State Sen. Julie Morrison said her bill would limit the sale of such prepackaged explosive components only from licensed firearms dealers to those with Firearm Owner ID cards. “This does not prevent anybody from purchasing that has a valid FOID card, and really, that’s what it’s used for, it’s used for target practice.”

The amendments to Rule 102 memorialize what has long been allowed under the code of civil procedure to allow for summons to be served via social media direct message, e-mail, or text message by special order of the court, “when service by traditional means is impractical,” the release says. The amended rules are effective immediately.

According to the school, these ceremonies provide “opportunities for our underrepresented students to celebrate their successes and graduation in a unique way.” The ceremonies will be hosted by registered student organizations in collaboration with the school’s Multicultural Center over the course of a month.

Southern Illinois University has a Cannabis Science Center available to students in the intensive controlled-environment plant production program; the University of Illinois has a cannabis production and management certificate; City Colleges of Chicago offers a certificate in Applied Cannabis Studies; and Joliet Junior College just launched certificate programs to gain cannabis job skills. “You can be the Rockefeller of cannabis right now if you position yourself correctly,” said Shelby Hennings, an assistant professor of sustainable horticulture at Western Illinois University, which recently launched a cannabis production minor.

Fifty-six percent of Illinoisans support amending the Illinois Constitution to reform the state’s public pension systems. Only 18% of voters chose: “Raise taxes or reduce state spending on higher education, public safety, and social services to fully fund the state’s pension obligations to government workers.”

While tens of thousands of illegal aliens continue to be bused to the sanctuary city of Chicago, Republican lawmakers in the state are sounding the alarm over the economic and social burden that the new arrivals are set to impose on taxpayers. Today, close to 700,000 illegal aliens live in the sanctuary state of Illinois.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Diane MacArthur told the jury during closing arguments Monday that the scheme wasn’t money in envelopes. Instead, the bribes were no-show jobs, lucrative contracts and a seat on the utility’s board of directors.

At the peak of the budget impasse, many vendors waited more than 200 days to get paid by the state. Currently, Comptroller Susana Mendoza says the oldest bill she has is just 16 days old.

“Sometimes you have to become a pest to be the best lobbyist in the state,” said Patrick attorney Cotter. “That’s politics and politics still isn’t illegal in this country.”

Funding for quality public services has suffered because of Illinois’ rampant pension growth, which crowds out funding for key services. Since 2000, pension spending is up 584% while vital services have suffered or dropped.

A republication of our Wirepoints column.

Illinois Farm Bureau’s Bill Bodine said they have discussed the issues with industry representatives and have gone from opposed to neutral to the industry-favored legislation. “Now the proposal we’ve negotiated with the industry isn’t perfect, we will admit that, but it does create protections for property rights issues associated with carbon storage that we believe will be amongst the strongest in the country.”

A new report has found that the millions of taxpayer-funded Chromebooks that flooded schools during the pandemic are being discarded because of their expiration dates. There is legislation at the Illinois Statehouse in House Bill 3601 which would give schools the tools, information and parts they need to repair their broken laptops.

The Reason Foundation report said despite Illinois’ efforts to become a model for the nation of cannabis social equity initiatives, the market has been dominated by a handful of large companies, many of which are publicly traded. “Some licenses cost up to $850,000, and then of course you have all your regular capital expenses, so we recommend drastically reducing the license costs and capital requirements,” Managing Director Geoffrey Lawrence.

State Rep. Ryan Spain, R-Peoria, said some changes he sees arising out of the trial is closing lobbying loopholes, making better disclosure on the origins of legislation, bringing reforms to how bills move out of committees, and how witness slips are managed. “We really got to take a master class in the manipulative practices of the leaders of this body of the past and the way that business is done here,” Spain told The Center Square.

School-based health services include, but are not limited to, behavioral health services, preventative care, and physical therapy. The expansion of the program will build on currently-offered health care services available in Illinois schools to children enrolled in Medicaid, as well as training offered to staff, and claiming of federal funds.

“…(O)ver 60 percent of Americans believed the feds were not spending enough on education, health care, Social Security or infrastructure, while another 59 percent believed spending was too low on aid to the poor, and another 58 percent thought spending on Medicare should go up. Which means the American public has a pretty poor understanding of what government spends taxpayer money on, and at best is giving mixed signals to politicians about the course of action they’d support.”

Audits for 51 townships in Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake, McHenry and Will counties show that 19 suburban townships had reserves exceeding a year’s worth of operating expenses last year; Four had enough reserves to cover more than two years of costs. “Most taxpayers are going paycheck to paycheck and certainly don’t have 2½ years’ worth of expenses sitting in savings,” said Bob Anderson, a Wonder Lake resident who has pushed for eliminating townships for decades.

Mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago, acting on instinct, knew just what to do: Say “no” to easy revenue that had been coming in for years. The city’s reputation was far more valuable. By dropping a charge of ten cents for public toilet use in 1973, he provided an object lesson in how not to leave a needlessly bad taste in the mouths of residents and visitors.

<img decoding="async" class="article-image article-image-ux-impr aligncenter" tabindex="0" title="Dignitaries listen to Gov. J.B. Pritzker on a stage behind the Shedd Aquarium to celebrate the selection of Chicago as the host for the 2024 Democratic National Convention April 12, 2023. Behind Pritzker is Mayor-elect Brandon Johnson, right, and Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison, left." src="https://img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/AA1adZY4.img?w=768&h=512&m=6&x=11&y=327&s=717&d=171" alt="Dignitaries listen to Gov. J.B. Pritzker on a stage behind the Shedd Aquarium to celebrate the selection of Chicago as the host for the 2024 Democratic National Convention April 12, 2023. Behind Pritzker is Mayor-elect Brandon Johnson, right, and Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison, left." width="560"

“What the heck is going on and when is it going to change so that you stop getting sued, so we stop seeing deaths as the headline, and that our public can feel confident that we’re overseeing $2 billion to your department in a way in which they expect a better result,” state Sen. Seth Lewis asked. 171 children involved with DCFS died during Fiscal Year 2022, according to the Inspector General’s report.

Illinois is one of just 12 states that still has a state estate tax. Senate Bill 140 amends the Illinois Estate and Generation-Skipping Transfer Tax Act to eliminate the state tax for persons dying on or after the effective date of the new law or for transfers made on or after the effective date.

Jim Dey: “There’s no specific quid quo pro — if you give me this, I’ll give you that — that’s been proved or even alleged. The law doesn’t require anything so obvious for jurors to reach their verdicts, just enough smoke to generate a fire that will scorch traditional business-as-usual in Illinois.”

The better state ratings are due in part to the positive effect of federal pandemic aid, which some states used for one-time expenses while others set cash aside for the future. State treasuries also saw an influx of tax revenue from residents — bolstered by US stimulus money sent to individuals — who spent on services at home at the height of the pandemic, and on travel after Covid lockdowns were eased. Still, a slowdown in the US economy this year is causing concern that states can

Politicians who glibly cite the true wishes of “the American people” as the motive for their actions are also simultaneously congratulating themselves for their insight. I think of four Illinois politicians nearest, though far from dearest, to me: Tammy Duckworth, Dick Durbin, Jan Schakowsky and J.B. Pritzker. A smarmy plea for unity rings especially false at a time when the country is so deeply divided.

Two bills in the Illinois legislature this session will require air conditioning, or at least a common room with air conditioning, in buildings housing seniors.

“We haven’t seen the full magnitude of what the liability could be for this program,” Rep. Ryan Spain said. “And you know, this is a large country where people are moving to different areas based on what benefits may be available to them. So we’re just scratching the surface of what could be our future unfunded liability in this area.”

In other states, people escaping blue counties accounted for almost all their population losses. In Illinois, for example, 91% of the state’s 282,048 net population loss

The State of Illinois currently pays debt service on four major types of bonds: General Obligation (GO) bonds for capital projects, GO bonds for pension obligations, GO bonds to pay backlogged bills and Build Illinois revenue bonds. In previous years, the State has also issued short-term debt.

Statistics released by the Illinois Department of Employment Security showed that during March 2023, the unemployment rate fell 0.1% from February to March. The state’s unemployment rate is now at 4.4%. The national average currently sits at 3.5%.

The Illinois House Revenue and Finance Committee is evaluating a proposed measure giving $25 million in tax credits for research and development projects. House Bill 1578 would offer a credit on qualifying quantum information science expenditures related to research and development that takes place in Illinois.

Bonus.com researcher Heather Fletcher said Illinois is one of five states to watch this year for possible online casino legalization. “Specifically for Illinois, once the market is mature it could mean $240 million, and that is if it’s taxed the same rate as sports,” Fletcher said.

Advocates urged ISBE to seek additional funding through the General Assembly to prevent the programs whose grants are expiring from closing. But spokesperson Jackie Matthews said the agency does not intend to do that. Instead, it is asking the federal government for permission to use pandemic relief funds to cover the amount that was over-allocated for next year.

Illinois is far behind some other states with the number of charging stations available for electric vehicles but is expected to spend more than $230 million in building out its charging infrastructure. That is still just a portion of the estimated $676 million investment needed to support the goal of having 1 million electric vehicles on Illinois roads at the start of the new decade, environmental groups have warned.

Parents, educators, and advocates want school districts to offer full-day programs because they say teachers would have more time to help children learn foundational skills, working parents would have child care covered, and students would be better prepared to enter elementary school. But some critics have concerns about additional costs, staffing, and space at local schools.

Freshman Rep. Harry Benton, himself an ironworker, filed this proposal to help more people get into the trades. People participating in apprenticeship programs would be entitled to a tax credit equal to unreimbursed expenses for work equipment starting January 1.

Raoul joined a friend-of-the-court brief filed by Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares arguing that veterans who earned educational benefits under two versions of the GI Bill — the Montgomery GI Bill and the Post-9/11 GI Bill — are being shortchanged on college benefits.

The current law allows any Illinois high school graduate to go to the University of Illinois if they complete at least 36 graded transferable hours at an Illinois community college with a 3.0 GPA. The bill would expand the law to allow guaranteed admission into all state universities.

Raoul on Thursday signed a letter with officials in 18 other states asking the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to recall affected Kias and Hyundais made 2011-2022. Raoul said in his statement Kia and Hyundai “have not gone far enough … to remedy their vehicles’ vulnerability to theft.”

“Let’s not forget that these independent private schools throughout the state also serve a very important role in educating Illinois kids,” said said Anthony Holter, executive director of Empower Illinois, the largest scholarship granting organization in the state. Holter said demand is high; More than 20,000 kids were on the waiting list this past cycle with Empower Illinois.

The Illinois House advanced three measures to the Senate, including one which would provide incentives for the development of affordable housing projects that incorporate urban and suburban gardening programs. Also passed Thursday was Senate Bill 1879, which would provide electric suppliers access to personal data stored on a costumer’s smart meter.

A report by Health Care and Family Services estimates for 2024, there will be an additional 108,400 undocumented immigrants needing care, far exceeding earlier estimates. The report also showed that in 2020, the Health Care Benefits for Immigrant Seniors program exceeded its appropriation in the first month of implementation.

If the legislation becomes law, members would be given several options on what to do with covered assets they own. Members who continue holding or trading covered assets would be penalized at least the same amount of the members’ monthly pay or 10% of the value of each asset violation.

Hannah Hill with the National Foundation for Gun Rights said the outcome of the Naperville case is paramount. “It doesn’t matter at the end of the day what level of government is taking away your rights. If you can’t function as a business, you can’t function and you’re going to lose that business. And, that’s exactly what the constitution is in place to prevent.”

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker were named the 32nd and 34th most popular U.S. governors, respectively, in a poll by national research organization Morning Consult. Parson and Pritzker each received a 52% approval rating from voters within their states. The poll adds that Parson has around a 36% disapproval rating and Prtizker around 44% in that regard.

A bill would allow colleges to receive grants to address student hunger if they meet requirements like creating a hunger task force that meets at least three times a year, having a staff member designated to assist students sign up for food stamps, and making programming for Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week. Any Illinois higher education institution is eligible.

The Driehaus resources will enable the BGA’s Illinois Answers Project newsroom to provide reporting resources to newsrooms in cities across Illinois—essentially “embed” work on investigative and solutions-focused stories.

More than half of U.S. states have passed measures against the teaching of critical race theory – for example in schools or government employee trainings. Almost all states that haven’t yet passed any such measures have seen them proposed on the state level. Illinois is one of a very few states with no finalized laws or directives on any level.

“Winning nearly half of the elections it participated in is not ‘losing big,’ especially when readers consider that Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, Democrats, and their teachers’ union allies in both Wisconsin and Illinois outspent conservative challengers by hundreds of thousands of dollars. They also got a helping hand from corporate media, which gave supporters of left-wing school board members plenty of TV time to help protect eligible seats from pro-parent candidates. “

Jim Dey: “Unions are about trust among the members and their elected officials, and violations like (former union president Byron) Clemons’ provide useful ammunition to those who object to union power… AFSCME Council 31’s membership has fallen from 65,000 in 2017 to roughly 53,000 in 2022 as a consequence of a 2018 U.S. Supreme Court decision that ruled that forced union dues are unconstitutional.”

“This case aptly illustrates the impossibility of the (school) District fulfilling its educational mission while simultaneously accommodating the concerns of every parent,” Judge Lindsay Jenkins wrote. In this case, the judge said, that conflict diminishes the father’s otherwise-fundamental right to parent his child, because the mother’s wishes align with the school district’s policy goal of “maintaining a non-discriminatory environment for students and protecting students’ privacy, mental well-being and physical safety” – and especially if that student identifies as transgender.

The case will likely turn on questions about whether each of the four defendants knowingly joined the alleged conspiracy, whether they acted with a corrupt intent tied to Madigan’s official actions or duties, and whether they did so in connection to legislation.

It reads, in part, “Brandon Johnson today decided to use his first interaction with the Legislature to launch one of the most partisan speeches we have heard in a long time on the House floor. It is hard to build a bridge with someone who comes to Springfield looking to pick a fight.”

The Illinois Freedom Caucus, consisting of downstate Republicans, criticized Johnson’s speech. “What we wanted to hear today was real ideas and real solutions – not more virtue signaling,” the group said in a news release. “Instead of solutions, all we heard today was one woke cliché after another. There is no vision for building a better business climate in Chicago.”

According to the Illinois Municipal League, as of 2011, 10% of total income tax collections were dedicated to municipalities and counties. The percentage share of state income tax revenue to local governments was then reduced to 6%. “We need these funds to cover rising costs, including mounting public safety pensions, unfunded mandates, infrastructure, stormwater and community improvement are extremely limited,” Cary Mayor Mark Kownick said.

Total sales reached nearly $135 million in March, with $101 million coming from Illinoisans and nearly $34 million from out-of-state residents.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a federal bureaucracy with a vast jurisdiction, is testing a novel approach to crime and punishment. In a lawsuit against Townstone Financial, a small Chicago-area nonbank mortgage firm, the CFPB is signaling that it may attempt to punish anyone who complains about neighborhood crime.

The news that Democrats picked Chicago as their 2024 Democratic National Convention host site has only bolstered Pritzker’s position just months into his second term. “It shows he has clout, to use a Chicago term,” said Dick Simpson, professor emeritus at the University of Illinois Chicago. “It offers him a chance to become one of the early contenders for the 2028 presidential election.”

During the pandemic, the state awarded a new set of programs 21st Century grants and allowed organizations to keep unspent money, not realizing this would result in insufficient funding to continue funding longtime recipients. ISBE estimates this could result in a shortfall of up to $15 million.

In the first six months that the 988 mental health crisis hotline has been operating, Illinois has fielded 66,553 calls, 8,712 texts and 14,574 chats.

There were 154 robberies in 2021 – up from 36 in 2018. Durbin also wants to know why a rapid alert system to notify carriers if a crime was committed near their routes was discontinued in 2021.

State Rep. Brad Halbrook, R-Shelbyville, previously suggested splitting the state into two parts, separating the Chicago area from the rest of the state. “They trample on our rights and force their insane ideology on the rest of the state and act as though we should be grateful just because there are a lot of people in Chicago paying taxes,” he said. “Mankind has survived thousands and thousands of years before the state of Illinois ever started collecting tax revenue from anyone. Not one human being has ever survived without agriculture. Rural residents need woke Chicago politicians like a fish needs

Gov. J.B. Pritzker promoted Illinois’ fiscal progress and ratings upswing in a direct pitch to investors as the state tees up its first general obligation bonds to carry single-A-level ratings since 2016.

Developer Dirk McCormick retained his seat on the Riverton school board by picking up a vote from a provisional ballot, breaking an election-day deadlock with another candidate, political newcomer David A. Leach. And in Loami, Steven Lambert has claimed a one-vote win over longtime village president Al Mann, 84-83.

Illinois has the fifth-highest rate of car thefts in the country, according to a new report. There were nearly 39,000 cars stolen in Illinois last year; That’s nine out of every 1,000 cars.

The order from the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals leaves in place a Chicago federal district judge’s ruling that the Second Amendment’s right to keep and bear arms does not extend to the ownership, sale and use of weapons that the state may classify as particularly “dangerous,” even if those weapons are commonly owned and used by millions of people for lawful purposes.

The Illinois Democratic Party spent nearly $260,000 on local school and library board races across the state leading up to the April 4 election. Spending in school board races — traditionally low-cost, low-interest contests — has soared as they have become another front in national partisan political battles. For the most part, conservative candidates fared poorly in this month’s election.

But former ComEd CEO Anne Pramaggiore’s toe-to-toe encounter with Assistant U.S. Attorney Sarah Streicker may have left jurors with questions about her selective memory. That’s because they learned that Pramaggiore met with prosecutors months after the chat, in which she was told people paid by ComEd through a contractor “pretty much collect a check” without working, yet she claimed to have forgotten all about it.

Mattoon in Motion, an economic development agency, has raised $60,000 with help from community businesses and the Mattoon Chamber of Commerce for the program.

A coalition of business, technology and health care groups wants the law updated to require proof that actual harm occurred to individuals before imposing fines. They also want to establish a “notice and cure” period, which would allow businesses to address any potential issues in instances where there has been no actual harm.

There is already a federal law requiring audio and visual voting tools, such as touchscreen voting units that allow visually impaired voters to hear the balloting instructions and will enable them to make their choices and cast their ballot. Former Lake County Clerk Willard Helander said those precautions make this measure unneeded. “If you have a solution in place, why do you create a second layer of process that, in fact, removes that person from the public?”

Illinois comes it at #5, with change since 1980 of +2.3 percentage points. Twenty-one states have lowered effective state-local tax rates since 1980.

Governors State, Chicago State and EIU faculty have all ended their strikes. CSU’s strike was the longest at 10 days.

The government, which filed the ad tech lawsuit in January along with eight states, had argued that Google should be forced to sell its ad manager suite because it illegally abused its dominance of online advertising.

While Democrats have argued that its policies are helping business and labor interests, state Sen. Don DeWitte says departures of companies such as Caterpillar and Boeing show the state is not being a welcoming environment to employers. “We don’t just want businesses to locate here in Illinois, we should be incentivizing the ones that are already here to grow and thrive,” he said.

On the one hand, choice advocates have clearly made some remarkable progress over the last two years. Setting up a genuine educational marketplace in California, Illinois, Massachusetts or New York will prove much harder. Nevertheless, it does seem likely that, over the long run, even Democrat-dominated legislatures will have a hard time resisting school choice, especially as their parent constituents learn how well red state students are doing compared to their own.

“We have more that we need to do. We know, just to become an average credit state in the United States, we have work to do. But we’re on our way. Our legislature understands the things we need to do to get there, and we are making real progress,” Gov. JB Pritzker said.

Though the trial is now entering its sixth week, there were hints Monday that it could be nearing its end.

Illinois Senate Minority Leader John Curran said his party will vote against budgets that raise taxes on Illinois businesses. “Go back to the 2021 budget that Republicans did not support that the governor is pointing to and that was a budget that raised significant taxes on business, and has put us behind in this state in competing with neighboring states throughout this nation for business.”

Wirepoints President Ted Dabrowski said the massive inflow of $188 billion of federal tax dollars in COVID-19 relief to both the private and public sector in Illinois helped. “The good news is that if you’re a bond holder, you’re in a much better position because Illinois’ financial condition as far as repayment of debt to bond holders has improved. But I think there’s a big disconnect between bondholders and what happens to ordinary people in Illinois.”

“We don’t have to look any further than recent departures of Stellantis, Caterpillar, Boeing, Tyson Foods and others to understand that Illinois needs to do a better job in retaining our large employers,” state Sen. Don DeWitte said.

After the latest report on county population trends showed 92 of 102 Illinois counties lost population, U.S. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi sent a letter to the U.S. Census late last month with “ongoing concerns surrounding the repeated undercounting” of Illinois’ population. “As I previously noted, those PES findings…raised serious questions for Illinois officials as to the reliability of the Census Bureau’s results more broadly.”

Former ComEd CEO Anne Pramaggiore said Monday that she was unaware the company had hired several people connected with former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan until 2019, long after lawmakers passed legislation that brought the utility back from the brink of bankruptcy.

