-- Connecting the dots between our economy, government and business --
The document, which was first reported by the school’s student paper, The Daily Northwestern, was created by the university’s chapters of Educators for Justice in Palestine, Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace. It now includes more than 600 signatures by students, faculty, staff and other Northwestern community members.
Jim Kaitschuk, the Executive Director of the Illinois Sheriffs Association, is frustrated by the lack of consistency in what’s detainable, and the trends he is seeing statewide. “The number of arrests, with just one new arrest, recidivism rates during that time were up 19 percent, two arrests was up 25 percent, and three plus arrests were up over 58 percent.”
House Bill 4621 from state Rep. Justin Slaughter sets up the Office of Statewide Pretrial Services as a standalone agency within the Illinois Supreme Court. Of the 102 counties in Illinois, 74 counties are already utilizing such services. Slaughter’s measure would provide such services at no additional cost to the counties, but taxpayers would see an increase of $2.7 million initially.
Moody’s Investors Service revised the Illinois’ outlook from “stable” to “positive,” citing continued improvement in fund balance and budget reserves. Moody’s added that the positive outlook hinged on the possibility of continued growth in state revenue.
Passing a pension bill without knowing the costs is incredibly dangerous to taxpayers in Illinois, as benefits cannot be reduced without amending the state’s constitution.
An Illinois Policy Institute poll found only 29 percent of surveyed voters approved of Johnson’s job performance, with to 57 percent disapproving as of January 2024
“It is clear there is a domestic violence crisis in Chicago that our government seems to be ignoring. It is aggravated by the SAFE-T Act pretrial release changes, which are flooding the streets with violent offenders, as well as the deliberate withholding of information that would determine the impact of failing to keep dangerous and repeat felons off the street.”
“Our team reads hundreds of Chicago police reports every week. We can say with certainty that ShotSpotter alerts routinely result in the arrests of armed men—and they’re almost always men—after shots are fired in the city.”
“This situation developed in an environment of proliferating local governments with limited state oversight. Illinois has more local governments than any other state. … In the case of Dolton, residents pay taxes to the village, as well as a park district, a public library district, a water reclamation district, a forest preserve district, a mosquito abatement district, multiple school districts, a community college district, Thornton Township, and Cook County. That is a lot of local government entities for taxpayers to both fund and track, if they wish to demand accountability.”
The letter points out that Illinois District 2 had some of the lowest on-time delivery rates for both two-day and three-to-five-day delivery options during a three month period last summer.
Ald. Lamont Robinson wants to create a task force, with members appointed by the mayor, that would study the impacts of poverty and work with city departments to develop solutions that expand on a universal basic income program.
The $5 million fund, through a partnership between the city and Ada S. McKinley Community Services, will provide one-time grants of $500 to up to 8,000 eligible K-12 students through a lottery system.
Chicago native and political analyst Gianno Caldwell, discussing the the $70 million proposal and the growing concern for police officers’ safety, said, “As mayor, Brandon Johnson’s message, I believe, to Chicagoans has been quite clear: Get on the back of the bus. Now that’s everybody, but especially those Black voters who are the reason he’s mayor today.”
“Even during those four years on the Cook County Board, Toni Preckwinkle held his hand. (Mayor Brandon) Johnson is not incompetent, he’s inexperienced. He deserves more than a year to learn how to do his job. He deserves the four years to which he was elected, by voters who knew that he was “owned by the CTU” …
“They are all headed downhill very rapidly, and they are all being run by radical leftists…. How we raise our kids really matters. We have been failing them for decades, and now the consequences can be very clearly seen in the streets of our major cities. A horrific societal collapse is upon us, and yet this nation continues to refuse to change direction.”
The Build Illinois Homes Tax Credit Act, on the other hand, was approved by the state Senate and the House last week, setting aside funds for a $20 million state affordable housing tax credit in the upcoming budget.
In Illinois, there are two buyout programs: one run by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources and funded through state legislative allocation, and another run by the Illinois Emergency Management Agency and funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Buyouts offer people in distress significant help, but they often come with long wait times and bureaucratic complications.
