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“The whole entire process has been dysfunctional,” Ald. Matt O’Shea said. “I don’t care what neighborhood you’re in or what member of City Council you’re talking to, everybody — I mean, everybody — is angry and frustrated with the situation we’re in. … And to hear yesterday that there’s been great collaboration is insulting.”
Senate President Don Harmon told Faraci and members of the Senate Executive Committee that he thought more time was needed to talk with stakeholders on both sides of the issue. Yet, 860 people filed witness slips in favor of the proposal Wednesday. 113 people were opposed to the bill.
“The fact is that what we need to do is make sure that we’re meeting the Social Security safe harbor minimum, right?” Gov. JB Pritzker said. “So that’s something that hasn’t been fully calculated. That’s something … that would be paid over time. So it’s not something that, you know, needs to get done exactly in the next session. But it’s clear that it needs to be dealt with, because otherwise you’ve created a whole other liability for the state.”
A measure proposed at the statehouse would bring Tier II into line with Social Security, something estimated to cost taxpayers about $5 billion extra over several years.
“We’re going to spend a lot of time and a lot of money fighting against a law that is blatantly unconstitutional,” state Rep. Dan Caulkins said. “We’ve spent millions of dollars fighting against this law that you know, we know and now a judge has said is unconstitutional.”
Fifteen attorneys general representing states from across the Midwest and South that have restricted abortion access filed a joint brief in support of Coalition Life and against Carbondale, population 21,600.
An Alderwoman in Geneva, Illinois, was found to have been an administrator for an activist group targeting conservative businesses. The alderwoman is also a government employee. The title of the Google doc doesn’t hide the ball, ‘Fox Valley and West Suburban Businesses with Terrible Politics.’
“You are seeing more migration patterns following politics,” said Conor Brown, CEO of the NorthWest Illinois Alliance of Realtors in Rockford. “And some of it could be social issues, whether it’s guns and abortion. Or, it could be economic issues like business and taxes and things like that.”
Govs. Kathy Hochul, JB Pritzker and Gavin Newsom are among those who responded to Trump’s victory
In its report, the task force noted a large block of pretrial detention appeals were filed as a “cursory, check-the-box affair,” as a matter of right, rather than fully explaining why the criminal defendants should be released. The task force noted many of these rapid appeals were based in the rules’ requirement that such appeals be filed within 14 days of a detention order.
Three Loop buildings — Ralph H. Metcalfe Federal Building, John C. Kluczynski Federal Building and Everett M. Dirksen U.S. Courthouse — have Legionella and, in some cases, traces of lead or copper that exceed safe levels set by the government. The Metcalfe building also includes a children’s daycare that detected Legionella and lead. The lawmakers said the Stanley J. Roszkowski U.S. Courthouse Building in Rockford was also found to have Legionella above safe levels.
Katherine Panella, a senior assistant Illinois attorney general, said her office has “grave concerns regarding the city’s proposed budget cuts to the CPD’s Office of Constitutional Policing and Reform, which is the cornerstone of CPD’s reform work.”
The funds would help help developers transform vacant floors in a 44-story tower at 135 S. LaSalle St. into hundreds of apartments and other uses, possibly including a neighborhood grocery store or full-service health club.
Josh Weiner, co-founder of the Chicago Jewish alliance, said in light of the Jewish man who was just shot in Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood, all the campus protests and the attack on the Jewish soccer fans in Amsterdam, he is not surprised that Jewish advocates were attacked at DePaul.
“These are tradeoffs. So when Gov. Pritzker supports spending over $1 billion on illegal immigrants, that means that schools aren’t being properly funded in Illinois, that means developmentally disabled aren’t being properly funded in Illinois,” Senate Republicans’ budget leader Sen. Chapin Rose said. “That’s a choice the Democrats are making.”
“Our budget team does a fantastic job,” state Senate leader John Curran said. “And if it was a Senate-only budget, we would have had a bipartisan budget. So the Senate Democrats, Senate Republicans worked in a very collaborative manner. It was a matter of getting the House and the governor to buy into a bipartisan approach.” But Illinois House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch disagreed with Curran’s claim, saying the state passed balanced budgets that support the values of all Illinoisians.
Jim Dey: “(T)he Pritzker administration’s response to what surely will be a preliminary decision on a complicated legal issue reveals the depth of emotion the gun issue elicits as well as the extent some elected officials seek to exploit that emotion. The Illinois law — or one similar to it — is certainly headed to the U.S. Supreme Court for final review. A Maryland gun law similar to Illinois’ is ahead in the legal line of litigants.”
Ted joined Dan and Amy to talk about Illinois’ lack of change in this election despite Trump’s growing success in the state, why principles and facts are so important when pushing back, why voters approving a progressive tax is a bad idea, why grievance politics are so destructive, and more.
Ted Dabrowski joined Ray Stevens to discuss how Gov. Pritzker’s rhetoric is alienating voters, the factors pushing the state toward a red shift, the chance of projects of Chinese companies like Gotion getting shut down by the Trump administration, and more.
The goal of Governors Safeguarding Democracy, or GSD, is to protect state-level institutions of democracy — and to utilize their collective legislative, budgetary, executive and administrative powers. Gov. JB Pritzker said it will “catalyze collaboration across state lines.” The coalition marks the latest national effort by Pritzker, who is considering his own political future as a third-term governor and a potential 2028 presidential candidate.
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