In Illinois, the decision on whether Supreme Court justices should recuse themselves from a case rests solely with the justices themselves, and both Mary K. O’Brien and Elizabeth Rochford declined to do so. Both received substantial campaign donations during their 2022 campaigns from Gov. JB Pritzker and House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch, named defendants in this case.

“The prosecution’s best testimony hasn’t come from the cooperators who lined up to testify about ComEd’s efforts to stay in Democrat Michael Madigan’s good graces. It’s come from the defendants’ own mouths, captured in the dozens of wiretapped phone calls and secretly recorded videos…What lies between is a rather large gap in which prosecutors are asking the jury to make the connection, based largely on circumstantial evidence, that the defendants believed the favors they were doing

Analysis of the 16 county detention centers across Illinois has found that only three successfully have completed audits mandated by federal law to enforce protections against sexual assault. Under the current lack of transparency, the public only has access to information about the detention centers in two scenarios: either from periodic inspections and audits, or only after concerns have been raised by those within the juvenile justice system itself.

“While I am a strong advocate for Catholic education, I am also an advocate for families who choose public school education. Everybody wins when parents, who know their children best, have the opportunity to pick the schools that meet their children’s needs.”

Chicago Mayor-elect Brandon Johnson has made clear that video gaming revenue prominently figures into his plan for the city, which will first need to legalize such machines, with a spokesperson recently telling reporters, “He is a supporter of legalized video gambling as an important revenue source for critical investments in public safety, transportation, housing and other public accommodations.”

“America is in a similar position to where it was in 1861, 1929, 1941, and 1968—only perhaps worse, given in all those cases, there was at least a president and Congress that identified and reacted to the crisis, whereas today our elected government is what caused the crisis.”

The five counties which lost the most residents are all located in high-tax states, namely California, Illinois, and New York. They have also been wracked by homelessness, drug taking and high rents and living costs.

The 593-megawatt Double Black Diamond Solar farm near Springfield is being built by Swift Current Energy of Boston. But the city doesn’t have a contract with the project itself. Instead, City Hall has a deal with Constellation Energy to supply 100% renewable energy. The Baltimore company sells electricity and natural gas contracts in states — like Illinois — that

Matt Paprocki, of the Illinois Policy Institute: “Another reform that would be popular? Pension reform. Even though Illinoisans paid the third most for government workers’ retirements in 2021, the state’s pension debt still totaled almost $140 billion at the end of fiscal year 2022..Voters deserve the chance to vote on a proposal to reform the state’s public pensions. A 2022 poll found bipartisan supermajorities of Illinois voters favor pension reform.”

Days before the family disappeared, 11-year-old Aiden told his grandmother and adult sister that he had twice walked in on his father telling a clown mask in his bedroom that he needed to ‘kill three people’, according to Gia Wright of the Missing Persons Awareness Network (MPAN).

The Bloomington-Normal Airport Authority is looking to expand its tax base to prepare for emergencies, but it has no plans to increase the levy. The levy would lead to lower property tax bills for Bloomington-Normal residents, while it would increase for the rest of the county. Bellflower Mayor Allen Grussing argued against the proposal, explaining that his community has just three businesses, and no schools or hotels. “Any revenue that would be coming in through the airport is not coming to Bellflower,” said Grussing.

State Rep. Marcus Evans Jr., who is sponsoring a bill that would create the Illinois child tax credit, said the legislation is an effort to support to support low-income, working families. He said it can also create more revenue, with families having more spending power once they receive the credit.

Before Elizabeth Rochford and Mary O’Brien were elected to the Illinois Supreme Court in November 2022, Gov. JB Pritzker gave each of their campaign funds half a million dollars from both his campaign account and a revocable trust, totaling $1 million to each. The two justices also received six-figure donations out of a campaign fund controlled by Illinois House Speaker Emanual “Chris” Welch”.

After Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) signed a controversial six-week abortion ban Thursday night, Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D-IL) reached out to disaffected residents of the state, encouraging them to make Illinois home instead.

Gov. Pritzker posted his support on Twitter. “No one better I can think of to be appointed to the Committee for the Preservation of the

“Indiana or Texas, they’re much faster at this,” said state Sen. Suzy Glowiak-Hilton. “We are in Illinois. It seems to be really slow, so I’m concerned about our ability to transition quickly.”

“Take Chicago’s mayor’s race as an example. The majority of voters did not cast their ballot for either Brandon Johnson or Paul Vallas in the February election. If Chicago voted with RCV, not only would there not have been an expensive runoff election, but it’s also conceivable that neither of these candidates would be mayor today.”

The Illinois Department of Revenue will offer tax relief to affected income, withholding, and sales and use tax filers who live or have businesses in the impacted counties, or to those who have tax records located in the five declared disaster areas.

“Everybody is in agreement, regardless of which side of the issue they’re on, that this is probably going to be a long protracted legal battle,” Dane Harrel said. “It’s already been months, it’ll probably be in the courts for many more months if not years. I don’t even want to speculate what the compliance rate is going to be and that’s going to be up to each individual to decide.”

“It’s highly unlikely that they will be able to gain the proper licensing in time,” said Ray Stout, the executive director of the Illinois Craft Brewers Guild. “People think this is kind of a hoax,” he added. “There’s nothing pointing to it being real.”

The list of those filing arguments before the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago, include former U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement and his law partner Erin Murphy, who together were on the winning legal team that secured the most recent big win in favor of Second Amendment rights before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Federal funding for IDPH is expected to drop by $1 billion in the 2024 fiscal year, shifting the fight against COVID-19 from a state’s public health system to the traditional health care delivery, a spokesman said.

Enrollment in ag classes was up 12% last year, a good sign of demand. But there are not enough teachers.

First-term Sen. Suzy Glowiak Hilton added to the environmental effort with a bill that passed the Senate March 31. It would require new buildings more than 5,000 square feet with 100-person occupancy to provide a bottle-filling station with each new water fountain, to promote reusable water bottles.

“In some cases, generational retirements are outpacing new installations,” said Diane Holder, of Reliability First. “And this is resulting in reduced reserve margins.” Holder said there might not be enough energy supply to get power up quickly if there are unexpected outages. She stressed that there could be more blackouts without adequate resources.

The nuance of the challenges against Illinois’ gun ban range from the state making firearms less safe for people with disabilities to prohibiting people from being able to fix their own guns.

The Illinois State Board of Education told a Senate Appropriations-Education Committee Wednesday that schools are looking for $10.3 billion for fiscal year 2024 that begins July 1. That is an increase of $517 million from fiscal 2023. ISBE’s budget proposal includes a $75 million increase for early childhood programs.

The American Legislative Exchange Council’s “Rich States, Poor States” report is a forecast based on a state’s current standing in 15 state policy variables. Illinois ranked 46th in the country, down one spot from last year. Hurting Illinois’ ranking are several tax-related categories, including property tax burden, which the state placed 42nd. Illinois ranked 44th in corporate income tax rate; and 49th for debt service as a share of tax revenue.

These effects are felt more acutely by low-income families. For families in the bottom fifth of income, tuition and fees for a 4-year public university represent at least 101 percent of that household’s income, according to the report.

“Illinois’ high tax burden coupled with record-high inflation are the major reasons that Senate Republicans continue to push for relief for Illinois families. Last week, Republican Senators made another public push for their measures that would provide Illinoisans with savings on food, drugs, childcare, and energy costs.”

The Illinois Police Officers’ Pension Investment Fund (IPOPIF) was created by the Illinois Legislature and signed into law by Governor JB Pritzker on December 18, 2019. The law, Public Act 101-0610, provided for the mandatory consolidation of the investment assets of the state’s public safety pension funds into two investment funds; one for police officers (Article 3) and one for firefighters (Article 4).

Illinois’ Department of Commerce, in conjunction with the Chicago Urban League and Chicago State University, surveyed 1,355 Black-owned businesses; There are nearly 150,000 total in the state. According to the more than 50-page report, 66% of business owners are the only employee, and more than half operate from their homes, without brick-and-mortar storefronts.

“I was in the AFSCME union and we just got no backing at all. The entire time I was president they never took up any grievance that we brought to them. Not one,” said John Moss. In 2022, less than 21% of AFSCME Council 31’s spending was on representing workers, according to its report with the U.S. Department of Labor.

Among hundreds of recordings played by prosecutors over the previous five weeks of trial, jurors have heard Pramaggiore’s voice on wiretapped phone calls, including one in which she refers to her co-defendants as her “spirit guides,” and other calls where she discusses putting Mike Madigan ally Juan Ochoa into a paid seat of ComEd’s board.

Some senators remained concerned that the state hasn’t addressed COVID-19 learning loss. “They’re behind on reading, math, social skills,” said Sen. Tom Bennett. “What do we do? How do we tackle this thing?” Added Sen. Chapin Rose, “Compared to the states around us that didn’t sit out the extra year, we are way behind…I know that there’s people around the country studying this. But we’ve got to catch these kids up.”

U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth said, “If you are tired of gun violence and you’re tired of the fact that we have had more mass shootings in this country that there are days in the year, then you need to call your Republican legislators and ask them why they continue to put the well-being of the NRA and gun manufacturers over the well-being of your neighbors and your families and your kids.”

“People – especially people of color – are unnecessarily pulled over far too often,” Sen. Rachel Ventura told Marijuana Moment. “The odor of cannabis alone shouldn’t be one of those reasons. Cannabis is legal in Illinois and it’s a pungent scent that can stick to clothes for extended periods of time.”

After hours of oral arguments Wednesday, a federal judge now has the case challenging Illinois’ gun ban with a ruling on a preliminary injunction expected in the weeks ahead.

“I fought like heck and put my own money behind it and ran a campaign to pass a graduated income tax in the state of Illinois that I believe would help us fund schools properly, it would reduce property taxes, and properly fund schools that are underfunded,” Gov. JB Pritzker said.

State Rep. Steven Reick,said Pritzker has been unwilling to discuss these issues with lawmakers. “Instead of going to Boston and talking to the Kennedy Center, he ought to be coming to us and talking to us about the problems that we have with this agency,” Reick said. “It isn’t like we are not getting the attention we deserve, we are being completely ignored.”

Ron DeSantis will join Darin LaHood for the 2023 Lincoln Day Dinner May 12.

In addition to reparations, the commission is looking at other possible remedies for racial inequity, including the creation of a vocational center for African American citizens, the assurance of proportional economic representation of African American citizens in all state contracts and the development of a state Slavery Era Disclosure bill. Disclosure laws, passed in cities like Chicago and San Francisco, require companies applying for government contracts to disclose whether they profited from slavery.

The agreement with New York, California, Colorado, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Mexico and Washington, D.C. marks the latest in a string of recent legal settlements Juul has reached across the country with cities and states. Last month, the company paid Chicago $23.8 million to settle a lawsuit.

Gov. JB Pritzker, at a forum at the University of Harvard Institute of Politics Monday, said that there is no other way to fix government than by electing Democrats. “I mean, we have to go win in

Jim Dey: “Much of what was presented to the jury is politics in its purest form. But a considerable amount was also politics Illinois-style, which prosecutors contend is, to borrow a defense reference, unlawful ingratiation. Will jurors see it that way? Or will the dream team of highly paid defense lawyers persuade jurors that there is no federal crime involved in how Madigan built and maintained a ruthlessly productive political organization that made him one of the most legendary politicians in the state’s history?”

Edward Moody testified he only worked about an hour per month calling legislators, adding that this work “didn’t compare” to the amount of time he spent working political campaigns. He told jurors he believed he was actually being paid “to stay active in my politics.” When asked directly if he had received monthly checks for years in exchange for doing “little or no work” on ComEd’s behalf, Moody replied: “I did.”

Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul joined the coalition of 24 Attorneys General that filed an amicus brief Monday urging the U.S. Court of Appeals to suspend the controversial ruling that essentially cut off essential access to medication abortion. Illinois was one of 18 states that filed a lawsuit to preserve access to mifepristone prior to the Texas decision.

“An emergency waiver for summer E15 would give consumers the option of lower cost fuel during the warmer months,” Illinois Corn Growers Association President Matt Rush said in a statement.

A 2022 report by Wirepoints showed that the amount of carjacking incidents has increased year by year. In that same year, Gov. J.B. Pritzker allocated $250 million to help address the issue.

Sen. Meg Loughran Cappel, a cosponsor of the bill, said she has concerns that edTPA is so rigorous and intensive that it could deter some people from ever trying to become a teacher.

The Democrats’ national convention will take place at the United Center in downtown Chicago from August 19-22 in 2024. Republicans will gather in Milwaukee from July 15 to July 18 largely at Fiserv Forum in the city’s downtown.

“For the state, the loss of these revenues is easily accommodated in an almost $50 billion annual state budget…For Chicago and other cities, that amount is much more significant. And importantly, it is not a one-shot revenue source but a continuing and growing participation in the strength of the state’s economy.”

Don Schaefer, executive vice president of the Mid-West Truckers Association, said regulators see truckers as easy pickings. “Truckers are not against a clean environment. Not at all,” Schaefer emphasized. “We don’t want regulators coming after the industry with a sledgehammer. Let’s be reasonable about it and we can work it out.”

When asked, Pritzker did not deny a potential presidential bid, but he affirmed that Biden is “running for reelection.” Pritzker said he will remain an active financial contributor to Democrats. “I’m supporting candidates all over the United States with my resources. You might think that’s good or bad, but it’s not just supporting me — it’s about electing Democrats up and down the ticket in every state in the United States,” he added.

Jim Dey: “The federal-aid issue has been a source of contention between the governor and financial analysts at Wirepoints and Truth in Accounting. Critics have argued that the many billions in federal aid the state has received since the pandemic broke out has papered over its revenue problems. Pritzker has rejected that claim, citing revenue growth from traditional sources.”

Said Faye Jones, of the Albert E. Jenner, Jr. Memorial Law Library at the University of Illinois, “Local control by the library board and director with input by library users is a much more effective way to shape collection decisions. As voters, we choose local library trustees so we all can participate in shaping our local library’s policies and services. I’d hate to see local control diminished.”

Madison County State’s Attorney Thomas Haine is leading the friend of the court brief in support of Caulkins with a bipartisan group of 33 state’s attorneys looking to overturn the law. “It’s not a political issue from our perspective,” Haine said. “We are attorneys. We are prosecutors. We took an oath to be objective about the law.”

Senate Bill 2243 will require the state board of education to develop and adopt a comprehensive literacy plan for the state between Oct. 1 and Jan. 31, 2024. This bill sailed through the Senate with no opposition and is currently in the House.

Some drivers are concerned that we may see a repeat of last summer. “We will. Without a doubt, we will. Everything is going up. A bag of chips is almost $5,” one consumer said.

Kwame Raoul is among 18 attorneys general who signed onto a brief in support of a controversial New Jersey gun law that would allow members of the gun industry to be sued in cases where the public is harmed by gun violence.

The business network Alignable asked small businesses in Illinois and around the country about their hiring practices during March. “Illinois small businesses went from the top of the chart in terms of hiring, things were looking really good last month, to the bottom of the chart where they are down 28 percentage points,” said researcher Chuck Casto.

Last week, the Senate passed Senate Bill 76, which would delete language in state statute that provides that no construction shall commence on any new nuclear power plant located within the state. Monday, the Illinois Commerce Commission announced it was selected to join the Advanced Nuclear State Collaborative, a partnership that seeks to bring together state utility regulators from across the country to discuss the “unique needs and challenges tied to deploying new nuclear generation.”

Illinois U.S. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi co-sponsored the “Averting the National Threat of Internet Surveillance, Oppressive Censorship and Influence, and Algorithmic Learning by the Chinese Communist Party Act” or “ANTI-SOCIAL CCP Act.” The measure would ban any transactions with TikTok’s Chinese-owned parent company ByteDance in the U.S., effectively banning the app nationwide.

Among the 700 bills to successfully move to the other chamber are a measure to lift the state’s 1987 moratorium on nuclear power plant construction, a bill that would create statewide building codes and another requiring retail establishments to accept cash payments within certain hours. Lawmakers will return to Springfield April 18.

Data writer Sam Huisache said Illinois hasn’t been hit as hard as some areas of the country when it comes to housing prices. “For example, Miami saw a 16% increase whereas Chicago, on the other hand, home prices increased only 4.5%,” said Huisache.

Gov. JB Pritzker touted his administration’s multimillion-dollar investments in higher education during a news conference Wednesday at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. But when asked afterward about its ability to tout these investments while strikes loom at the other universities, his office blamed past administrations for poor handling of the state budget. “It takes time to repair years of damage and underfunding, and many universities continue to feel that loss. The Governor supports making college

Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul called the Texas ruling “legally unsound” and pledged that Illinois patients would still have access to mifepristone while the legal battles continue.

Forbes lists 23 billionaires in Illinois, including four memebers of the Pritzker family.

In Will County, conservative groups who support parents for school boards won eight seats in local school board races.

Illinois badly wants to keep the Belvidere plant up and running and is putting a major push with daily talks between officials and Stellantis.

“At least in this state, the Bill Clinton era sure appears to be over. Ginning up fears about crime and promising to throw more money at the police just aren’t enough by themselves any longer to win races.”

Around $30 million has been designated to distribute 60,000 HEPA air purifiers in more than 3,000 Illinois schools across the state.

The municipalities allege that Monsanto intentionally misled the public for decades about the environmental and health hazards of PCBs, resulting in widespread contamination. The lawsuit seeks to shift the significant costs associated with eliminating PCBs from the affected cities and villages to the defendants. It is unclear yet the exact costs.

Jim Dey: “The effort staved off a Champaign County court hearing involving (Sally K.) Carter’s nonpayment of wages to a former employee. But it also cast a shadow over the attorney general’s legal effort to enforce a court ruling requiring Carter to repay $1.8 million in (IDHS) grant money she received to oversee programs to help lower-income children…(An additional State) board of education grant — which involved the Champaign school district, at least initially — was for $5.4 million over five years.”

“Voting numbers show that of Champaign County’s 136,443 registered voters, just 18,842 cast ballots. That’s roughly 14 percent. Over in Vermilion County, turnout was a little higher on a percentage basis, 5,176 votes cast out of 28,730 registered voters. That’s about 18 percent…What is this state doing? And why?…Perhaps the answer is the best of all possible reasons — it’s always been done this way. Perhaps, it’s because the powers that be prefer low-turnout elections that allow relative handfuls of people to elect municipal insiders to officers who have taxpayer resources to spread around.”

Prices in Illinois are 31.6 cents per gallon higher than a month ago and stand 59.6 cents per gallon lower than a year ago.

“(Former graduate students Maggie) DeJong clearly has the right, as enshrined in the First Amendment, to express her religious, political, and social views on her personal social media account and to engage in mutual conversations with fellow students regarding those opinions without fear of retaliation,” Federal Judge Nancy Rosenstengel wrote.

While Montgomery, Alabama saw the country’s smallest amount of growth in home value at just 59.6%, five cities outside of the Chicago area followed on the list. Springfield, Peoria, Bloomington, Rockford and Decatur followed in the #2 through #6 spots respectively, with price growth ranging from 61.4% to 62.3%.

“Western and southwestern Illinois get a fair amount of hunters that come in from Missouri and Iowa particularly for waterfowl, so it’s already a big issue,” said Josh Witkowski with Illinois Federation of Outdoor Resources. “There’s a potential for firearm seizure, there’s potential for felony involved, it’s going to be a huge issue with the hunting community with that going on.”

IDES chief counsel Kevin Lovellette said overpayment waivers happened because federal guidelines allowed for it. “This was part of the CARES act enacted by Congress, that was fully federally funded,” Lovellette said. “As part of the continued assistance act and then continued in ARPA, Congress allowed for a waiver of overpayments.”

Illinois will get an extra $143 million for lead water line removal this year in the wake of new changes to the federal funding formula that now take into account how bad the lead problem is in each state.

According to a recent report from the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability, state spending on higher education in Illinois was cut nearly in half, by $1.8 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars, between 2000 and 2023. That’s despite recent increases in the real dollar amount invested in the state’s universities. “This significant cutback in state funding has really created some fiscal stress, particularly for those public universities that serve more traditionally underrepresented student populations, like low-income kids, rural kids, minority kids,” said Ralph Martire.

Senate Bill 1994 would put a cap on how much money school districts could hold in reserves. Districts that exceed it would be required to file a report with the state. According to the most recent report 70 percent of districts had cash reserves of between 100 and 359 days of expenses. But 197 districts had reserves of 360 to 720 days, and 10 districts had reserves greater than 720 days.

The report estimated trial lawyers have received, on average, $11.5 million in fees from BIPA-related lawsuits. By contrast, class members typically receive $506 each – “and only individuals that affirmatively filed paperwork as part of the claims process received individual payouts,” the report said. The report says the findings should serve as a warning to other states to avoid following the example of Illinois.

Nathan Atkinson, a professor of law at the University of Wisconsin, said that for swing states like Wisconsin and Georgia, where there are a large amount of voters on polar opposite sides of the aisle, this method would make it hard for candidates in the middle to ever get elected. “So to the extent that there’s not actually that many people in the middle, it might not give much of an opportunity for these, these moderate candidates to prevail.”

