public area and forming an escape route.'”

Officials from the Office of Budget and Management estimate the city of Springfield would lose about $3.8 million in revenue for the year if Gov. JB Pritzker’s call to repeal the Illinois grocery sales tax is successful. Mayor Misty Buscher said she wished some sort of “sunset clause” would have been implemented. As it stands now, the 1 percent tax could permanently be removed by July 1, if approved by the general assembly.

Among them, Senate Bill 2960 would require hotels to stop giving out small plastic bottles of personal products. This includes small bottles of shampoo, conditioner and body wash that are found in hotel bathrooms. Hotels that violate this would be faced with fines up to $500.

Illinois is the only state in the U.S. that guarantees child social media influencers get a slice of the profits their content makes. Other states have proposed similar laws to Illinois including New York, Washington, New Jersey, Maryland, Ohio, Georgia, Missouri, California, Arizona and Minnesota.

“The Journalism Preservation Act would require Meta to give news organizations like the Sun-Times a cut of advertising revenue. This isn’t unprecedented. When platforms like Apple News share our stories, we get a small portion of revenue from the ads. But Meta’s response is clear: The company was happy to take money from Russian entities to sow distrust in our democracy but isn’t willing to support local news to counteract the propaganda and misinformation they helped amplify.”