“The grocery business operates under notoriously thin profit margins, and grocers must be responsive to changes in customer demands to survive. Operating on tight budgets, as well as quickness and nimbleness regarding answering peoples’ needs, are not responsibilities governments perform well. And Chicago is particularly inept among governmental bodies.”
Hotel occupancy was 51 percent, up 3 percentage points from the same period in 2023, and 11 percentage points lower than the first quarter of 2019. The retail vacancy rate in the Loop was a record-high of 30 percent, according to the Chicago Loop Alliance.
Officials from United and American airlines were at Monday’s event, but the airlines are still reviewing the mayor’s idea, and have not officially signed on to it.
The building will be rezoned into a neighborhood commercial district, allowing the Englewood organizations to build about 30,331 square feet of commercial space, a restaurant, a workforce development training space and a community garden.
All are CPS Selective Enrollment schools. Walter Payton College Prep checked in at No. 5 in the annual list of top high schools in the country. Also included among the top 100 schools in the nation were: Northside College Prep (No. 35), Whitney Young Magnet High School (No. 52), Jones College Prep (No. 53) and Lane Tech (No. 60).
Hundreds of people converged in the area of Roosevelt and Canal after 7 p.m. March 2 in response to announcements circulated on social media.
“The petting zoos are safe. We are not closing petting zoos in the state of Illinois,” said state Rep. Daniel Didech, who received thunderous applause from his fellow legislators on the House floor Thursday after assuring the measure would not close petting zoos.
The move represents the first victory in the tribe’s larger effort to regain the approximately 1,280 acres of its ancestral land in Illinois via legislation in both the General Assembly and Congress. But the tribe first had to spend $10 million over the last 20 years to repurchase the first 130 acres of the Shab-eh-nay Reservation, located in what is now DeKalb County.
Jim Dey: “Sally Carter, who works for local Democratic state Rep. Carol Ammons, received a $1.8 million grant to provide social services to poor kids. But the money disappeared, and the state wants it back. Carter, however, filed bankruptcy seeking to discharge the debt. Attorney General Kwame Raoul wants to block that move.”
“Members of the Illinois Senate Republican Caucus are calling attention to serious issues with a proposed funding formula for the state’s higher education system. … The formula would fund higher education institutions on a per-student basis, with tiers of $2,000, $4,000, $6,000, and $8,000, based on multiple factors, including race. They noted that under the recent Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard ruling, basing funding levels on race is likely unconstitutional.”
HB303 aims to prohibit the Chicago Board of Education from closing any public schools with selective admissions requirements until Feb. 2027, as well as changing the admissions criteria at such schools during the same time period. CTU President Stacy Davis Gates said the bill is “cynical, racist and will negatively impact all Chicago students.” She argued State Rep. Maragret Croke appears “unaware” of the harm her legislation will cause.
“However, what’s obvious is that the entire aim of the report is to get a guarantee in law for more funding for higher education. To sell that increased funding, the bureaucrats wrapped their findings in equity arguments and asserted that universities are currently underfunded.”
Last week, amid the 324 bills passed by the Illinois House, several included programs and initiatives for state agencies that are “subject to appropriation.” One measure would create a new program to help fund certain farm programs with tax dollars. Another measure allows a state agency to rework a web portal for a state-run program. There were even measures dealing with electric vehicles and recreational trails that were “subject to appropriation.”
“If this were … a government with a history of conservative planning and fiscal practice, then you could take these numbers more at face value,” said Matt Fabian, lead analyst at the Massachusetts-based research firm Municipal Market Analytics. “But it being Chicago, [it has] a history of pushing things into the future and using very sophisticated cloaking of what it’s actually doing.”
It is not an exaggeration to say that Johnson and the city council are actually prioritizing illegal immigrants over the (taxpaying) residents of their city. In fact, in asking for federal aid, they are prioritizing illegal immigrants over other cities’ residents as well…. They have a clear path out of this but are refusing to take it….”
“Nobody is safe here right now. We have leadership in the City Council that is more worried about funding money toward illegal immigrants and getting votes for the next election than they are protecting our city and out citizens. My father had a saying, ‘when your police officers aren’t safe anymore, you’ve lost your city.’ That’s what’s going on here,” he said.
SIGN UP HERE FOR OUR FREE WIREPOINTS DAILY NEWSLETTER