“We are doing everything we can to improve the things that appeal to folks so we can attract them and keep them,” Jacksonville Mayor Andy Ezard said.

The Illinois State Board of Education is using federal COVID-19 relief funds to match about 1,900 students with about 700 tutors in 59 school districts throughout the state. Said Donovan Community Unit District 3 Superintendent Tony Coates, “Every elementary student receiving tutoring in math has shown math growth from fall to winter. That’s the name of the game — to get kids to catch up from some of the learning loss that occurred during the pandemic.”

In the highest-spending scenario outlined in the three-year forecast from the Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability, the state could once again face a bill backlog as high as $18 billion. That estimate assumes spending growth at its five-year average of 7.1 percent.

Jurors then heard FBI recordings of Michael McClain — a Michael Madigan confidant who had no obvious role in the matter — brokering the deal in 2018 between Madigan and Anne Pramaggiore, who was then ComEd’s CEO. McClain told Pramaggiore that Madigan “would appreciate it” if Pramaggiore “would keep pressing” to get the deal done.

Even before Amendment 1 passed in November, Illinois was unique in giving some collective bargaining agreements the power to override state law. The amendment and language in the Illinois Public Labor Relations Act together make Illinois the only state that allows government unions to override state and local laws without restriction.

“The state’s policy on noncompetes is a model that would work better for the nation than the FTC’s proposed blanket ban…If a state as blue as Illinois can come up with a bipartisan compromise on this issue — the General Assembly approved the measure unanimously — then even an agency as far to the left as the current FTC can do the same.”

Illinois is one of only 12 states with a moratorium banning any future construction of nuclear plants. “Banning nuclear entirely in a world where its become much safer, things are smaller, less prone to an accident, more likely for us to be able to maintain them for a long time. That is something worth consideration,” Gov. JB Pritzker said. “The devil’s in the details and we want to make sure we are not just opening this up to nuclear everywhere or every type of nuclear.”

The courts are asking to add 71 employees to offer pretrial services like electronic monitoring and drug testing to counties that need assistance with such services.

According to a study by the Cook County’s Treasurer’s office, a little-known loophole has allowed investors to siphon millions of dollars from government agencies. That makes Illinois “like no other state in the country,” where the law “allows tax buyers to easily and quickly undo a tax deal for trivial reasons, often getting all of their money back, including interest, fees and court costs.”

State Sen. Ram Villivalam said the state has the tax resources to fix problems. “We need to acknowledge two pieces. One is we have the money to fund the child care system that parents and providers deserve. We just have to prioritize and make it happen,” Villivalam said. “We also have to talk about the workforce.”

Mailee Smith, of the Illinois Policy Institute: “To be sure, some (Paul) Vallas voters and others who see CTU for what it is – a power-hungry political machine rife with corruption – may feel dejected. Some may even make the painful choice to leave this beautiful city. Only time will tell how the business community will react, but Johnson’s campaign promise to gin up $800 million in new revenues by reimplementing the city’s head tax on employers certainly won’t help the city as businesses decide where to plant roots or whether to stay.”

Illinois Education Association President-elect Al Llorens said, “Since the pandemic, the mental health issue has become something that’s front and center for almost everyone. But when you get down to the point of looking at those living in high poverty, it’s exacerbated.”

“Republicans had better get their abortion position straight, and more in line with where voters are or they will face another disappointment in 2024. A total ban is a loser in swing states. Republicans who insist on that position could soon find that electoral defeats will lead to even more liberal state abortion laws than under Roe. That’s where Michigan is now after last year’s rout.”

Dr. Sameer Vohra said IDPH and Gov. JB Pritzker plan to respond to lessons learned during the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic. The agency is proposing a $45 million investment to modernize the state’s public health data systems, $3 million to create a loan repayment and scholarship program to grow a diverse health care workforce, and $7 million to enhance public health communication. Senate Bill 209 would appropriate $27.5 million for the IDPH AIDS and HIV division to offer education, drugs, services, counseling, and testing.

The union has been out of contract since September 2022. Faculty and staff are asking for better pay to accommodate an increased workload.

Illinois’ largest portion of state revenue sources comes from tax collections at 57%, the third highest percentage in the country and well above the national average of 46.9%. “Illinois is more vulnerable to any fluctuations in its tax collections, affecting its overall budget conditions,” said Justin Theal, Pew Officer for State Fiscal Health.

The states with the highest effective property tax rates were New Jersey (1.79%), Illinois (1.78%), Connecticut (1.57%), Vermont (1.43%) and Nebraska (1.36 %). Rounding out the top 10 were Pennsylvania (1.29%), New Hampshire (1.28%), Ohio (1.27%), New York (1.26%) and Iowa (1.25%).

After a resounding number of local election wins, the Democratic Party of Illinois (DPI) is celebrating its success in preventing extremists from being elected to numerous school and library board seats across the state. While results are yet to be certified, 73 of the 101 extremists that DPI identified and opposed lost their races, and of the 117 candidates recommended by DPI, 84 were elected.

“Looking at it historically, the mayor of Chicago has about maybe 10% of the influence now, the impact in Springfield now, than when I started as a reporter 50 some years ago,” said Charlie Wheeler, retired director of the public affairs reporting program at the University of Illinois Springfield. “It’s a combination of the old patronage system kind of going out of fashion because of court rulings, and the evolution of the Democratic Party as becoming more rooted in the suburbs than it was historically. Those folks don’t really have to worry about the mayor of Chicago.”

“I think there is a lot to admire about him. He is a teacher and I believe he will bring a certain vibrancy to the city,” Gov. JB Pritzker said. “There is a change that’s gone on across the Midwest, I might add, that people who believe

The recordings played in court so far portrayed in colorful relief Michael Madigan and Michael McClain playing hardball, plotting the forced resignation of a longtime ally and talking about delivering “body blows” to Madigan’s counterpart in the Senate over a perceived political slight. The defendants’ attorneys contend that the so-called scheme was nothing more than legal lobbying, part of the state’s high-stakes, often-messy politics where myriad interest groups and stakeholders compete for access to lawmakers.

Illinois Policy Institute’s Bryce Hill said that the numbers are the numbers, no matter which way Gov. JB Pritzker tries to spin them. “Whether it be Census Bureau estimates, whether it be tax records from the IRS, whether it be moving day surveys, they all point to the same thing, which is that hundreds of thousands of people are leaving the state of Illinois every year,” Hill said.

State Sen. Terri Bryant said she wants to avoid a similar situation in which Illinoisans’ power bills doubled this past year. “So people who had a $400 electric bill previously are paying $800, and that’s individual and that doesn’t count the businesses, so moving forward, that has to be part of this conversation.”

Gun rights advocate Todd Vandermyde said there’s too much gray area. “The gun club I’m on the board of directors of, what constitutes properly licensed? We have a special use permit from the county to do what we do but there is no Illinois licensing of ranges.”

Republicans opposed to the measure openly expressed concerns about revenues, with state Sen. Jill Tracy taking to the House floor to openly wonder how her small Adams County home would be left to make up the $22,000 it issued in such fines as recently as last year. “That is a significant amount that somehow that county and that entity of government through their taxpayers is going to have to make up.”

“But with a potential recession looming and federal aid about to dry up, advocates must convince skeptics that the $35 million-per-year program will be worth the cost to taxpayers.”

Justice Eileen O’Neill Burke, president of the Illinois Judges Association: “The phrase, ‘It happens slowly, then all at once,’ is a reminder that we must be aware of the threat to an independent judiciary now and not wait until laws are passed that limit our authority.”

Kwame Raoul and a coalition of 18 attorney generals argue that a West Virginia law that bans transgender female students from being on girls sports teams violated the Equal Protection Clause and Title IX of the Education Amendment of 1972.

The governor told a group of students and administrators at NIU that the increased spending has contributed to increasing freshman class sizes throughout the state.

Defense attorneys have argued that the ComEd Four were engaged in legal real-world lobbying, which sometimes involves paying lobbyists for their ability to intervene in crucial “magic” moments. But prosecutors continued to undermine that notion Tuesday, leaving jurors with the impression that not even a swarm of FBI agents could find any evidence that five Madigan allies did any real work in return for the large sums they received.

The agency’s drinking water infrastructure survey will be used to steer billions of dollars from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to water infrastructure upgrades like finding and removing lead pipes in states that need it most.

State Rep. Martin McLaughlin said there is a simple reason why state agencies including the Illinois Liquor Control Commission, Illinois Arts Council, Executive Ethics Commission, and the Commission on Equity and Inclusion are asking for more funding: “It’s too much government spending and that in itself causes the devaluation of the dollar.”

The state of Illinois has been given an extension to the deadline it has to file an appeal of a circuit court’s ruling in a case over when the state can suspend someone’s Firearm Owner ID Card.

“There are motions pending before the court as we speak and at this point I’m not going to make any comment on those motions until they’ve been decided,” Chief Justice Mary Jane Theis said.

University Professionals of Illinois is part of the Illinois Federation of Teachers, one of the two major teachers unions in the state. IFT President Daniel Montgomery said that the current divide between the universities – Chicago State University, Eastern Illinois University and Governors State University – and their faculty is ultimately a byproduct of years of underfunding from the state.

“Friedman was primarily concerned with education. But choice in education turns out to have far-reaching consequences for politics, where teachers unions hold great power. Look at the Chicago Teachers Union, which is now trying to elect a former CTU organizer as mayor.” Comment: Obviously written before Chicago’s election results came in, making it all the more true.

Late Friday, March 24, the Illinois House was in the process of voting on one of the dozens of bills passed that day. Some Republicans noticed Democrats not at their seats despite their votes being counted. “You aren’t going to use parliamentary tricks,” state Rep. Dan Caulkins said after the vote on a bill dealing with generic drug pricing regulations. “This is a bill that is going to have a huge implication on this state.”

“Events like these expose how progressive prosecutors’ aspirations for social justice endanger already-vulnerable communities. De-prosecution, a mainstay for progressive prosecutors, results in massive increases in homicides. St. Louis is facing its highest homicide rate in 50 years.”

The act’s stated purpose is to protect women against “deceptive, fraudulent, and misleading practices” as they make “autonomous” decisions about their “reproductive health.” The act explicitly states a “limited services pregnancy center” is one that “does not directly provide abortions.” Although abortion facilities do not provide pregnancy services such as delivering babies, they are not considered “limited” according to the act and thus are not in its crosshairs.

The congressman released a statement Tuesday which reads, in part, “Rosa joined our family as a young girl who had been in the foster care system. We did our best to provide a stable, loving, and welcoming home for her.”

The report from the nonprofit, nonpartisan Tax Foundation shows excessive tax rates on cigarettes induce substantial illicit market movement of tobacco products into high-tax states from low-tax states. The study found that the biggest increase in the country in cigarette smuggling from 2019 to 2020 was in Illinois. That is when Illinois increased its cigarette tax rate by $1 a pack, resulting in an excise tax of $2.98. In Cook County, $3 is added on and another $1.18 from the city of Chicago, bringing the total taxes per pack in Chicago to $7.16, the highest in the country.

“We had to hire these guys because Mike Madigan came to us,” Michael McClain, the speaker’s trusted confidant, told lobbyist John Hooker on the call. “That’s how simple it is. So if you want to make a federal court suit over it, OK. But that’s how simple it is.”

The personal finance website WalletHub reports Illinois has the 9th highest overall tax burden at a 9.3% share of personal income. “We are not only looking at the actual tax rate by state, property, individual income and excise taxes, but we’re comparing that to the personal income in the state,” analyst Jill Gonzalez said.

“Students that earn major coursework credit at a community college should not have to spend more precious time and money to re-earn the same credit at a four-year university,” said Sen. Cristina Castro. “This legislation will reduce the burden on our students and accelerate the time it takes them to earn a degree and start a meaningful career.”

A notable increase has also occurred nationwide, although the national average is more than 30 cents lower than that in Illinois. Prices quickly jumped over the weekend, according to AAA, after Saudi Arabia and the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries announced a surprise production cut.

State Sen. Jil Tracy argued that the measure was a way for Democrats to punish these clinics. “Don’t try to hang this over their heads and harass them,” she said. “We talk about bullying all the time. We need peaceful discussion of our ideas.”

U.S. Sens. Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth sent a letter to the White House requesting a federal disaster declaration for five Illinois counties. “Governor Pritzker has indicated that this incident is of such severity and magnitude that effective response and recovery is beyond the combined capability of the state and local governments,” the letter said.

Fertility fraud, where a doctor uses their own human reproductive cells during a patient’s reproductive treatment, is currently illegal in eight states. Illinois is working to make it the 9th.

Republicans proposed a continuation of the suspension of the grocery tax, a rebate for Ameren customers and an increase to the income tax exemption for seniors. They cited Gov. JB Pritzker’s past comments, saying if the state continues to stabilize its financial situation, then the state can start to look at potential tax cuts.

Gambling terminals in the state made $462 million in income through January and February 2023, a 16 percent increase from the same stretch in 2022. Visitors have put $1.78 billion into the machines, getting back about $1.32 billion.

Today there are no active coal mines, but there are dozens of less-than-regal scars from the mining process dotting Vermilion County’s landscape. Illinois will receive more than $1 billion over the next 15 years for mine-reclamation projects funded by the federal so-called Bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. U.S. Rep. Mary Miller, who represented Danville in Congress at the time, voted against the legislation, as did most other Republicans.

About 80% of property-tax dollars in Chicago go to pensions. Yet Chicago’s four pension systems have only enough assets to cover about 25% of whatthey owe workers and retirees, which is less than Detroit’s pension funds had when the Motor City declared Chapter 9 bankruptcy a decade ago.

“Statewide (and) nationwide,” he said, “it is a proven fact that students are below grade level and (schools) are just working on starting to get kids caught up at this time, and I think that’s just the trend that was here.”

If approved, the measure would spread the airport’s tax burden across more of McLean County. That would theoretically mean lower taxes for property owners in Bloomington-Normal but higher taxes for those in rural parts of the county. Some small-town mayors are opposed to the idea, which airport leaders have tried unsuccessfully for years to get passed.

U.S. Representatives Darin LaHood and Mike Quigley are proposing big penalties for anyone in power who mishandles classified documents.

A new report shows that Illinois is a top state for so-called “thermonuclear verdicts.” Marathon Strategies found that juries in Illinois state and federal courts issued multi-million dollar verdicts against corporations that have totaled $3.3 billion since the Great Recession of 2009.

Here are the statistics from Kiplinger that determined Illinois is the worst for the middle-class: State Income Tax Range, 4.95%; Average Combined State and Local Sales Tax Rate, 8.73%; Median Property Tax Rate, $2,073 per $100,000 of assessed home value.

Under the legislation, if a veteran with a spouse dies while their veteran’s homestead exemption is under review, the review will continue, and if the exemption would have been granted for the veteran, then it will be granted to the surviving spouse.

In the ranking of overall value to taxpayers, Illinois finished worse (36) than nearby states such as Missouri (5), Iowa (11), Wisconsin (13), Kentucky (14) and Indiana (29).

Answer the Public, using autocomplete data pulled from Google and other search engines, has determined some of the most popular search queries about Illinois as of March 24. Among them: Are Illinois taxes high? Can Illinois governor remove a sheriff? Illinois who is my state representative? Illinois without Chicago.

The subcommittee has been actively investigating censorship of truthful information posted to social media websites that were removed by the Biden Administration in what free speech advocates have deemed the “Censorship Industrial Complex.”

Jim Dey: “(Admitted co-conspirator and former Commonwealth Edison Vice President Fidel) Marquez grabbed the fed’s life preserver and began wearing a wire and video recorder. Last week, he testified at length about how and why the utility put (Michael) Madigan friends and associates in lucrative no-show jobs in exchange for Madigan looking favorably on utility-backed legislation.”

“Pritzker money is driving rotten and mistaken attacks on three candidates for the Champaign School Board…The vehemence and vagueness of the Pritzker attacks are more suited to traditional political campaigns for important political offices. That sort of approach is sometimes distasteful and sometimes unfair even at that level. To stoop so low as to introduce this kind of partisan nastiness in a school board election is beyond the pale.”

Already eliminated in more than 20 states, advocates say the costs of the fines and fees especially impact families of color and lower income families. A recent report from the Illinois Statutory Court Fee Task Force recommended abolishment and found the assessments “undermine the goal of achieving rehabilitation.”

While anyone in Illinois can experience trauma, the Task Force noted that it is disproportionately experienced by people in marginalized groups. The bill language states that systemic and historical oppression, such as racism, is often at the root of this inequity.

Celina Villaneuva (D-Chicago) said, “We must ensure that women who are seeking reproductive health care are protected from deceptive and misleading practices. At a time when they are already vulnerable, they must have peace of mind that they won’t be taken advantage of.”

“The ban needs to be lifted immediately so Illinois can compete with numerous other states for nuclear technology that is currently being developed at Argon National Labs or the University of Illinois,” state Sen. Sue Rezin said. “This bill, along with the existing nuclear fleet, will save consumers money by easing the market into the needed wind and solar, until wind and solar is built out in Illinois.”

In their motion, attorneys representing gun owners from Macon County say that without recusal from justices Elizabeth Rochford and Mary K. O’Brien, they will be left arguing at a hearing at which they “will look to the table of the opposing counsel and see the leading cash donors, approximately $2,681,000 of campaign contributions to the Justices … and look up to the dais to see Justices pledged to support the agenda at issue.”

Most excavated Native American remains in Illinois are held by state universities and museums. If passed by the Senate and signed into law, the bill would create a cemetery on state land where repatriated Native American ancestors and their belongings could be reburied. The state would be responsible for protecting the cemetery, which would not be for public use, from potential looting or vandalization.

“U.S. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi…who sits on the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, has been trying to force the Census Bureau to retool its population estimates because they have been so awfully inaccurate going back years and years.”

Illinois could soon require new or renovated homes and multi-unit residential buildings to include electric vehicle chargers.

Michael Madigan’s status as the most powerful man in Springfield allegedly made him an irresistible target for lobbyists looking for favorable results in the legislature. Although Madigan is gone, the structures that consolidated the speaker’s power remain.

A bill targeting the practices of crisis pregnancy centers that do not perform or support abortion passed the Illinois Senate this morning. The measure now goes to the Illinois House. The sponsor of Senate Bill 1909, state Sen. Celina Villanueva, D-Chicago, said in a statement that the bill prohibits the use of deceptive practices that interfere with an individual seeking to gain entry or access to the provider of an abortion or emergency contraceptives, or induce a person to enter a limited-services pregnancy center, in advertising or soliciting.

State Rep. Dan Caulkins’ attorney Jerry Stocks filed a motion Thursday for the justice to recuse themselves because of “unreasonably large campaign contributions” from Gov. JB Pritzker and House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch that “undermine public confidence” in the judiciary. Asked in early March if the justices should recuse themselves because of the donations, Pritzker said that’s “ridiculous.”

The Illinois Finance Authority, in its role as the state’s climate bank, is ramping up efforts to establish new financing options for green initiatives with a slate of federal funding applications in the works aimed at moving the state toward clean energy, climate, and equity goals.

Said Dan McConchie, “I hope this legislation helps drivers who are the victims of this flawed and failed traffic system that is causing more harm than good.”

“These funds will be used for 22 port, rail and highway projects in Illinois to address bottlenecks, increase mobility and improve the supply chain up and down the state,” Gov. JB Pritzker said. IDOT officials said every year, 1.6 billion tons valued at $2.5 trillion of freight flows in and out of the state, making Illinois one of the top states for freight activity.

The Illinois Senate approved a measure on Thursday that would lift a 1980s-era moratorium on nuclear power plant construction. Senate Bill 76, sponsored by Sen. Sue Rezin, R-Morris, was approved on a 39-13 vote. The bill now goes to the House of Representatives for consideration.

Full costs at elite private colleges now stretch well into the $80,000s, or upward of $320,000 for four years and well above what the typical U.S. household earns. At UChicago, the cost of attendance — tuition, room, board and fees — is just over $81,000. At Northwestern, it’s roughly $84,000.

Illinois will need about 900 additional primary-care clinicians in 2025 and 1,100 additional providers by 2030 to meet demand. In 2022, Illinois had more than 100 Health Professional Shortage Areas, with about 60% in rural areas. According to the Illinois Center for Rural Health, of the 12.7 million people living in Illinois, more than 1.4 million — about 11% — live in rural Health Professional Shortage Areas.

The City Council demands a 3% tax on cannabis. Half goes to police and fire department pension funds, the other half goes to projects intended to help businesses and neighborhoods on the east side.

State Sen. Bill Cunningham acknowledged the funds going to the state through sports betting, adding with it that the legislature had a “responsibility” to protect those with gambling addiction problems. According to a study from the Illinois Department of Human Services, approximately 380,000 adult Illinoisans are considered to have a gambling problem while an additional 761,000 are believed to be at-risk of developing one.

A Democratic Party of Illinois spokesperson said in a statement they’re opposing candidates who have embraced values like censoring books, blocking full spectrum sex education, teaching revisionist history and ignoring public health.

Randi Weingarten heads the American Federation of Teachers, which is the parent organization of the Chicago Teachers Union.

Though federal prosecutors have developed a now-known bevy of once-secret cooperators — including former Ald. Danny Solis, Cinespace President Alex Pissios and former state Sen. Terry Link — none have recently taken the witness stand to face the kind of grueling cross-examination faced by former ComEd executive Fidel Marquez Thursday.

“Setting aside the electorate’s voice in the County Clerk’s race based on how many votes someone else got in some other race, and based on mathematical probability analyses would disenfranchise all voters who voted and who did nothing wrong in exercising their right to vote,” Judge John Anderson wrote.

“Today’s decision out of Texas gutting the preventive services mandate is a devastating blow to millions of Americans who receive lifesaving treatment each year thanks to screenings and preventive care,” Gov. JB Pritzker said. He called it “another sad example of political grandstanding overshadowing common sense.”

Dr. Joel Zinberg said states with fewer restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic outperformed states like Illinois that implemented more restrictions. “The important finding of our study is that states that imposed more severe lockdown measures did not do any better than states that were

Several Republican Lawmakers introduced different plans to lessen the tax burden on Illinoisans. Among them, Senate Bill 1150 would make the 2022 sales tax exemption for groceries a permanent one while also exempting prescription drugs and other medical devices from state sales tax beginning July 1.

“Smart Stat is increasing money into the block grant, and we want to make sure it’s going to get into the streets and not be absorbed into administrations and I’m just wondering if we have spent enough time talking about it,” state Rep. Will Davis said.

State Sen. Win Stoller said his community and family are seeing the exodus from Illinois for better opportunities elsewhere. “My own son has moved to Chattanooga,” he said. “Chattanooga was the same size as my home town of Peoria just 10 years ago and now it’s double the size because they have attracted a new Volkswagen electric car plant and that’s where my son works, in Chattanooga.”

Congressman Darin LaHood and Congresswoman Nikki Budzinski argue the site needs recognition for its impact on American history, as it was the catalyst for the start of the NAACP. Illinois’ senators Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth are also working in the Senate on similar legislation.

State Sen. Sue Rezin said the bill would specifically allow for the construction of small modular nuclear reactors, or SMRs. SMR proponents say they can be deployed in places like factories, replacing the need for things like coal-fired cogeneration plants. “This is a large change in energy policy for the state of Illinois,” Rezin said. “It’s important to have a robust discussion and make sure the bill’s been vetted.”

“People – especially people of color – are unnecessarily pulled over far too often,” said state Sen. Rachel Ventura. “The odor of cannabis alone shouldn’t be one of those reasons. Cannabis is legal in Illinois…”

This idea is a component of the Illinois Legislative Black Caucus education pillar and legislation in 2021 that established the Whole Child Task Force. While anyone in Illinois can experience trauma, the Task Force noted that it is disproportionately experienced by people in marginalized groups. The bill language states that systemic and historical oppression, such as racism, is often at the root of this inequity.

The bill would prohibit health care workers who have been the subject of a substantiated claim of “material obstruction” of an abuse investigation from further employment in the health care field.

Nearly half of Illinoisans have thought about moving away, and they said taxes were their No. 1 reason. Population decline also contributes to the lower economic prospects of the state.

A new bill progressing through the Capitol would extend the length of time parents can take off work for bereavement leave if their child dies by homicide or suicide. The proposed bereavement leave policy would require companies to allow 12 weeks of unpaid leave for businesses with more than 250 employees, or six weeks for businesses for fewer than 250 employees.

The Illinois Senate unanimously passed a bill Wednesday that gives financial protection to children whose parents make money posting videos of them on social media. Sen. David Koehler said if the bill is signed into law, Illinois would be the first state in the nation to enact such legislation.

In emails and in recorded conversations, Assistant U.S. Attorney Amarjeet Bhachu detailed the extent to which Michael Madigan and Michael McClain pressured their contacts at ComEd, and in some cases Exelon, to hire people — some of whom were either former legislators or relatives of Illinois politicians. That included ensuring employment for both Toni Berrios and Vanessa Berrios, daughters of former Cook County Assessor Joe Berrios.

House Bill 2401 would require school districts to make sure that reading assignments and courses include authors who have diverse backgrounds and cultures. “Now more than ever, it’s critical that we uplift educational standards that represent and positively reflect the rich diversity of our state,” state Rep. La Shawn Ford said.

Former Commonwealth Edison Senior Vice President Fidel Marquez told jurors the state’s most powerful politician once demanded that the utility giant raise at least $450,000 to fill the coffers of the Democratic Party of Illinois he controlled, with the request coming at a time when the company was frantically pushing a lucrative utility bill that sailed through in Springfield later that same year.

Under the current proposed rule, the federal government, in light of an anticipated increase in border asylum claims when Title 42 is set to end on May 11, 2023, would largely require migrants to follow the rules specified pathways to secure protection in the United States.

The annual “Makers Madness” contest is a bracket-style competition to celebrate manufacturers across Illinois. The habitat is manufactured by Ingersoll Machine Tools in Rockford. At a height of 23 feet, the structure is designed to house two people at a time on the moon and is the world’s tallest single-piece 3D printed polymer structure.

The change means that a farm with leftover tomatoes can turn them into a marinara sauce to be jarred and sold alongside produce. Fruits can be turned into jams, peppers into salsa, and so on. The changes mean less waste and greater profits for small farms.

In mid-February, Gov. JB Pritzker appointed Fran Hurley, who had been reelected in November, to the Illinois Labor Relations Board. Gill will fill out the remainder of the term.

The pro-gun control group Everytown ranks Illinois’ gun laws as the seventh-strongest in the nation as of January. However, the state has struggled to restrict the flow of illegal guns, particularly in Chicago, and Illinois officials have also faced legal hurdles to implementing new gun restrictions.

The cloud of uncertainty threatens to disrupt classrooms with just a few weeks to go in the spring semester. The unions have been without contracts since last summer.

General trends are largely consistent with those released in the FY2024 budget, as both the Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability and the Governor’s Office of Management and Budget rely on many of the same economic sources when formulating their predictions. Overall, COGFA predicts an additional $465 million in revenue above the February GOMB estimates, largely stemming from net individual income taxes and sales taxes.

Susana Mendoza’s office paid another $150 million into the Illinois Rainy Day Fund, also called the Budget Stabilization Fund, for the first time this year. The account now stands at $1.22 billion. The comptroller has also scheduled three more payments before the end of the fiscal year.

Lawmakers created the temporary visitor driver’s license, or TVDL, in 2013 to ensure all drivers on state roads have passed a road test regardless of legal residency; According to the secretary of state’s office, more than 300,000 people currently have a TVDL. While the TVDL is valid as a driver’s license, it was never valid as identification.

Given that even more election judges will be needed for the 2024 presidential election year, county Clerk and Recorder Aaron Ammons said the county could be in the same situation next year if more don’t come forward.

Former ComEd vice President Fidel Marquez told jurors that when he got a request from Mike McClain — a ComEd consultant and Michael Madigan’s longtime trusted ally — he knew he had to act on it with urgency because those directions were really coming from Madigan. During one February meeting, McClain is overheard advising Marquez not to put “anything in writing,” stating that “it’s a favor.”

Peoples Gas, North Shore Gas, Ameren Illinois and Nicor Gas are all seeking rate increases.

Illinois’ economy ranked near the bottom in all 11 of its major industries over Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s first term in office, a time that also saw the state rank just 35th in the country in overall job growth.

One intern candidate had a 1.1 GPA, according to emails prosecutors showed on Tuesday. When Marquez pointed this out to McClain, McClain responded “Holy mackerel, even mine was higher than that number!” Marquez testified that he considered requests from McClain to be directly from Madigan. In one instance, Nicole Madigan, at the request of her father, emailed McClain in 2012 because of a power outage at Tiffany Madigan’s place. McClain in turn emailed Marquez. When power was restored, McClain responded with an email that said, in part, “Fidel Marquez dropped and did … Enjoy.”

The Illinois Supreme Court has thrown a rare brake on the ability of workers and trial lawyers to target employers with potentially massive payout demands through class actions brought under Illinois’ stringent biometrics privacy law, as the high court declared employers can use federal labor law to block unionized workers from suing them over required worker fingerprint scans.

Out-of-state sales make up nearly one-third of cannabis sales in Illinois. Missouri offers the lowest excise tax in the nation with a flat 6% sales tax. Illinois uses a scale that charges up to 25%, depending on the product.

Comment: The Wisconsin court race is hugely important because Democrats believe it can lead to their recapture of control of the U.S. House of Representatives, as explained here in the Wall Street Journal.

Ralph Martire’s Center for Tax and Budget Accountability: After adjusting for inflation, state funding for Illinois colleges and universities has fallen by nearly 50% since 2000, while tuition has more than doubled, making it increasingly difficult for students from low- and middle-income families generally, and Black and Latinx students specifically, to afford getting a higher education degree.

Jim Dey: One asked the other if he should assign “agents” to deliver “body blows” to their target. “I know you’ve got a law degree, but you’re more of a street fighter than anybody knows, except maybe for guys like me. And if you want to put the squeeze on the guy, you could hurt him pretty badly.” That’s a snippet of a conversation between Michael McClain and former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan.

“I am eternally grateful for the wonderful neighbors I’ve had over years. We all benefit from being (and having) good neighbors. In some cases, they can be lifesavers. Are you the kind of neighbor you’d like to have?”

Illinois plans to recoup about $180 million from four Medicaid insurance companies this year after the businesses saw a surge in profits during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic — the first of several such payments the state could seek.

The Illinois General Assembly has a plethora of education-centered bills it is considering during this spring session.

Illinois House and Senate versions of a bill were introduced last month. They would require regular sensitivity training relating to caring for people with disabilities, people living with HIV, and people of diverse sexual orientations and gender identities – among other groups.

Do soft-on-crime laws encourage criminal wrongdoing? Or does this kinder, gentler approach help society’s miscreants see the errors of their ways and embrace a more law-abiding approach to life. It depends, of course, on the criminal and the crime. But the example of Cook County resident Jordan Henry is illuminating.

The Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity (DCEO) officially launched the latest $175 million in available resources for restaurants, hotels and creative arts businesses and organizations, all of it coming from the American Rescue Plan Act with allotments for each business being based on revenue declines and tax returns. With applications being accepted from April 5 to May 10, all applicants will receive a grant as long as they meet eligibility requirements, submit proper documentation and attestations outlined by the program.

New legislation that would further regulate freelance work in Illinois is being criticized as government overreach. The Freelance Worker Protection Act in House Bill 1122 requires written contracts for workers and several requirements on payment.

State Rep. Blaine Wilhour, R-Shelbyville: “Allowing a member of the General Assembly or constitutional officer to certify or solemnize a marriage in Illinois, so we’re not dealing with our pension crisis or anything else but we can all officiate marriage ceremonies now.”

Fidel Marquez, who served as the utility’s senior vice president of governmental and external affairs from 2012 to 2019, said those associates didn’t do any lobbying work for the utility but were paid to curry favor with Madigan. Marquez pleaded guilty to bribery charges in September 2020.

It was a very busy week at the Illinois statehouse last week. The House of Representatives raced to beat a deadline Friday to move substantive bills that originated in that chamber over to the Senate. The week featured long nights, short debates that at times got testy and the passage of hundreds of bills. Here are some of them:

The so-called “Build Illinois Homes Tax Credit” legislation included in House Bill 2044 and Senate Bill 1737 would be similar to a federal program now overseen by the Illinois Housing Development Authority and Chicago Department of Housing that currently helps foot the bill for affordable housing across the state.

Our Wirepoints article republished.

Trial testimony revealed that a 2016 law passed by dint of a massive ComEd bribery scheme was worth $1.8 billion to the Chicago-based electric utility. Add $2.3 billion in nuclear power plant subsidies for Exelon, and ComEd’s illegal conduct produced a $4.1 billion corporate windfall.

“After six years of implementation, five of which included new year-over-year funding, Illinois’ school funding formula – the Evidence Based Funding for Student Success Act, or EBF – has worked towards its promise of closing Illinois’ drastic funding and achievement gaps between schools in property-rich and property-poor districts, as well as between schools in predominantly white communities and schools that serve predominantly students of color.”

During a late night run of bills Friday evening, Illinois House Republicans used a parliamentary procedure to expose staff voting the switches of absent Democratic legislators before session was abruptly ended. All week last week, the House passed more than 400 bills. Friday was

On March 17, a group of nearly 150 Waterloo High School students lined up to use the nurse’s restroom after being told if they were uncomfortable sharing a bathroom with a student of the opposite sex, they could use the single-stall unisex bathroom, students told the Daily Caller News Foundation. Following the protest, Superintendent Brian Charron notified the school community that the students who stood in line were marked tardy from class and those who continue to protest the issue will be disciplined, a move students believe is unfair.

Thursday, members of the House of Representatives approved a proposal that would require school boards in Illinois to provide full-day kindergarten starting with the 2027-2028 school year. The measure, House Bill 2396, was met with bipartisan, though not universal, support, passing out of the House on Thursday on an 87-23 vote.

Anger over pandemic mandates has morphed into outrage, injecting Washington-style polarization into discussions among neighbors about what kids are being taught in the classroom and what’s available on school library shelves. The candidates also heard from Ted Dabrowski, president

Illinois on the whole is over 70% higher than the national average.

A 16-year-old girl was already a sex trafficking victim – and we have learned the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services placed her with a three-time convicted felon who is accused of forcing her into prostitution.

Three projects under Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s Rebuild Illinois program, including a proposed port in beleaguered downstate Cairo, have benefited his friends or political allies. Pritzker

The final scheduled filings have been made in the Southern District of Illinois federal courts in the consolidated challenge of Illinois’ gun and magazine ban. The next key date is oral arguments next month.

Comment: These myths are the very foundation of how state and local public finance work in Illinois, as we’ve written often.

The lawsuit against CheckpointID and IDScan.net means the two companies have become some of the latest facing potentially massive financial damages under the law known as the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act.

The legislation would mirror a federal program administered by the Illinois Housing Development Authority and Chicago Department of Housing which helps finance affordable housing across Illinois and cost Illinois $35 million annually for ten years.

In an unusual move, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has quietly begun a new competition for the contract to run the United States’s sole dedicated particle physics laboratory. Announced in January, the rebid comes 1 year after Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), which is managed in part by the University of Chicago (UChicago), failed an annual DOE performance review and 9 months after it named a new director.

The Democratic Party of Illinois is “committed to supporting credible candidates who will oppose efforts to ban books, revise history, and limit reasonable sex education,” party chair and State Rep. Lisa Hernandez said in a statement. “We can’t afford to sit back while kids and families are at risk.” Added Ben Hardin, executive director of the party: “It’s not Democrats versus Republicans. This is about our need to defend our values.”

“While Illinois’ operating budget is safe for the short term, it’s a different story in terms of long-term debt. That’s why the governor has made it a point to put additional funds in beyond what was statutorily required. As welcome as Pritzker’s talk of undefined tax cuts is, the bigger issue is the state’s horrendous public-pension debt.”

During the first 50 minutes of Madigan staffer Will Cousineau’s testimony, jurors heard snippets from a secretly recorded Dec. 9, 2018 conversation. Michael Madigan told the group that “in the case of the majority leader, I view that as my appointment. I have no compunction about saying that to anyone who wants to listen to me…“I understand we have a lot of people walking around trying to find things to complain about, and every once in a while, the speaker gets to do what he wants to do. Every once in a while.”

The top sectors with job growth for February include Government with 5,900 new job gains, Hospitality with 5,100 job gains, and Transportation, trade and utilities with 2,700 job gains.

“In Springfield, we spend a lot of time debating and passing meaningless virtue signaling legislation that helps no one and there are really no solutions to help the taxpayers,” ate Rep. Chris Miller said.

The bill’s sponsor, state Rep. Lance Yednock, said the bill also would make it illegal to place objects in the public way.

The Democratic Party of Illinois is spending $300,000 on mailers and online campaigns for local school and library board races early next month. “There are lots of candidates who are running, Republicans or Democrats, they’re not listed on the ballots as such. What we’re trying to do is to raise awareness about the extremists that are running,” Gov. JB Pritzker said.

Illinois law already allows for single-occupancy bathrooms to be designated for all genders, but state Rep. Katie Stuart’s bill would allow an all-gender designation for bathrooms that accommodate two or more people. The bill sets out standards that all-gender bathrooms would have to meet, such as “inclusive signage” that does not indicate any specific gender and stall dividers with functioning locks controlled by the user.

In 2022, the Attorney General’s office was able to bring in $304 million through collections litigation, including cases involving the collection of funds for damage to state property, child support enforcement, fines and penalties. The Attorney General’s office also collected more than $807 million through tobacco litigation and more than $456 million in estate tax revenues.

The funding – $175 million for restaurants, hotels and creative arts businesses and organizations – comes from the American Rescue Plan Act and is determined based on revenue declines and tax returns.

The spirits industry supports nearly 80,000 jobs in Illinois and has an economic impact of over $7.8 billion. “There were zero craft distilleries in the state of Illinois until the mid-2000s and today there is about 50, so we as distillers and our customers and consumers just haven’t had a chance to really establish the need and make enough noise and tell the story that this is something we want,” said Nick Nagele, of the Illinois Craft Distillers Association.

Asked to describe the policy platform of the Sustainable Investment Caucus, Rep. Sean Casten said, “Pro-capitalism. We’re not saying everybody should invest in ESG. We’re saying ESG is a tool. There’s a huge market demand for it. We need to quantify what the rules are. And we need to make sure that investors who want to participate in a free and unfettered market are protected from people who have some more

The Illinois House of Representatives passed a bill with near-unanimous support on Wednesday that would designate the black walnut as the official state nut of Illinois.

The legislation at issue was the Energy Infrastructure and Modernization Act or EIMA, which passed in 2011, and the Future Energy Jobs Act or FEJA, which passed in 2016.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz are backing Chicago for the convention site, as well as Democrats in Iowa, Missouri, Kentucky and beyond. “In an incredibly polarized nation, whose electoral college model has a griphold on election outcomes, the Midwest is utterly indispensable to the party’s success and should be the home of its 2024 convention,” their letter reads.

A coalition of more than 35 organizations across Illinois has made plastic reduction a priority. The ban would take effect Jan. 1, 2024, for the majority of establishments. Food pantries, soup kitchens, nonprofit organizations and government agencies that provide food to “needy individuals at no or nominal charge” would be given until Jan. 1, 2025, to comply.

HB 4021 would lower the state’s legal drinking age to 18 by amending the Liquor Control Act of 1934, which set the drinking age at 21 following the end of Prohibition.

State Rep. Kam Buckner introduced House Bill 3749 to allow municipalities to switch to ranked choice voting if they so choose. “In the small municipality I live in, Chicago, there are estimates that runoff elections cost the city between $25 [million] and $35 million each time,” Buckner said.

Former Commonwealth Edison chief lawyer Tom O’Neill said Wednesday that over time he came to work hand-in-hand with associates of then-House Speaker Michael Madigan to secure jobs for them in high-profile positions.

The sponsor of House Bill 3412, state Rep. LaShawn Ford, said the school should be able to handle kids when they act up. “It has been identified as disorderly conduct in a school where you have children being children, and now we’re labeling it disorderly conduct because the police are involved,” Ford said.

State Rep. Anne Stava-Murray closed the debate by disparaging opponents. “Local control has long been a dog whistle for allowing statewide or nationwide racist or bigoted policies to persist, and by saying local control, you’re booing, and only one side is booing and I wonder why because maybe there is some truth to it,” she said.

House Bill 3308 would set up childcare services for workers to be paid for by their employers. House Bill 3307 would offer a workforce training class as an alternative to the required two years of foreign language classes in schools. And HB3590 would establish a task force to investigate a way to offer liability insurance to cover students participating in a career development experience or apprenticeship program.

“There’s little doubt that those supporting a GBI want to help others less fortunate. However, throwing money at this problem has not proven to help the underlying issue. In fact, it’s often proven to exacerbate issues that will only sustain downward societal work trends. What would be far more productive is for lawmakers to come to the realization that government cannot be the solution.”

All 11 major industries in Illinois were among the worst in the nation for job growth from January 2019 to January 2023, with each of them ranking in the bottom half in the nation. The best performing industries for Illinois during Pritzker’s first term barely cracked the top 30 nationally.

“Taking on insurance companies is like taking on the elephant in the living room,” said state Rep. Sue Scherer. “And how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time. And that’s what I feel like we’re doing here is one bite at a time we’re packing away until we get this right.”

Wisconsin (10th), Michigan (11th), Iowa (12th), Minnesota (14th) and Illinois (15th) had among the 15 lowest resignation rates in the nation.

Jim Dey: “The eagle on the current flag may appear ‘distressed and confused.’ But how is that compared with: A flag depicting moving vans and trucks filled with desperate Illinoisans lining up at state borders en route to more welcoming climes in Texas, Florida, Wisconsin, Indiana and Missouri? A forlorn Abraham Lincoln, with pants pockets turned out, prepared to enter a bankruptcy court door?”

In Illinois, organizations behind the report support a proposed state law that calls for hospitals to screen uninsured patients for financial assistance and help them apply for it. Patients who are eligible for publicly-funded Medicaid health insurance or hospital discounts, for example, couldn’t be steered toward collections for not paying their bills.

The testimony by Scott O’Neill, who served as ComEd’s top in-house attorney, provided the first link in the “ComEd Four” trial between a benefit the utility giant allegedly gave Madigan, a Chicago Democrat, and the work the speaker’s office’s did to shepherd legislation ComEd desperately wanted through the House chamber.

Already, eight states and roughly 200 cities and municipalities have enacted bans on polystyrene foam containers. The EPA estimates that 22 million pounds of plastic enter the Great Lakes each year, and just over half of that ends up in Lake Michigan alone.

The People’s Utility Rate Relief Act aims at making energy rates more affordable, creating stronger protections against disconnection of services, and oversight from the Illinois Commerce Commission for affordability. The bill also incorporates a heat index assessment, meaning in the summertime, services can not be disconnected if it is 85 degrees Fahrenheit or higher rather than 95.

“We believe it is going to increase public safety,” state Rep. Justin Slaughter said. “The efforts will indeed help citizens become more productive, positive citizens.”

During the trial Tuesday, state Rep. Bob Rita testified he was the sponsor of the Future Energy Jobs Act, a wide-ranging and controversial energy bill that state lawmakers passed in December 2016. Rita told jurors that when he was presented with an amendment to that legislation that he previously didn’t know about, defendant Michael McClain pulled him out of a committee hearing to direct him to proceed with the amendment. And that’s what he did.

A new WalletHub study found the typical household in Illinois pays 15% of its income to state and local taxes, the highest in the nation. That’s an average of $10,463 – a 22% hike since 2017.

Illinois plans to sell up to $2.5 billion of general obligation debt before the fiscal year closes June 30 in its first primary market outing to benefit from upgrades that put two of its ratings in single-A territory. The state plans to sell up to $1.5 billion of new money and is eyeing another up to $1 billion of current refunding bonds.

“There are companies now who were looking at Illinois or were beginning to set up shop in Illinois who after they saw that White Castle decision just pulled up shop and said, ‘We can’t do this anymore,'” said Brad Tietz, of the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce. “So it is impacting economic development.” Public safety is a concern for his members, he said, and certain kinds of new cameras could help combat organized retail theft. But such technology isn’t coming to the state because of the court’s consistent interpretation of the law to favor demands from trial lawyers, Tietz said.

Last year alone, more than 7,000 Kia and Hyundai vehicles were stolen in Chicago, accounting for about 10% of all registered Kias and 7% of all registered Hyundais in the city, according to Kwame Raoul’s office.

State Rep. Dave Vella said the workforce of police officers and firefighters is aging and vacancies need to be filled. “I’m a firm believer in giving kids who walk across the high school graduation stage a place to walk into,” said Vella, a former criminal defense attorney. “Either college or a job or an apprenticeship program.”

The Work Without Fear Act, pending in the statehouse, would also expand protections for workers who report sexual harassment or file complaints outside of official channels. If the bill becomes law, it would be “among the strongest” labor protections in the nation, said Kevin Herrera, legal director at Raise the Floor Alliance.

“We actually need to be more keen on public policy when we write it to avoid this type of opportunity allowing vultures into our state,” said state Rep. La Shawn Ford, who has sponsored cannabis legislation. “It is unfair, but it’s capitalism, and that’s just the fact.” Still, he added that state officials can’t be too restrictive in trying to grow a multibillion dollar industry. “We’ve gotta bring the money in,” he said.

Across the state, the number of candidates running for school board are reaching double-digits and the campaigns seem more contentious than ever. Most voters are used to seeing complete candidate profiles in local newspapers or media outlets, but now political parties and advocacy groups are increasingly getting vocal about these candidates and the issues at stake.

In Jan. 2022, the state saw a 5.4% rate; That went down to 4.7% in Jan. 2023. Nationally, the unemployment rate decreased from 4% in Jan. 2022 to 3.4% in 2023.

When asked what Michael Madigan valued most in other legislators, state Rep. Robert “Bob” Rita answered, “loyalty.” Rita’s testimony capped a broader day of testimony Monday, in which jurors also heard recordings of a ComEd executive discussing how FEJA and other legislation turned the utility’s finances around.

Defending Illinois’ ban on more than 170 semi-automatic weapons and magazines over certain capacities, Illinois has filed responses to plaintiffs suing claiming Second Amendment violations.

Researcher Casey Mulligan with the National Bureau of Economic Research compared various metrics from across the country and said Illinois did poorly on education and economic outcomes, but average on mortality. “If you’re going to ruin everything, it would be nice to be above average on something, but they didn’t do that. Pretty close results between Florida and Illinois on mortality, but Florida was good on other things, they had good economy, good on education, so that’s fake news coming from the governor. ”

Ted Dabrowski of Wirepoints explained why so many states around the nation have decided to cut their income tax rates. “One of the things we have found is that 22 states around the country have permanently cut their income taxes. The reason why is because they are all booming in revenue after all of the COVID aid.” Illinois received $8 billion in federal COVID-19 relief funds but has not made any budget cuts.

Asked by prosecutors how Michael Madigan obtained that power, state Rep. Bob Rita responded: “Through fear and intimidation.” He further told the jury what happened to people who didn’t follow Madigan’s orders: When former state Rep. Kenneth Dunkin sided with former Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner on a vote, Rita said the Democratic Party of Illinois recruited and funded a candidate to run against Dunkin in the next primary election.

Invest in Kids takes up $75 million in the state budget, or 0.77% of the $9.7 billion budget projection for primary education in 2023. Gov. J.B. Pritzker said in a Chicago-Sun Times candidate questionnaire he now supports Invest in Kids.

Said state Sen. Sara Feigenholtz, who is sponsoring the bill, “This is a piece of legislation that sort of lays the groundwork about the right to charge.”

A review of the General Assembly website found the House approved 47 bills between Tuesday and Thursday that will go to the Senate. The House has until Friday to move additional bills past third reading and onto the Senate. March 31 is the third reading deadline for the Senate.

Comment: We wrote here about Casten’s proposals, which are utterly mad.

Illinois’ hold as the number one producer of soybeans in the United States remains solid, with the top eleven counties for soybean yield in 2022. Illinois had the top five counties in the country for total corn production. Illinois as a whole remains the second largest producer of corn in the country, only behind Iowa.

In February, its first month of legal sales, legal marijuana sales in Missouri totaled $103 million. In Illinois, sales to out-of-state shoppers dropped 15% in that time, and as much as 30% in stores near Missouri, market analyst Cantor Fitzgerald reported. That’s important because sales to out-of-state residents make up almost one-third of all cannabis revenue in Illinois.

“The proposals involve far more than just throwing more money at a problem and hoping it goes away. They have real substance in terms of boosting teachers’ skills in teaching reading and improving the techniques they employ…But it’s fair to ask just what is happening in Illinois schools now. Taxpayers are spending a fortune on K-12 education that is supposed to put an emphasis on the teaching of reading.”

“There’s no system to do it,” said Richard Pearson, of the Illinois State Rifle Association. “It’s kind of like telling someone ‘alright, I want you to go out and start a baseball team … How you do it, we don’t care. You have no money to do it, but good luck to you.’ The state of Illinois is just always doing stuff like this.”

Matt Paprocki, of the Illinois Policy Institute: “There is an urgency to fixing the problems that force business owners to make the difficult decision to leave. State leaders need to understand their job is to ensure employers who want to stay and invest in Illinois can do so…So it’s troubling when you hear state lawmakers are again pushing failed policy ideas such as the progressive income tax, which voters clearly said they don’t want in 2020.”

Since last December, the agency has alleged facilities were not testing their water for harmful chemicals like chlorine, copper and lead. Many of them also lacked proper water treatment and sanitation infrastructure, including water softeners. Additionally, activists have called for a state investigation into outbreaks of Legionnella in the water at a dozen prisons across the state.

“There’s been a law on the books that required pretrial services since the ’80s, but nothing was done with it because the Legislature never funded it,” said Champaign County Judge Brett Olmstead. From a staff of just 11 on June 30, 2022, the office has grown 11-fold to a staff of 132, now serving 70 counties.

The constitutional sheriffs movement has percolated across the nation as some sheriffs have vowed to not enforce laws ranging from gun bans to COVID-19 restrictions. But it garnered new strength in Illinois this year with Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s signing of the Protect Illinois Communities Act.

Trading spreads on Illinois GO bonds narrowed this week after the state’s latest rating upgrade, and an uptick in tax revenues could help keep the positive ratings momentum going if the state makes more headway on paying off debts and building reserves.

“In the last few weeks, some have suggested that white people don’t really experience violent crime, or that the attention being paid to the issue is a consequence of the spillover of such crimes as carjacking into traditionally more affluent neighborhoods.Black Chicagoans are far more likely to be the victims of crime, which is why so many voted for Vallas or businessman Willie Wilson, who ran far to Vallas’ right on the issue.”

For the first time in 26 years, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has issued new guidelines for drinking water safety. Municipal utilities will be required to install expensive filtration systems to lower the amount of PFAS in water supplies. The new EPA drinking water guidelines are expected to cost Illinois municipalities billions of dollars.

A bill before the Illinois Senate would give participants in the state retirement system the opportunity to choose an additional option for their retirement plan coverage. Sen. Dan McConchie (R-Lake Zurich) introduced SB 1516, which would require plans by July 1, 2025 to prepare and implement a defined contribution plan that aggregates state and employee contributions in individual participant accounts that would be used for payouts after retirement. The bill would:

“It was very clear to me that there had been a decision made by the speaker that I was not going to move up in the ranks, and the reputation I had built over 32 years was not going to avail me to much progress in my career,” former State Rep. Lou Lang said during government questioning.

The state reported more than $400 million in wages and 15,000 non-extra hires in 2022. Gov. JB Pritzker’s tax credit extension lasts through the year 2033, giving plenty of room for growth across the state.

“Madigan’s crew put the arm on plenty of special interests…He was running a small army, and his soldiers required sustenance. ComEd stood out partly because it often needed things, and because of its patronage history and because it had so many jobs and so much money for contracts. It was the old Willie Sutton story. When the notorious criminal was asked why he robbed banks, he reportedly said, ‘Because that’s where the money is.'”

The Secretary of State’s office says the digital driver’s license won’t be a screenshot or digital copy, but that “mobile (driver’s licenses) are secure because they are encrypted and rely on state-of-the-art technology to protect the owner from fraud and identity theft.”

Recreational marijuana is not legal in Wisconsin, but it is in each of its surrounding states. Said Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, “We do not need to become like Illinois or Michigan where anywhere you go, there’s the stench of marijuana.”

“There are rare cases where this is necessary, ” state Rep. Charlie Meier said. “There will be cats that will be thrown outside because their owners also have medical issues.”

From 2011-2021, Illinois public schools lost nearly 180,000 students but gained 4,500 teachers. Illinois public schools currently have more than 5,300 unfilled positions, but nearly half of those vacancies are for paraprofessionals, not traditional teachers.

The bill’s sponsor, state Rep. Jennifer Gong-Gershowitz said the intent of the bill is not to limit constitutionally protected speech. “We feel it’s important that while we may not remove or necessarily adopt all the suggestions from the ACLU, that we have come as far as we can. We feel as policymakers sometimes we need to make those calls to ensure we address the harms we are seeking to address.”

State Rep. Adam Niemerg this week asked Kristen Richards, the former head of the Department of Employment Security who now leads another agency, how much money was stolen, to which she did not have an answer. “The United State’s Department of Labor, as last I left the agency in mid-January, is still working to quantify the number of fraud that was associated with the federal programs,” Richards said.

Nuclear power has been divisive among those pushing to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions in the energy sector. For some it’s a reliable carbon-free alternative to coal and natural gas. For others it’s a dangerous diversion of money away from renewable resources.

“We should not allow inadequate examination of a potentially damaging, dangerous technology and unverified promises from an industry incapable of meeting budgets or deadlines be the final word on Illinois’ energy future. Those who worked hard for CEJA’s passage in 2021 should be most alarmed that these moratorium repeal bills are Trojan horses for SMNRs designed to sabotage the renewables goals of CEJA.”

For Sandy and Dave Schoenborn, a couple who own the Lincoln Theatre in Belleville, the state mandate is a major concern. “I’m pretty worried,” Sandy Schoeborn said. “Unless business gets better, it’s gonna be a strain.”

Jim Dey: “But the revenue-growth good news has caused fiscally irresponsible legislators’ mouths to drool in anticipation of another spending spree, which prompted state Comptroller Susana Mendoza to warn that ‘estimates do not equal actual dollars’ and ‘we can’t spend money we don’t have.’ Mendoza advocated restraint in a world where too many people choose to act in haste and repent in leisure.”

All 14 metro areas of Illinois had lower unemployment rates in January, compared to a year ago. Statewide, Illinois’ unemployment rate fell to 4.7% in January, down from 5.4% the same time a year ago.

“There are few activities politicians love more than handing out benefits that others must pay for.”

The legislation — HB 3098 — would nominally limit these companies’ ability to require use of their own payment processing systems. What it would actually do is inhibit Apple, Google and other software store providers from honoring commitments to customers and safeguarding digital financial transactions. It is based on flawed assumptions and would have consequences for the state’s economy.

Prosecutors played the recordings to reinforce to the jury that Michael Madigan called the shots in Springfield and was consumed with staying in power above all else. The recordings also buttressed allegations that Michael McClain acted as an “agent” for the famously reclusive speaker, delivering messages and completing “assignments” for his boss even after McClain’s retirement from lobbying in 2016.

Illinois is one of five states with legislation from the early 1900’s that prohibits people from getting married in the state if they intend to live somewhere else. The law also states that any marriage celebrated in Illinois in violation of the provision is null and void.

House Bill 2231 gets rid of an exemption that says rideshare companies are not responsible for their drivers. “One of the reasons these entities have been so successful has been the costs involved are not as great as the other entities,” state Rep. Patrick Windhorst said. “By increasing regulations or burdens on business, we may drive them out.”

Illinois state Rep. Steven Reick said Illinois is “walking on eggshells” with unfunded liabilities around $140 billion for state funds. Something drastic needs to be done, he said, like Congress expanding bankruptcy for states. “There are only three ways we’re going to fix our pension problems, it’s going to be revenue increase, benefit cuts or a complete collapse of the system.”

Ranked choice voting, or as it’s sometimes called, “instant runoff voting,” actually has a long history in U.S. elections at the municipal level. But it has become more widely adopted in modern times, including in several states and dozens of municipalities.

State Rep. Bill Hauter, an anesthesiologist, said the testing strips are more effective than the opioid-overdose antidote naloxone. “We are getting Narcan out, but in medicine we know for sure, that it is better to prevent something than to rescue someone. Narcan has a lot of problems with its implementation.”

Hundreds of bills sailed out of committee last week. Among them, Senate Bill 1715 would mandate that, starting in 2026, all drinking fountains include water bottle filling stations. House Bill 1633 would mandate that, beginning with the 2024-2025 school year, all public elementary and high schools include a unit on Native American history within Illinois and the Midwest and instruction of the Native American genocide during the unit on the Holocaust.

“Ranked choice voting is a scheme to disconnect elections from issues and allows candidates with marginal support to win,” said Andy Bakker of the Illinois Opportunity Project.

“The repeal of this authorization of use the use of military force does not mean the United States has become a pacifist nation,” U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin said. “It means that the United States is going to be a constitutional nation and the premise of our Founding Fathers will be respected.”

House Republicans also introduced a plan earlier this spring to make the site inspections unannounced. “There is much going on in our (group homes) and our most vulnerable are getting abused, are being raped, and taken advantage of,” state Rep. Charlie Meier said.

The program is funded by the CDC through the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 and is targeted for school districts that serve lower income communities and counties that have elevated air pollution counts.

Dave Briggs, analyst with PlayIllinois.com, said that in March of last year, legislation allowed Illinois residents to sign-up online for sportsbooks rather than in-person at a casino. He said that explains why sports betting handle in January 2023 was up 23% over January 2022.

“Mike Madigan was the most powerful person in the Illinois General Assembly,” Assistant U.S. District Attorney Sarah Streicker argued. “He [could] wield that power to make or break a piece of legislation.” She pointed to three instances where Michael Madigan helped ComEd win legislation that proved to be lucrative for the utility, including the “Smart Grid” bill in 2011 and another bill in 2016 that held a rate structure in place and extended the life of two of the company’s nuclear plants through bailouts.

The governor’s comments came one week after the legislature’s nonpartisan Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability, or COGFA, increased its revenue estimates by about $1 billion for the current and upcoming budget years combined. “I would like to see – as we feel comfortable with these new revenues coming in and their stability; and I think we’re seeing a few years in a row now of the stability of that revenue – that we should be talking about whether there

ISBE members have requested an extra $350 million in state funding go towards the Evidence-Based Funding formula to help them meet their goal of reaching 90% adequacy for schools over the next ten and a half years. A report by Wirepoints shows that 53 schools do not have any students who can do math at their grade level and that at 30 schools, no student can read at grade level.

Jim Dey: “While the proceedings in the SAFE-T Act case took one day and featured dry legal arguments, the ComEd case will be lengthy and attention-grabbing…Chicago radio and TV — and far beyond — will be filled with revealing and titillating excerpts that show how the political sausage is really made in our corrupt state. But there’s no doubt the high court’s ruling on the Pretrial Fairness Act will have a more dramatic effect on ordinary people.”

Illinois universities and community colleges will be required to submit policies for awarding an academic credit or non-credit alternative to the Illinois Board of Higher Education and Community College Board. Lawmakers hope this proposal could help election authorities address the constant shortage of election judges across the state.

“We don’t have to be smart about this at all,” state Rep. John Cabello said. “We can just take what Indiana has done in the last 10 years, take all the bills that they have passed in Indiana, implement them here, and we’re going to be already in a different trajectory.

“And, I must say that I think people who run for judge do it for the right reasons and I think that people who give to candidates for judge do it for the right reasons,” Gov. JB Pritzker said.

The longest serving legislative leader in U.S. history seemed everywhere during arguments while he personally was nowhere to be found during the daylong proceedings in the overflow courtroom. As part of her opening, Assistant U.S. Attorney Sarah Streicker left little to the imagination, telling jurors “in short, Madigan wanted, the defendants gave and the defendants got. It’s that simple.”

“Illinois has the second worst unemployment rate in the country, and it is severely impacting small businesses,” Chris Davis, of the Illinois chapter of the National Federation of Independent Businesses, said. “The NFIB Small Business Index indicates that 47% of small businesses are attempting to hire, and of those 47%, 90% are reporting a lack of qualified applicants.”

Missouri had 20 local government entities placed on the list, more than any other state. Following Missouri was Texas (16), New York (11), Pennsylvania (11) and Alabama (8). Other states with governments on the list include Arizona, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, New Jersey, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

“This fortuitous result was in part due to the exceptional generosity of federal aid but also was attributable to surges in economic activity and own source tax revenue…While this good news may be cause to celebrate, we caution that Illinois’ fiscal situation remains tenuous and is likely to require diligence and restraint to remain healthy in the coming years.”

A statement from Kwame Raoul reads, in part, “In Illinois, I am initiating the Firearms Industry Responsibility Act, which I urge members of the General Assembly to support. The Firearms Industry Responsibility Act, or FIRA, will make clear that the Attorney General’s office can use Illinois’ Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act to take enforcement action against firearms dealers and manufacturers that engage in dangerous sales and marketing practices.”

“We need to take steps to change the culture surrounding distracted driving, which will lead to more responsible drivers and ultimately save lives,” Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias said in a prepared release.

The most recent SEC filings from IMRF indicated the fund had at least 2,251 shares of SVB at the end of 2022, though that number could be higher. It is also possible that IMRF and other Illinois pension systems had exposure to SVB through index funds or ETFs. IMRF also had millions invested in funds with exposure to FTX, a digital currency exchange that went bankrupt in late 2022.

Mr. Frerichs said in an interview that he supported SB 2152 stressing “this bill fights for workers’ security” and noted that his office manages $50 billion in a variety of state funds with a strong focus on active proxy voting to urge corporations the funds are invested in to make long-term decisions in managing their companies.

The loan fund aims to assist approximately 100 new and existing county businesses and entrepreneurs, focusing on those who do not qualify for traditional lending. Eligible businesses can access small loans up to $50,000.

“California, New York, New Jersey, and Illinois have each proposed some form of state wealth tax to expropriate their highest earners. These states are already highly taxed, heavily indebted, poorly managed, and experiencing out-migration…The catalyst for the ongoing state tax revolution might, therefore, end up being the utter fiscal mismanagement of America’s largest, most progressive states.”

Despite multiple prior constitutional referendums to change the way courts handle pre-trial release of accused criminals, lawyers for the state’s top Democrats told the state Supreme Court that Illinois lawmakers did not need to follow the same procedures when abolishing cash bail altogether, because lawmakers should be left free to define “bail” in whatever way they believe best fits the state’s policy goals.

Chris Davis at the National Federation of Independent Businesses said although it’s a well-intended act, he still has concerns for small businesses. “They already stay awake at night wondering who’s going to show up for work in the morning and with this added benefit, it’ll be more difficult for them to determine whether they’re going to have to limit their hours.”

Governors from California, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Washington and Wisconsin joined Pritzker in sending the letter to executives at CVS, Walmart, Rite-Aid, Safeway, Health Mart, Kroger, Costco and Target.

The governor’s proposed budget for the 2024 fiscal year calls for an additional $100 million for Monetary Award Program grants.

State Rep. Sue Scherer said that if every foster family received SNAP benefits, more parents would enter the foster care system. “We’re losing a lot of foster parents because of the fact that they can’t get SNAP benefits unless they qualify, not counting these children that they take on.”

“You have heard from the first responders about the incidents of rape, sexual abuse, the neglect of residents, and even starvations that we can document in the state of Illinois that have taken place in (group homes),” said state Rep. Charlie Meier. House Bill 1298 would require the Department of Human Services to establish a system of sight inspections at the facilities.

Moody’s Investors Service has upgraded Illinois’ bond rating to A3, marking the eighth credit upgrade the state has received in less than two years. In its announcement, Moody’s cited the state’s “improving governance” as a key factor in its decision. Moody’s is one of many firms that now assesses companies and governments on an “environmental, social and governance,” or ESG, framework.

Illinoisans bet more than $275 million on March Madness in 2022, with the state netting more than $2 million in tax revenue. Revenue totals for sports betting in 2022 were the second highest in the nation behind New York.

The latest complaint against Proft follows one filed by the state Democratic Party on Nov. 4, just days before the election, alleging Proft’s PAC illegally coordinated with Bailey’s campaign to oppose Pritzker’s bid for reelection. As an independent expenditure PAC, People Who Play By The Rules is not allowed to coordinate spending activities with a political candidate.

Prosecutors and sheriffs from more than half of Illinois counties filed civil suits, which were consolidated last year. They argue the Illinois constitution requires a system of monetary bail and the legislature doesn’t have the power to remove it.

House Bill 1533 is sponsored by State Rep. Barbara Hernandez. Anyone caught declawing a cat would be subject to an Illinois Department of Agriculture fine of $500 for the first offense and $1,000 for a second violation.

“Fascinating to listen to both sides,” Gov. JB Pritzker said. “It’s clear to me that there’s one side has the much better argument on the SAFE-T Act and I think that will prevail.”

Deputy Solicitor General Alex Hemmer, representing Attorney General Kwame Raoul and Democratic legislative leaders, argued that the legislature has set policy for decades that affect the pretrial process for Illinois criminal defendants, while Jim Rowe, the state’s attorney for Kankakee County, argued that judges should have the option to set a cash bail as “a tool in the toolbox” to ensure that defendants come to the courthouse for trial. The justices gave no timeline for when a decision in the case will be released.

State Rep. Justin Slaughter expects the Illinois Department of Returning Residents Affairs would require roughly $75 million per year to help people get access to housing, potential jobs and financial assistance. He said the governor would appoint a formerly incarcerated person with lived experience to lead this department.

“We have seen the effects of the SAFE-T Act, and we have seen that crime is extremely important to the constituents that we serve all across this state,” state Sen. Steve McClure said. “It is important as ever that the people that are serving on the prisoner review board are the most qualified.” According to state data, board members make $92,305 per year.

“…the House has taken a step backward, repealing that reform and going back to the days when the Rules Committee only allowed a select number of favored bills to move forward in the process, in direct contradiction of Speaker (Emanuel “Chris”) Welch’s promise to continue to reform the rules and bring the chamber out from (Michael) Madigan’s shadow.”

Jim Dey: “…Illinois legislators have grasped for new gambling revenues like a drowning man lunges for a life preserver. Why? They want the revenue. More important, there’s little resistance to levying taxes on activities in which otherwise-tax-averse citizens voluntarily participate.”

“As more and more benefits are legislated by pro-employee lawmakers, more and more employers try to evade the legal employment relationship,” Michael LeRoy said. Some employers will have to bite the bullet and comply, he said, but there will be others who respond by saying “How much can I outsource my work?”

The Illinois Law Enforcement Training and Standards Board sought an opinion from the attorney general on its authority to expand permission for concealed carry to former sheriff’s correctional officers and state prison guards as prescribed by a law that took effect Jan. 1. But Attorney General Kwame Raoul’s office declined in part because it expects lawsuits over the board’s unwillingness to administer the expanded program.

Questions over the influence of campaign cash on the public’s perception of judges’ ability to remain impartial has long been a subject of concern among the legal community in Illinois and elsewhere, resulting in relatively recent calls for a strong rule to make clear when judges should step aside from hearing cases involving people or organizations that fueled their election campaigns.

Illinois first banned texting while driving in 2010, according to the press release, and banned the use of cell phones while driving in 2014, requiring drivers to get hands-free devices. Motorists would be permitted to participate in conference calls, but only if they use hands-free devices and if the video function is turned off.

Across the country, the legal communities in several other states endorsed similar rule changes to either establishing “bright line” rules concerning campaign funding and recusal. In Illinois, however, the state Supreme Court did not approve the rule, and no rules concerning the need to recuse in light of campaign contributions exists. The rule was also not included in the state’s new Code of Judicial Conduct, which took effect this year.

The Leveraging and Energizing America’s Apprenticeship Programs (LEAP) would provide $1,500 federal income tax credits for businesses offering apprenticeships and pre-apprenticeship programs. “By providing tax credits to small businesses, this bill will both address the need for more qualified workers and cut educational costs for job seekers,” U.S. Rep. Nikki Budzinski said.

“After the Cook County Circuit Court implemented a similar program to the new law, mandating unconditional releases for many crimes and severely restricting money bail, the result has been more missing defendants and more re-offending upon release. Immediately after the reforms, failure-to-appear rates climbed to 19.8% from 16.7% before the reforms.”

Effective Jan. 1, 2024, workers will begin to earn paid leave on their first day at a rate of one hour of leave for every 40 hours worked, up to 40 hours of paid leave for the year. Employees can begin using their paid leave either 90 days after their employment begins or 90 days after the act’s effective date. Ultimately, the measure received a few Republican votes in the House but passed the Senate with only Democratic support.

In January, Gov. JB Pritzker signed a law that makes any individual who was under the age of 21 when sentenced to life in prison eligible for parole review after they served 40 years or more of their sentence. But the measure only applied to those sentenced on or after June 1, 2019. Senate Bill 2073, carried by Republican Sen. Seth Lewis, would extend the measure retroactively to apply to any currently incarcerated individual who was sentenced before turning 21.

Fourteen states and Washington, D.C., require employers to offer paid sick leave via similar laws, although employees may only use it for health-related issues. What sets Illinois’ new legislation apart is workers won’t have to explain the reason for their absence as long as they provide notice in accordance with reasonable employer standards.

“The trial will feature an only-in-Illinois cast of characters that allegedly benefited from Madigan’s vaunted political machine, including precinct captains and door-knockers who hustled votes at election time, current and former state legislators who twisted arms in the General Assembly, and those who went through the golden revolving door of politics and cashed in their allegiances in the form of lucrative lobbying careers.”

Gov. JB Pritzker’s involvement is another example of how nonpartisan school board races — amid lingering discord from COVID-19 mitigations and fierce debate over sex ed curriculum and library books — are feeling the influence of party politics.

“Although wind and solar are an incredibly important part of our energy portfolio, we cannot provide the reliability and resiliency we need with only wind and solar,” state Sen. Sue Rezin said.

A recent study suggests that, for the first time in nearly 100 years, Americans’ average intelligence quotient (IQ) is declining. The professors who authored the study, including one from Northwestern, theorize that the quality of education could play a role in reversing the IQ gains enjoyed by previous generations.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker rarely passes up a chance to brag about his landmark clean energy law, which requires all fossil fuel-burning power plants in Illinois to shut down by 2045. Yet Pritzker’s signature legislative triumph could backfire if he ignores warnings about its potential impact on electricity reliability.

“The trial will give jurors a close-up view of how Springfield operated in the last decade. They’ll hear talk of an ‘old-fashioned patronage system.’ And they’ll learn how an apparent obsession with pleasing Madigan might have prompted four officials to cross a legal line as ComEd sought to pass legislation it valued at more than $150 million. But jurors will also watch as lawyers explore that line, between legal lobbying and criminal activity.”

Many startups and their investors worked around the clock, scrambling to come up with loans and other sources of capital to keep them afloat before regulators stepped in late Sunday and said SVB customers will have access to funds Monday.

There is not a timeline for when the case will be decided.

“These are not little sparklers,” Tom Styczynski, the fire chief of the Alsip Fire Department, said. “The pyrotechnic devices they are trying to legalize contain 500 grams of pyrotechnic component, which is the highest potency before needing a professional pyrotechnic operators’ license to handle.”

U.S. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said, in part, “By protecting and strengthening the bedrock promise of Medicare and Social Security, the President understands how crucial these programs are for the security and safety of millions of Americans.”

Data by the Illinois State Board of Education shows that schools in Illinois reported 3,558 unfilled teaching positions as of October 2022. In 2022, the Teacher Retirement System’s total unfunded liability increased to $80.6 billion.

In Illinois, Gov. JB Pritzker just signed a 10-year extension for the state’s film-friendly tax incentive program, which guarantees productions 30% back on eligible expenses through Jan. 1, 2033. There is an additional 15% incentivized bump for hiring crew from underserved areas in the state as determined by census data.

Nearly a third of Illinois’ $1.6 billion in recreational cannabis sales in 2022 were to residents of other states, according to the state’s Department of Financial and Professional Regulation.

“The new law would allow police officers to pull you over if they see that you are driving with an animal in your lap, whatever the animal may be,” the bill’s sponsor, state Rep. Jawaharial Williams, said. Pets aren’t covered under distracted driving laws.

“People who are denigrating her are aggrandizing themselves,” said Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who has looked at a post-Biden White House run himself, speaking generally of Harris’ critics.

She is seen as relatively dovish on Fed policy, analysts say.

While total proposed FY2024 expenditures are nearly flat from the prior year, agency expenditures are actually proposed to increase from FY2023 by $2.7 billion, or 8.3%. With fairly conservative revenue projections for FY2024 anticipating a potential mild recession, a question going forward will be how sustainable these the proposals for increased agency spending are for future years.

“This bill is designed to modernize Illinois law regulating the home-delivery of purchased vehicles, to ensure customers don’t have to go to a physical facility just to sign some paperwork,” Will Munsil, Senior Corporate Counsel for Carvana said. He said the bill would clarify what has become common practice across the state, but is not explicitly allowed in Illinois.

The February 2023 numbers represent an 18% increase over February 2022.

State Rep. Ryan Spain said campaign spending is growing, but there are other issues of fairness like the judicial redistricting Democrats approved in 2021. “Let’s remember, 600,000 voters said we need to change how we deliver redistricting in the state of Illinois…”

Calvin Miller, associate director of the Illinois Council on Problem Gambling, has heard some heartbreaking stories in his work on the council. “People can lose their life savings in a weekend,” Miller told The Center Square. “But there is always a way out. If you

More than 60,000 foster children have been stuck in a vicious cycle of moving from one place to another – four, 10, 20, and even more homes and institutions. Children often suffer trauma as they constantly start over with new caregivers, communities, schools, and friends. Their paths should have been different.

“And, make no mistake, the problems are severe, despite what national rankings may show. Currently, 15,000 people (in Illinois) are on a waiting list for community-based intellectual and developmental disabilities placement, according to a report last week by Capitol News Illinois, Lee Enterprises and ProPublica Illinois.”

Supporters of the legislation say the dangerous working conditions have led to a shortage of public transit workers statewide.

Wirepoints President Ted Dabrowski, who co-authored the website’s schools report, isn’t sure how much difference Lightford’s proposal will make, even if it becomes law. “Every kid should learn about finances and how to manage their financial future, but the first priority for Illinois leaders should be to assure that kids can read and do math and today that’s not happening,” he said. “Instead of adding another mandate for this they should mandate that schools massively elevate the percentage of kids who can read and do math in Illinois schools.”

Tuesday will mark the first time the four defendants appear in court after being indicted in November 2020. The trial is expected to run for six to eight weeks at the Everett McKinley Dirksen United States Courthouse in Chicago.

SmartAsset found that for the 2021 tax year, Illinois ranked fifth in the country with an average federal tax refund of $1,739.

Actuary Mary Pat Campbell: “Wirepoints has several features, and the best part is the daily email. Wirepoints has helped give me more detail on the players, and the specific tactics being tried out so I don’t look like a complete ass from the East Coast when I write about the Midwest. So if you want to know about one of the

The U.S. economy fully recuperated pandemic-era job losses in June 2022 and has since added more than 2.7 million jobs. Illinois’ ability to fully recover remains a question, with the state hitting a record population loss of 104,437 in 2022.

Under Rezin’s legislation, public utility and energy companies would be given the option to choose whether they want to invest in the construction of both traditional, large nuclear reactors or new, small modular reactors that could be placed in existing infrastructure, such as factories or pre-existing coal-fired power plants already connected to the electric grid.

The cannabis landscape in Illinois has grown more challenging in the past year as market conditions have tightened and state regulations continue to create obstacles for start-up growers and retailers.

The bill seeks to prohibit counties from enacting local ordinances that contain an outright ban on solar and wind projects on land zoned for agricultural or industrial use.

Senate Bill 1392, filed by state Sen. Mary Edly-Allen, looks to set up a way for victims of physical, emotional, reputational, or economic harm caused by deep fake media to seek justice. Victims would be able to collect damages and remain anonymous during court proceedings.

Illinois taxes ranked as follows: 51st for Overall Effective State & Local Tax Rate; 39th for Income Tax; 50th for Real Estate Taxes; 1st for Vehicle Property Tax; and 25th for Sales and Excise Taxes.

“After covering Illinois politicians for more than 30 years, I have no faith whatsoever in their collective wisdom. None. Zip. Zilch. Nada. Just look at this statement from (state Sen. Doris) Turner: ‘For years, Illinois was seen as fiscally irresponsible. We have turned that around and returned Illinois to the great state it is, and our flag should reflect that.'”

It’s been many years since any other pumpkin growing state has beaten Illinois in pumpkin production. Raghela Scavuzzo, executive director of Illinois Specialty Growers, said Illinois produced 651.9 million pounds of pumpkins in 2021, 39% of all the pumpkins produced in the U.S.

Adding to the issues across the state, Ted Dabrowski, the President of Wirepoints, shared the concerns he has with the state’s education system. “I think we need to make education a place of excellency again. We don’t need to be lowering standards for teachers or for students. We need to be raising standards. I think we’ve gotten so far away from standards that now the system doesn’t make sense.”

The IDES said that in January, the unemployment rate fell by one-tenth of a percentage point, dropping down to 4.5%. Nonfarm payroll jobs, meanwhile, increased by over 14,000.

Currently, a conviction of sexual misconduct, prostitution, rape, or any other offense requiring registration as a sex offender automatically bars an applicant from obtaining a massage therapist license. But this is not the case for first-degree murder, armed robbery, aggravated battery, aggravated vehicular hijacking, arson, assault, stalking, theft, and kidnapping.

The Republicans also proposed two House Resolutions they said are ways for the state to reflect on “the importance of cleaning out corruption.” One would prohibit the placement of “a Speaker Madigan portrait” in the House chambers.

Illinois lawmakers have filed about 6,500 pieces of proposed legislation during the 103rd General Assembly. There are more than 100 committees and subcommittees in the House alone, including appropriations, higher education, human services and labor and commerce.

The legislation is similar to older laws that protected child actors, according to state Sen. Linda Holmes. “I think we see the necessity for this because the rise of social media just creates opportunity for people, including minors, to make money online. This is something we did not see years ago.”

Under House Bill 2789, libraries in Illinois would be required to either issue a statement attesting to their anti-banning position on controversial materials and books or show that they follow the American Library Association Bill of Rights that stipulate “materials should not be proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval” in order to be eligible for state grants. The bill would make Illinois the first state in the country to take such a defined position.

A proposal at the Illinois Statehouse would legalize and regulate “natural organic reduction,” a process in which human remains are rapidly decomposed into compost over the course of several weeks. Companies that offer this service place a person’s remains in a vessel with wood chips, straw and other organic material and heat it to accelerate the growth of microbes that break down the body.

In Illinois and around the country, groups of conservative candidates are banding together in an attempt to get elected to their local school boards. In several Chicago suburbs, slates of candidates have been telling a similar narrative about their districts: wasteful spending, plus lower test scores caused by distracting ideological lessons on sex, gender, mental health and diversity.

While state-based social equity programs like this one are designed to help people whose communities were affected by the war on drugs get started in a new and lucrative business, Illinois is the only state that explicitly gives preference to people directly affected by gun violence. Critics say such programs have not met their goal of diversifying the cannabis industry.

State Sen. Julie Morrison told the Senate Executive Committee Wednesday that the recent surge in use of e-cigarettes and vapes has threatened the state’s progress, as Illinois leaders celebrated the 15-year anniversary of Smoke Free Illinois laws last month.

“Is the state actively enforcing this law? If they are actively enforcing this law— why are they enforcing a law that courts have deemed unconstitutional?” Rep. Patrick Windhorst asked.

Illinois is one of only three states in the country to ban fireworks, with New Hampshire and Vermont being the other two. There is an effort to legalize fireworks in Illinois every year, with some saying the state is missing out on millions of dollars in sales tax revenue that is being made by surrounding states.

“Statesmanship, at its essence, is the determination of leaders to look to the long term and a disposition to take difficult and politically unpopular actions to advance the public good. Illinois’ state budget cries out for statesmanship.”

The Commission on Government Forecasting Accountability increased its revenue estimate for the current fiscal year by $575 million – yet another positive development in a monthslong streak of revenue growth. A spokesman said the expected growth was driven by strong performances in the state’s base tax revenue sources – corporate and personal income tax and sales tax driven higher by inflation.

Prior to securing his spot in the Chicago mayoral run-off, the campaign for Paul Vallas became a victim of a growing digital deception known as a “deepfake.” Senate Bill 1392 and House Bill 2123 would allow the campaign and other victims of digital forgeries to seek legal action against perpetrators who create and share inauthentic media.

The measure, SB 1782, addresses the rise in so-called “kidfluencer” content found on online platforms.“Traditional child actors have been protected for a number of years by child labor laws,” state Sen. Linda Holmes said. “However, there’s nothing on the books to protect these child influencers. Parents should not be able to profit from the work of their children.”

“In Illinois, we have successfully tackled large energy issues in the past by letting our values guide our policy and focusing on what’s best for all our people. It’s time to do it again on natural gas.”

The Literacy & Justice For All Act could, among other things, add a foundational reading exam for candidates in educator prep programs. “The candidate would take the assessment. If the candidate doesn’t pass the assessment, no problem. They still get their license. If they do pass the assessment, they earn an additional credential,” said Jessica Handy, the government affairs director for Stand For Children. “And then, we would have aggregate data on the program for how many candidates are passing that test.”

Saying a Chicago federal judge essentially ignored at least two U.S. Supreme Court decisions, attorneys for a Naperville gun shop owner have asked a federal appeals court to slap a hold on the state’s so-called “assault weapons” ban.

Here in Illinois, the number of deaths from Sept. 2021 to Sept. 2021 increased by just over 5 percent.

The reports from ADP found that Illinois workers who stayed in their role for the previous 12 months had a median salary of $59,300, a 7.6% increase from February of 2022. These stats compare to a national median salary of $57,600 and median pay growth of 7.2% for job stayers.

The judge wrote that he did “not find that the subject of this proposed testimony is so enigmatic to require expert testimony…Neither does the court see how testimony of the history of the Chicago Machine helps the jury determine a fact at issue in this present case. The court does see, however, how emphasizing the history of corruption and election fraud that marked the early years of the machine could prejudice defendants.”

“If you’re suggesting that the fact that I gave money to let’s say the Democratic Party or the committees that supported candidates means that everybody who’s received any money has to recuse themselves from anything to do with the state of Illinois, that’s ridiculous,” Gov. JB Pritzker said. “And I’ve certainly never asked anybody to vote a certain way or decide on a case a certain way. I would never do that.”

“This bill is not about restricting people’s choices,” state Rep. Anne Stava-Murray said Wednesday. “On the contrary, it’s about helping them make the best choices for themselves and their family.” She added that this is a labeling bill and does not ban gas stoves or prevent anyone from buying gas stoves.

According to the court’s order, oral arguments are scheduled to be heard sometime in May.

Doxing, as defined by House Bill 2954, occurs when an individual intentionally publishes another person’s private information, such as their social security number or home address, without their consent. Additionally, for a doxing claim to be successful, the individual would have had to publish that information with the intent of harming the other person.

“When the newest proclamation ends April 2, Pritzker will have held emergency powers for 1,116 of his 1,539 days in office. Anything lasting three years is no longer an emergency, but rather a regular state of affairs over which the Illinois General Assembly should debate and legislate as needed.”

In Illinois, the number of children who arrived in hospital emergency departments with suicidal thoughts climbed nearly 60% over a nearly six-year period ending in 2021. But the state-run Screening, Assessment and Support Services program is riddled with holes. It’s buckling under the weight of a youth mental health crisis, grappling with staff shortages and greater need. One example: the state couldn’t provide screening outcome data for about 40% of the cases that required the 90-minute response over five years.

The plan includes repurposing the Choate Mental Health and Developmental Center over three years in partnership with the SIU School of Medicine, and implementing new safety enhancements at Choate and across all State-Operated Developmental Centers.

“Illinois should not be a state where workers are forced to choose between needing time off and maintaining employment…This legislation is the culmination of years of fierce advocacy work and represents a new chapter in our state’s history, one that emphasizes the importance of creating fair and equitable conditions for all workers.”

Illinois hotels are required to charge guests a 6% lodging tax, and now the Illinois Hotel and Lodging Association is calling for short-term rentals, like Airbnb and others, to pay the same tax. The state lodging tax is expected to raise $305 million this year.

The legislation would put DCFS workers in the same class as other front line workers, including teachers, peace officers and private security officers – making committing aggravated battery against a department worker a felony for people 21 and over.

Because local suppliers will also lose the plant’s business, the city of Belvidere and Boone County will lose 2,000 jobs in total if the plant doesn’t start back up. Patty Ibraimi, owner of Uncle John’s Family Restaurant, explained, “We all thrive on that huge plant. They’re a big part of the community. We have a lot of people that work there. When they’re working, they’re eating, they’re going out. And for them to close completely, it’s devastation for the town and the businesses.”

Illinois 11th grade students scored on average 486.4 on the reading portion of the SAT and 473.8 on math in spring 2022. This marked a nearly 10- and 13-point drop in reading and math since the previous academic year, and an 11- and 23-point drop since 2019. Illinois requires all high school juniors to take the SAT to graduate from high school.

The full interview is here.

Said Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias, whose office also serves as the state librarian, “We view this as protecting our libraries. They’re under assault the likes of which they have never seen. They are being thrown into the mix of a political battle, and we’re trying to give them cover by helping them, by codifying this into legislation.”

In addition to placing the matter on its May calendar, the high court is set to hear oral arguments next week on a law that would end cash bail in the state, another landmark measure approved by the Democratic legislature and signed by Gov. JB Pritzker.

“We simply cannot continue to exempt Uber and Lyft from the same standards of care that would apply to any other taxi, train, common carrier,” state Rep. Jennifer Gong-Gershowitz said. “One of my colleagues pointed out that a Ferris wheel is a common carrier in Illinois. Uber and Lyft are common carriers and should be treated as such.”

“We’ve got a strong labor backbone in the State of Illinois, and if that can overcome difficulties, that’s great,” state Rep. Jeff Keicher said. “But each year, and not addressing BIPA, makes that a higher and higher threshold for a business to consider.”

SB 2354 would create the Redefining Science in Elementary Schools Task Force Act. The group would focus on identifying age-appropriate anatomy, physiology, and nutrition education materials at Illinois grade schools.

House Minority Leader Tony McCombie has been a vocal critic of the criminal justice package SAFE-T Act. “We have seen victims’ rights be sidelined through the SAFE-T Act and it’s something that needs to be rectified if we are truly going to make our neighborhoods safer; it means we stop empowering criminals,” she said.

The governor signed a law in 2022 that capped contribution limits in such campaigns to $500,000 from “any single person.” Despite that, to each candidate, half a million came from each of Pritzker’s political campaign and his revocable trust. Pritzker donated a total of $2 million to then-Illinois Supreme Court candidates Mary O’Brien and Elizabeth Rochford.

As of Tuesday, more than 6,500 bills had been introduced in the 2023 session. Illinois lawmakers began working through mountains of proposed legislation as a Friday deadline approaches for bills to pass out of their original committees.

“Political officials routinely work with lobbyists and entertain outreaches from their constituents,” Michael Madigan’s attorneys wrote in a pre-trial motion seeking to have many of the charges dismissed. “This conduct is central not only to the conduct of office but also to American democracy.” The attorneys further argue that “statutes that impermissibly chill such interactions infringe on rights that go to the core of democratic government and violate the First Amendment.”

State Rep. Charlie Meier introduced several measures to address video surveilance, site visits and reporting. Among them, “House Bill 1298 requires the Department of Human Services to establish a system of sight inspections. Once again, I want to say unannounced. Right now, once every three years (small group homes) are inspected,” he explained.

Almost 60% of MRI’s workforce includes people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. “We’re over five million plates now so it’s really grown. Which on average is about 24,000 plates a day have to come to our facility,” said Ryan Raleigh, Chief Operating Officer at MRI.

The Illinois Manufacturers’ Association “Makers Madness” is a bracket-style tournament in which voters across the state will decide which product is The Coolest Thing Made in Illinois. The economic impact of manufacturing in Illinois is estimated to be between $580 billion and $611 billion every year – the largest share of any industry to the state’s Gross Domestic Product.

For the second year in a row, Gov. JB Pritzker is proposing the state spend tens of millions of dollars on a witness protection program that went unfunded for the first nine years of its existence. Eight months in, however, no witnesses have been relocated, and only about $67,500 of the $30 million approved by the General Assembly last spring has been spent, primarily on employee-related expenses.

In the House and Senate, there are 6,545 bills filed for consideration. Many of those are what is referred to as a “shell bill.” State Sen. Steve McClure, R-Springfield, gave his take on shell bills “Shell bills can be used after deadlines have passed to get sometimes important bills passed but more often than not they’re used to ram a piece of legislation at the very last moment where you can change the bill number by attaching an amendment to a brand new shell bill,” McClure told The Center Square.

Mark Denzler of the Illinois Manufacturers Association explains why so many industries in Illinois could be crippled by BIPA. Upwards of 2,000 cases have been filed in Illinois in the last few years.

“Illinois’ current BIPA law is outdated and flawed, resulting in thousands of lawsuits and billions of dollars in damages, even when there has been no harm to an individual,” Illinois Manufacturing Association CEO Mark Denzler said. “It’s time for lawmakers to put an end to this rampant abuse of the law and enact commonsense reforms that protect businesses while preserving privacy rights.”

The state’s new CDCRC website.

A national republication of our Wirepoints column.

The Illinois Realtors Association lists about a half dozen pending rent control legislation before Illinois’ 103rd General Assembly.

“There’s no benefit whatsoever of rushing this case to the supreme court, not for the gun case and certainly not for trying to get something done to alter how laws are passed in Illinois which benefits much, much bigger issues ladies and gentlemen than a gun issue,” attorney Thomas DeVore said.

Gov. JB Pritzker has made child care and early childhood education a priority in this year’s proposed budget. But part of the problem in Illinois is that there are more children than “slots” for them in child care settings. Day care centers, in-home day cares and preschools all have a capacities based on staffing levels and facility size.

The revenue plan proposed by mayoral candidate Brandon Johnson calls for $800 million in new taxes on city businesses and middle-class workers. This includes taxes on those coming to Chicago by air, workers commuting into the city by train, taxing businesses for each employee, taxing those enjoying a night out and taxing “rich” residents – who turn out to be middle-class Chicagoans when the details of his plan are examined.

“BIPA is hurting our industry, and it is making our roads less safe” because many trucking companies are removing in-cab cameras due to involvement in or fear of a BIPA lawsuit, ITA Executive Director Matt Hart said. “Likewise, trucking companies that were considering these cameras to improve their safety have now decided against installing these cameras in Illinois because they fear being sued in this state.”

The power grid operator serving northern Illinois and points east to the Mid-Atlantic is sounding the alarm about potential electricity shortages over the coming seven years, driven in part by state policies like Illinois’ clean-energy law that are forcing power plants to close. The report explicitly cites Illinois’ Climate & Equitable Jobs Act, or CEJA, enacted in 2021, as a contributor to the issue.

“Groups all across the political and issue spectrum try to encourage people to file witness slips on the General Assembly’s website in support or opposition to bills to show supporters, donors, the other side and legislators that they have public backing. The slips are empowering. People feel seen. They believe they’re making a difference. But the slip wars also provide a positive feedback loop for dark conspiracy theories.”

Joe Cahill: Rivian will have to consider whether it makes sense to go it alone in a fast-growing but increasingly competitive EV market. Rising costs and increasing competition are stiff.

“No wonder The Washington Post and other national analysts consistently include Pritzker on the short list of Democrats who might realistically run for president next year if Joe Biden doesn’t seek reelection.”

In 2021,103 principals throughout the state resigned, according to State Board of Education data. The following year, that number shot up to 198. Likewise in Chicago Public Schools, the number of resigning principals went from 15 to 27. The surging number of principals leaving — and the declining number of teachers interested in moving up — worry state education leaders about the disruption it can cause schools and communities.

Jim Dey: “The Constitution mandates that ‘a bill shall be read by title on three different days in each house. A bill and each amendment thereto shall be reproduced and placed on the desk of each member before final passage.’ The rule, like ones adopted in other states, is designed to assure legislators and the public have time to learn what’s in proposed legislation…Illinois legislators refuse to comply.”

According to 2015 data from the Illinois State Board of Education, nearly 80% of all kindergarten classes were full-day. Those that do not, however, often have to seek tax increases to afford a new program said Zack Messersmith, director of government relations for the Illinois Association of School Boards.

Bereavement on the basis of race requires a day off, an ability to work from home, a deadline extension and to have their workload reassigned. Including these benefits will help “for the retention of Black faculty and staff.”

Jim Harper, of the American Enterprise Institute: “Passage of the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act made the Land of Lincoln a ‘leader’ in regulating biometrics. But it’s an example other states have not followed, for good reason. The difficult work of balancing multidimensional values like privacy against new uses of technology is not done with sledgehammers.”

While BIPA has been in place for nearly fifteen years, it is only in the past few that it has triggered much litigation.

As part of the Economic Opportunity Bill, the African Descent-Citizens Reparations Commission was established to bring an equity focus on African American communities and residents that have been disproportionally impacted by longstanding disinvestment due to direct and systemic repercussions of slavery.

Gov. JB Pritzker tells “Face the Nation” that Democrats should be focusing on what he described as Republican attempts to “ban books and libraries, they’re trying to keep our schools from teaching Black history.”

“Chicago runs Illinois, not just politically but in terms of its status as a world-class city and its economic strength. If Chicago catches a cold, the rest of the state gets pneumonia. Right now, Chicago is in a world of hurt, overrun by crime that has undermined its reputation as a ‘city that works’ and nasty tribal politics.”

The Times Higher Education has prompted a debate in the teaching academy over a call for “Black bereavement leave” by Angel Jones, a visiting assistant professor teaching educational leadership courses at Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville. Jones wrote that Black educators need time off to cope with the killings of black individuals in society. The leave would not depend on the educators knowing or having any relationship to the deceased. The question is whether such race-based leave would be constitutional.

Senate Bill 2193 creates the “Brewer Shipper’s License” that mirrors the permit that lets winemakers ship their products to customers in other states using third-party delivery services like DHL, FedEx, and UPS.

A recession could lead to a decline in overall economic activity, and House Republicans are concerned about the impact outmigration has on the state’s tax revenue. Rep. Martin McLaughlin stressed that people leaving the state have higher income than people who move back to Illinois.

There have been two official state flags – the first was adopted in 1915. The second was adopted in 1969, which did not change the original design of the flag but added “Illinois.”

On her radar is the Next Generation Fuels Act, legislation introduced in the previous Congress with backing from I-state members, that would reverse regulations currently limiting the use of fuel with higher blends of ethanol. “I am excited about biofuels in the future, where it is potentially going, for two reasons,” Budzinski said. “One is that it supports the farmers in this district, the corn and soybeans that is produced to support and create biofuel, but also it reduces carbon emissions.”

In January, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker pushed back at assertions that businesses are leaving the state due to violent crime. But the number of residents and businesses that are moving out are hard to ignore.

Senate Bill 1534, filed by state Sen. Tom Bennett, fixes an issue with homestead exemptions for veterans.

A recent state report shows there were 140 shootings in 2022, leading to three deaths, compared to 264 shootings in 2021 with 24 deaths. “That technology is proving to be a real game-changer,” Illinois State Police Director Brendan Kelly said.

Court records show Montano was arrested near two handguns last summer after running from a stolen car that was wanted in a shooting. He was only charged with a misdemeanor count of resisting arrest, and that charge was later dropped in return for Montano performing community service.

Deerfield-based Walgreens says it will not sell abortion pills in states in which Republican attorneys general have threatened legal action – despite the drug being legal in some of those states.

Where are our counselling services? Where is our grace for missed meetings and deadlines while we mourn?” she asks. Her university biography reads something like the profile pages of woke-parody Twitter accounts:Expertise: “racial microaggressions, Racial Battle Fatigue, and gendered-racism”; research focus on “The impact of racism on the mental health of Black students at historically White institutions”; recent work on “How Black graduate women respond to and cope with gendered-racial microaggression”; Next study on “Exploring the experiences of Afro-Latina students with Racial Battle Fatigue.”

The city of Chicago is expected to get $78 million over 18 years from Illinois’ share of the legal settlement with the four drug companies, which didn’t admit wrongdoing. Local governments in Illinois, including Chicago, are getting 45% of the state’s share of the national $26 billion legal settlement. Officials said the state will use the other 55% — estimated to come to $437 million over 18 years — for programs that help address the opioid crisis.

“But while Mr. Pritzker declined to provide a yea or nay on whether he would run, he added that a last-minute swap of an understudy for Mr. Biden was ‘such an odd hypothetical if you ask me.'”

An attorney for state Rep. Dan Caulkins, R-Decatur, says he’s confident a final judgment against Illinois’ new gun ban issued by a Macon County judge Friday is statewide pending an expected appeal from the state.

He said, “Now, 38 states have ratified the Equal Rights Amendment in the past half century. The most recent [being] Virginia in 2020. Thirty-eight is the exact number needed to certify an Amendment to the Constitution. The only thing standing in the way of an Equal Rights Amendment is an arbitrary deadline that Congress included in the preamble… when the amendment passed in 1972.”

A Macon County judge has declared Illinois’ gun ban and registry unconstitutional, setting up a direct appeal to the Illinois Supreme Court. The move means the law is not enforceable statewide pending appeal, according to attorney Jerry Stocks, who represents state Rep. Dan Caulkins in his challenge to the ban.

Funds could be used for signing bonuses, housing stipends, down-payment assistance and providing residencies or apprenticeships, among other hiring incentives.

In response to a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision restricting the ability of people to recover damages in federal court for certain discrimination claims, Democrats in the Illinois House are pushing a bill to allow the recovery of those damages in state court.

On top of village property owners receiving a 100% refund of the village taxes late last year, Bradley residents — whether homeowners or renters — can receive up to a $120 gift card as the village will rebate up to $693,000. “This is another way of giving back to our residents to share in our financial success,” Mayor Mike Watson said.

Jim Dey: “Former Gov. Rod Blagojevich tried to frame his trades of appointments to state posts and grant money for campaign cash as perfectly legal politics as usual. Former Gov. George Ryan sought to dismiss his misdeeds while governor and secretary of state as traditionally legal you-scratch-my-back-and-I’ll-scratch-yours favor-trading…Now it’s just about time for the co-stars in the Madigan saga to perform the ‘it’s just politics’ song and dance and find out if jurors will applaud.”

The Illinois Education Association’s State of Education report makes special note of staffing shortages in schools across the state. Its poll shows 87% of Illinoisans are worried about teacher shortages, while 79% are worried about a shortage of school support personnel, such as teaching assistants. The poll, which surveyed 1,000 residents, showed Illinoisans ranked having a good public education system higher than lowering taxes, economic growth, balancing the state budget and pension reform.

Sales of recreational marijuana to out-of-state residents dropped 10% in February from the same period a year ago, even as overall cannabis sales rose 6%, according to new state data. Missouri dispensaries started recreational marijuana last month. Missouri has much lower cannabis taxes at 6%, compared with 20% to 25% in Illinois. (Local taxes and the general state sales tax can push the total rate in Illinois to about 40%.)

Illinois’ budget and pension stabilization funds would receive automatic deposits when the state hits revenue growth and bill payment triggers under legislation that cleared a House committee this week. With a series of infusions over the last two fiscal years, the state’s once-depleted rainy-day fund remains on track to hit $1.9 billion by the end of the current fiscal year on June 30, but more is needed to reach a healthy level on par with other states, state Comptroller Susana Mendoza told the House’s State Government Administration Committee.

The small business network Alignable surveyed thousands of business owners from across the country and found that 35% of small businesses in Illinois couldn’t afford their rent last month.

A package of anti-corruption bills introduced in the Illinois Senate by state Sen. Andrew Chesney: one prohibits lawmakers from using campaign money to pay for legal defense, another fines felonious politicians $100,000 and one takes away their specialty license plates.

He said, in part, “We have to rebuild that trust in government, again, whether you’re a Democrat or Republican, we want to increase transparency. Lobbyist registration reports, everything within our office to help increase transparency will be, I think, positive. We’re also as I mentioned, our libraries will be a huge focus of what we do, and just in general, eliminating the time tax that people pay for government services.”

Legislation to lower the retirement age at which teachers can begin to collect their pensions is currently moving through the Illinois Senate.

A coalition led by the Illinois Manufacturers Association, Illinois Trucking Association, Illinois Health Care Association and others is urging immediate action by lawmakers to change BIPA.

It also argues the term “arms” refers to weapons and not “accessories,” and that large capacity magazines are therefore not protected under the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms.

A proposed 1,300-mile pipeline to carry concentrated carbon dioxide that would run through 13 Illinois counties is being met with pushback from residents of central Illinois.

“So, it’s baffling why some officials around the country appear to want to skip this professional responsibility by banning investment managers and banks that consider the billion-dollar risks related to climate change, environmental degradation, water shortages and poor company governance.”

“A report by Wirepoints found that more than 30 schools in Illinois failed to have even one student reading at grade level. Most of those schools were in the Chicago Public Schools District. The same report found that more than 50 schools in the Land of Lincoln failed to have any students doing math at grade level. Again, most of them were in Chicago.”

Vallas won big in the Northwest and Southwest Side wards where police officers and other first responders live. Johnson did well in Lakefront Liberal neighborhoods like Lakeview, Edgewater and Rogers Park, not to mention Lincoln Square.

“The failure of the Biden administration to recognize the amendment does not impact its legal validity, but it does have serious consequences. The Biden administration has neither published nor enforced the ERA. Congress has not passed laws to implement the ERA nor has it updated existing laws. The judiciary branch has ignored the amendment when rendering legal decisions. State and local governments have not updated their laws or justice systems to take the amendment into account. And we the people have not been informed that the ERA is in force.”

And a little over a year from now, Madigan is scheduled to stand trial in a case that federal prosecutors have been building for the better part of a decade. Along the way, the wide-ranging probes of Madigan and his associates have nabbed more than a dozen other Democratic politicians, lobbyists and business executives, upending Chicago and Illinois politics.

A bill that would trigger automatic payments into the state’s so-called “rainy day” fund is heading to the Illinois House for consideration after unanimous passage out of committee this week.

Under the proposal announced Wednesday, gasoline with higher blends of ethanol could be sold year-round in Illinois and seven other Midwestern states starting next year.

Through CZ Biohub Chicago, the state’s leading institutions will develop new groundbreaking technologies for studying human tissue to improve the understanding of inflammation, which could lead to new treatments for the inflammatory states that underlie many diseases.

“All the signs are there that it’s not going to be an automobile facility anymore,” Smith said. “That’s sad for the community and all the people who need employment.”

An Illinois House committee has approved a plan to end a moratorium on the construction of new nuclear power plants. The ban has been in place since 1987.

Glennon said another reason that is being underreported as to why people are fleeing Illinois and will continue to do so is that research shows people are moving to states that are more politically-likable to them. “If that’s the case, and it probably is more so in Illinois, we have a huge nationally re-sorting going on where the country is going to get far more divided than it is right now,” Glennon told The Center Square.

“If that progressive, 46-year-old Cook County commissioner and Chicago Teachers Union organizer Brandon Johnson, prevails in the April 4 runoff election, it will be another transformational moment for the city and the country.”

Veteran political operative Victor Reyes called White a “fantastic, proven vote-getter” who will “help Paul — not only in the Black community, but also in the white, progressive community because Jesse is a uniter and a collaborator.”

“A [Wirepoints] report recently found that there are 53 public schools in Illinois where not a single student can do math at grade level. That report made international news.”

“This race could outline the fissures that exist throughout the Democratic party all around the country. Paul Vallas represents the old guard. The governing Democrat of the Bill Clinton school of thought that wants to fix budgets, improve education, and doesn’t subscribe to pie in the sky liberal ideology. Brandon Johnson is the modern embodiment of the progressive wish list. He may not lay it out in so many words, but it’s likely Johnson would push, or sign off on, expansive spending

In proposed regulations that would touch any jurisdiction that accepts any sort of HUD funding, fair housing must mean a plan to “promote equity in their communities, decrease segregation, and increase access to opportunity and community assets for people of color and other underserved communities.” Translated that means that the route to upward mobility for disadvantaged minorities lies through their relocation to more affluent communities, where they will no longer be “underserved.” The details as to how this should be done run more than 200 pages. Those required to comply will include more than 1,200 cities and counties receiving HUD

Nearly 30 million Americans are more food insecure as of Wednesday, because the pandemic-era emergency increases in the SNAP program have now ended.

The Illinois Republican’s political organization is launching a nationwide campaign urging voters to reject extreme candidates on both sides of the aisle ahead of the 2024 election. The centerpiece of the campaign is a nearly six-minute-long short film titled “Break Free,” inspired by Apple’s “1984” Super Bowl ad about escaping the conformity of non-Apple computers.

Trade magazine Site Selection Magazine ranked Illinois as number 2 for corporate expansion in 2022 for number of projects, with 487 projects in the year. It also ranked 4 for number of projects per capita, after ranking as number 7 for 2021.

As emergency food stamp benefits are set to expire this month, one food bank in Geneva, Illinois is claiming the move will impact their 450,000 monthly clients, who are losing $90-$250 per month per family.

Gov. JB Pritzker said he’s glad he didn’t follow Florida’s lead. “Thousands and thousands of more people would have died in Illinois if we had followed the lead of a state like Florida,” Pritzker said. “If they had followed our lead, thousands fewer people would have

House Bill 2515 would set up automatic deposits into the budget stabilization fund, also called the state’s rainy day fund, from future budgets if the state keeps up with bill payments. “Adding the marker that the accounts payable has to be under $3 billion on top of the 4% growth, that’s where I’m looking at can we afford to do this,” Comptroller Susanna Mendoza said.

Unless there’s a change of U.S. law, those 313 guardsmen for Illinois shouldn’t expect back pay.

“Currying favor with government officials—even those with the capacity to influence legislation of interest to the employers—is legal,” the 75-page motion to dismiss stated. “In short, this far-flung superseding indictment impermissibly treats lawful ingratiation as illegal bribery, and stitches together unrelated allegations of purported misconduct into a single scheme…”

The Illinois Law Enforcement Training and Standards Board said conflicting laws render the board powerless to issue concealed carry permits to sheriff’s deputies who worked the jails or monitored courtrooms. But it waited until Jan. 11 — more than a week after the law’s effective date — to seek an opinion from the state attorney general as to how to proceed.

Stratton’s testimony highlighted the entrenched disparities that continue to impact women, particularly women of color, that bring urgency to the efforts for gender equality.

Illinois State Representative Sonya Harper filed HB3891, which will make you a criminal if you do not turn over your (unserialized) ammo. She wants all of your ammo registered with the Illinois State Police and a tax on each round of ammo.

But a look at police budgets in Illinois, Chicago and two other large cities in the state show funding for police has only grown since 2020. During the last three years, state police funding is up 15%; Chicago police funding is up 11%; Aurora police funding is up 17% and Joliet police funding is up 2%.

While two other states have imitated Illinois’ first-in-the-nation biometric privacy law, Illinois is the only of the three states that allow individuals the right to sue over the improper collection and mishandling of biometric data. Since about 2018, upwards of 2,000 suits have been filed under BIPA, followed by several high-profile, high-dollar settlements – including the $650 million Facebook paid out after settling a class action suit in 2020.

Jim Dey: “Illinois, tied with Utah, came in No. 10 on the happiness ranking…Illinoisans accept public corruption, but they’re not happy with it. They live with Illinois’ horrific financial problems, but they aren’t pleased to be deeply in the financial hole. They pretty much realize our prominent politicos say one thing and do another when it comes to overseeing genuine improvements in public education, fighting crime and reasonable levels of government spending. In other words, Illinoisans accept what they can’t change.”

We are in the midst of such a backlash, one that threatens to eradicate decades of progress by warping our view of the nation’s past — including all those previous backlashes — and thwart our future progress toward an equitable, multicultural society. Those very terms, in fact — “equitable” and “multicultural” — are the principal hobgoblins of the movement to preserve white supremacy by distorting history and presenting racial gaps as the result of ‘merit” and “hard work” instead of systemic oppression.

Ire is spreading among restaurant workers in several cities, including Chicago, about required food and beverage safety training programs that industry insiders say fund anti-minimum-wage lobbying efforts. The National Restaurant Association operates and administers a food and beverage safety training program by the name of ServSafe.

Joe Santiago, a Belvidere small business owner, pointed more toward the high taxes in Illinois, the influence of unions, and the lack of overall business competitiveness in the state, though he added that Stellantis’ moves over the last year have been “haphazard, to say the least…I hear more people who want to move out of state than I see people wanting to come to Illinois to work, which is unfortunate.”

“But we can say this with at least moderate certainty: The media got a whole lot wrong in the early days of COVID-19, often allowing ideological bias, and a specific disdain for Trump, to influence reporting. And a lot of public health professionals jumped on the same zealous train, seduced by talk-show appearances, op-ed column offers and a growing cadre of social media followers, all desperate for information, rather than biased opinion.”

After becoming the first business slapped with a massive jury verdict under Illinois’ biometrics privacy law, BNSF Railway is asking a federal judge to either slash the $238 million payout the jury ordered, or at least give them another chance at trial before a different jury.

State Rep. LaShawn Ford said the group would help license holders who can’t afford to open their doors.

State Rep. Mary Flowers, said DCFS is losing good people because of the complicated hiring process. “Rethink whatever it is that you’re doing here because this reminds me of a clogged sink, and when the stuff backs up, it stinks,” Flowers said.

“The ISA supports efforts to make Illinois and all of its citizens safe, but it also recognizes that those efforts must be within the bounds set by the Constitution. HB 5471 crosses those bounds, and in doing so, demands that sheriffs enforce a law that deprives the law-abiding citizens they serve of their constitutional right to keep and bear arms for lawful purposes, including sport and self-defense,” the filing said. “Because law enforcement should never be compelled to violate the constitutional rights of Illinois citizens, the ISA supports Plaintiffs’ action to enjoin the implementation of HB 5471 and to have

State Rep. Mike Coffey, who owns a restaurant, is not a fan of such a mandate. “In my personal restaurant I have very little Styrofoam, and just because they brought it up I will look to see how I can eliminate it, but I don’t need the government to come in and tell me what to do,” said Coffey.

With the investment, more than 265 jobs will be retained across three plants.

In a short three-page order, Judge Staci Yandle said she saw in the BIPA statute no language limiting liability only to immediate, direct employers. She said prior decisions of other courts make clear, in her opinion, that “any entity that collects such biometric information may incur liability.” In this case, Yandle said that means BIPA liability could extend to franchisors.

The situation is a result of several pandemic-related changes to federal law. In Illinois, the number of people on Medicaid jumped from nearly 2.9 million before the pandemic to 3.9 million now, according to the state.

Te Knight-Silas Legacy Act, comes a little over a year after DCFS worker Deidre Silas was stabbed to death last year while on a welfare visit in Thayer. Since Silas’ death, the state has passed laws allowing workers to carry pepper spray and continuing insurance coverage for families of workers who die on duty. This one would make committing aggravated battery against a DCFS worker on duty a felony for people 21 and up.

State Rep. Adam Niemerg has House Bill 1575 to reduce Illinois’ gas tax to 19 cents a gallon. “We have a $50 billion budget that the governor has put forth for this fiscal year and to look at the government inefficiencies, the spending, the out of control spending that’s going on in the state of Illinois, we have enough income coming in,” he said.

An unnamed source familiar with Cook County Jail said it is the ideal environment for ballot harvesting. “Cameras inside the Jail notoriously don’t work. There aren’t any election observers. If an inmate complains, who would believe them? So, if you wanted to manipulate a ballot, who would know?”

The course would cover banking, bill payment, investing, managing credit, paying for college, taxes, and more. The bill would affect the freshman class of the 2024-25 school year.

In a brief filed Monday, the office of Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul stated that the “plaintiffs’ response brief identifies no persuasive reason to affirm the circuit court’s sweeping decision striking down the pretrial release provisions.”

The Illinois National Guard couldn’t immediately say how many of their troops were impacted by the mandate.

Out-of-state sales could drop even more now that Missouri has legalized recreational cannabis, charging the lowest excise tax in the nation. Billboards near the state line now encourage Illinoisans to save by buying their weed in Missouri.

The Illinois Supreme Court should reject a “grab-bag of constitutional theories” put forward by more than 60 prosecutors across the state who are challenging a measure that would eliminate cash bail, the attorney general’s office argued in a final appeal brief filed Monday.

State Sen. Andrew Chesney, the bill’s co-sponsor, says that their goal with this bill is to have those from a different perspective understand what they are trying to regulate.

Happy Foods owner Barbara Eastman addresses the cost and liability of keeping an armed guard in her store during business hours, as has been proposed.

Rivian is searching for a pathway to profitability in what looks to be an intense period of competition, with legacy automakers getting serious about EVs and Tesla planning the next phase of its product portfolio. “The financials for Rivian are just painful right now,” Brauer said. “They’re spending lots of money and not coming anywhere near paying for it with sales.”

Senator Sue Resin: “Thanks to our state’s nuclear energy history, we are poised to take immediate advantage once our own archaic moratorium ends. However, if we continue to sit back and allow the moratorium to continue, we risk losing our competitive edge in the nuclear energy industry, especially as newer and safer nuclear energy technology rapidly emerges.”

It’s a battle state Sen. Steve McClure has been fighting for some time now, having filed Senate Bill 1405 to that end several times over the past few years. The so-called “Lindsey’s Law” legislation would pave the way for law enforcement to charge intoxicated drivers with a Class 2 felony if they kill someone and cause great bodily harm, permanent disability or disfigurement of others.

Illinois remains the only state to allow individuals to sue over violations. Others allow state attorneys general to take action.

The Illinois Sustainable Investing Act, passed by the General Assembly and signed into law by Gov. J.B. Pritzker in 2019, provides that public fund investment officers should integrate “material, relevant and useful sustainability factors into their policies, processes and decision-making.” But it leaves them latitude in how they evaluate risk. IMRF, for example, has focused on adding diversity to its managers and their suppliers. And investment officers in Illinois could find money managers picking sides — either casting their lot with red or blue sides of the divide. If that happens, managers worry that it will limit choice, restrict

“Given the fact that trial lawyers are a key constituency of and generous donors to supermajority Democrats in Springfield, the business community can’t expect much positivity from Springfield. It’s a virtual certainty trial lawyers don’t want to destroy targeted businesses. But it’s equally likely they wish to keep them healthy enough to extract huge liability payments from them. Either way, it’s a wretched situation, but par for the course in Illinois.”

By October, Pritzker apparently was confident enough he’d be victorious that he didn’t give JB for Governor any more cash. Instead, he contributed to other campaigns and groups, including state-level Democratic groups in California, Colorado, Michigan, New Mexico, South Dakota and Tennessee.

“State Rep. Curtis Tarver II introduced a bill last week, House Bill 2455, to close the judicial FOIA loophole and expressly make the court system in Illinois subject to the public-records law… Illinois is the only state in the country where these sorts of financial and administrative records of the courts are not available either through FOIA or by court rules or other state laws, according to research by the Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts and the Civic Federation.”

State Rep. Mike Coffey, who owns a restaurant in Springfield, argues that the current system of tipping good service is capitalism at work. “I think that is what differentiates the Untied States of America from a lot of these other countries. We reward hard work, so it gives the customer the ability to reward somebody for great service and take away if the service is not great.”

Carbon capture and storage “could play an important role in achieving the state’s decarbonization goals,” according to the report, which was commissioned by the state legislature. But as the fight over Navigator CO2’s pipeline illustrates, battle lines are being drawn, with opponents questioning carbon capture’s very reason for being — its real-world effectiveness in reducing greenhouse gases.

State Representative Blaine Wilhour said the solution is school choice. “We have continued to fund failed programs in our education system for too long. It is time to adopt policies that will produce good results with minimal investment. It is time for our education dollars to follow students and give families real choices in their kids’ education.”

Sheila Weinberg, of Truth in Accounting: “The biggest problem with this financial catfishing is that big decisions will be made based on deceptive information. Spending will be increased because of the false narrative that the state has a surplus of money, when Illinois is hundreds of billions of dollars in debt.”

“While reviewing the governor’s proposed budget, I was disappointed to not see an increase for LGDF,” state Rep. Anthony DeLuca said. “This funding impacts fire and police services, garbage pickup, snow removal, water and other core services that municipalities provide for people. It would be prudent and beneficial for the state to properly prioritize the LGDF in this budget so that municipalities are better equipped to deliver critical basic services that residents depend on each and every day.”

“However, many of the structural fiscal flaws that created years of deficits remain in place. Which means Illinois decision-makers have the rare opportunity to thoughtfully consider reforming the state’s fiscal system, with an eye toward building the capacity needed to sustain investments in core services over the long haul, rather than just dig out of the crisis du jour.”

Jim Dey: “(Professor Kent) Redfield said there are several tax-hike possibilities Democrats could pursue — the progressive tax, expanding the sales tax to services, taxing retirement income above certain levels or an income-tax surtax devoted to paying off the state’s onerous public-pension debts. But he said legislators will probably want to avoid taking any action until after the 2024 election in the hope the public’s surly mood will change.”

The project is the largest capital project in the Department of Natural Resources history. Some of the older beach ridges at Illinois Beach State Park date back 3,000 years.

“Last week, my suicidal 15-year-old grandson ingested and smoked a cocktail of several drugs. His loving parents found him nonresponsive, with a heart rate near 200 beats per minute. The emergency responders and doctors saved his life. Sadly, it was not his first attempt.”

“Exports are absolutely crucial to the agricultural sector, particularly in the Midwest,” University of Illinois agriculture economist Gary Schnitkey told The Center Square. Soybean farmers, for example, export 50% of their crop. One of the failings of U.S. trade policy in the past few years, Schnitkey said, is the failure to remove non-tariff trade barriers with

Jim Dey: “Sheila Weinberg, CEO of Truth in Accounting, attributed part of Illinois’ improved financial picture to ‘billions of dollars in federal tax funds for COVID-19 relief.’ Weinberg noted credit ratings are not an indication of overall state finances, explaining that the upgrade is better news for bondholders than taxpayers. ‘It’s just the rating on the risk of whether the bonds will get paid,’ she said, noting that rating agencies are ‘looking out for the bondholder.'”

“There is being destitute, oppressed, exploited or crushed — and then there is America’s inner-city student population, most of them minorities…. As the authors of the Wirepoints report stressed: Defenders of the current system are sure to invoke COVID as the big reason for the low scores. But a look at the 2019 numbers shows that the reading and math numbers were

I’s time the Illinois Supreme Court steps up and revisits the issue of “repeated ethical lapses associated with gut-and-replace legislation,” which was used to create two controversial state laws that have since drawn national attention: bans on so-called “assault weapons” and cash bail. That was the sentiment of the three-justice panel of the Illinois Fifth District Appellate Court in Mount Vernon

When the Illinois State Board of Education launched the grant program in 2020, one of the main goals was to help school districts better meet the needs of their local teacher pipeline, said spokeswoman Jackie Matthews. ISBE reported Illinois had 2,139 unfilled teaching positions in October 2021, with most of the unfilled positions concentrated in underresourced communities and in bilingual and special education roles.

The Democratic Party of Illinois began by initially looking at 400-some races and then identifying more than 100 what they call “fringe” candidates in 60 different school board districts. All of those districts and most of those candidates will be targeted in what party officials say will be a “robust” campaign. “It’s going to be very much a voter education program,” explained a Democratic Party of Illinois official. The state party will be “shedding light on the fact that there are candidates supported by these national extremist groups that are on their ballot.”

Gov. JB Pritzker on Friday released a blueprint for transforming what the state acknowledges is a confusing patchwork system for families who need greater access to mental health care for their children at a moment of overwhelming need both in Illinois and across the country.

Comment: The words “crime” and “taxes” don’t even appear in this article.

For Belvidere, a city of 25,000 rising up from farm fields about 75 miles northwest of Chicago, the fear is palpable. “Everyone’s on edge,” said Kevin Logan, president of UAW Local 1268, which represents the remaining plant workers about to be laid off. “It’s going to be catastrophic for this community.”

Small business owners like Jim Higgins – who says his time clock system stored fingerprints in an algorithm that made them impossible to reproduce – face tough odds if they’re brought to court. “You just hope somebody doesn’t do it,” he said.

“Local law enforcement agencies know their communities best and know who poses a threat,” ISP Director Brendan F. Kelly said. “Grants to local law enforcement agencies galvanizes our ability to keep firearms out of the hands of individuals who pose a significant threat to themselves or others.”

In the state-level challenges to the gun and magazine ban, all four cases that have been filed have temporary restraining orders issued against the state preventing enforcement of the law, but only for certain plaintiffs. Thursday, the Illinois Supreme Court denied attorney Thomas DeVore’s motion to consolidate his three cases with a case from state Rep. Dan Caulkins, out of Macon County.

In a 15-page legal brief, the AGs are calling on justices to uphold a pair of federal whistleblower lawsuits accusing pharmacy operators of over billing government health insurance programs for prescription drugs.

Over 30 cannabis-related bills have already been filed in the current General Assembly which began in January, addressing areas including licensing, distribution of cannabis tax revenue and the expungement of past offenses. The working group will comb through these measures to more effectively address the industry’s most pertinent issues.

Problem No. 1 is these revenue estimates are likely too high because they ignore the negative effects of tax hikes on the economy. Still, even if the Commercial Club of Chicago Civic Committee’s estimates are accurate, neither plan comes close to generating enough to pay down Illinois’ pension debt.

Rather, they assert it is the state and public at dire risk from the restraining order, because it allows people to still buy the so-called “assault weapons” and potentially use them in further mass shootings or other acts of violence.

“Last Friday, Feb. 17, every member of the House Republican Caucus and every member of the Senate Republican Caucus signed on to a letter to respectfully urge that a joint bicameral hearing of the House and Senates Health and Human Services Committee and Health and Human Services Appropriations Committee, be convened immediately to provide critical oversight into these disturbing Inspector General reports,” state Rep. Paul Jacobs said.

Without their own category on government forms, Arab Americans have long been counted as “white” or “other.” Social service groups, activists, researchers and residents say that makes it nearly impossible to gather critical data and address the community’s needs.

The lawsuit is based on a 2010 complaint from Don Lippert, a diabetic inmate at Stateville Correctional Center who claimed he was denied his twice-daily doses of insulin, that grew into a class action against the state.

“The question, of course, is whether members of the Illinois House and Senate who are notoriously uninterested in adopting real ethics rules will have the initiative to deal with the pension issue in a sensible way. One can always hope, of course, that legislators will be shamed into taking action. But hope that Illinois legislators will do the right thing when it comes to protecting their financial self-interest hasn’t gotten much done in the past.”

“Please remember, I’m an elected Democrat,” Kane County Sheriff Ron Hain said. “I’m pro-no cash bail. If they want to ban any sort of weapon, whatever, we’ll enforce it. But our legislators here in Kane County, especially with the (Democratic) Party next to their names, do not listen to law enforcement. They refuse to communicate with us. They create legislation based on what they read on social media and knee-jerk reactions in the news. I’m tired of having to clean up the pieces and try to figure this out afterward.”

Mental health problems for children were already on the rise when the pandemic hit. And Illinois is, indeed, experiencing a youth mental health care crisis, the report says, with 40% of young people in Illinois who experienced major depressive episodes unable to receive mental health care.

Greg Bishop reviews the findings of a report by Wirepoints looking into the homicide rates and totals for the nation’s most populated cities.

Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker said he’s willing to spend what it takes in the next election to help President Joe Biden keep his job. “It’s very important to me that we elect a Democratic president and that we make sure to keep DeSantis, Trump and the retrograde views that they carry out of the White House,” Pritzker, a longtime Democratic donor, said. “I’ll continue to support Democrats in the best way I can to help them get elected.”

The proposal of HB 1185 would extend the repayment date for downstate public safety pension funds from the end of MFY 2040 to MFY 2050 or later. The schedule is significantly shorter than other statewide, state-administered, and Chicago-based pension systems, despite downstate public safety pension funds having better funding ratios.

“Just weeks ago, we enacted changes to U.S. law to enable more support to the International Criminal Court’s Ukraine investigations… But more not only can be done internationally, it also must be done. The United States is conspicuously absent from a core group of world powers — including Ukraine, the United Kingdom, Finland, Poland and Sweden — dedicated to achieving accountability for aggression through a tribunal.”

Federal prosecutors want University of Illinois at Chicago Professor Emeritus Dick Simpson to explain Chicago’s Ward system, “including the operation of the political machine as it works through the Ward political organizations including the Ward Committeeperson, precinct captains and patronage hiring.”

Gov. J.B. Pritzker and other statehouse Democrats heralded the news as a sign of their budget management. “Our continued fiscal responsibility and smart budgeting will save Illinois taxpayers millions from adjusted interest rates, and my partners in the General Assembly and I look forward to building on that success,” Pritzker said in a statement. “I’ve been saying for a while now that I prefer 7’s to 6’s so I’ve been looking for today’s 7th credit rating upgrade from Standard & Poor’s,” Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza said. “This is a testament to the responsible budgeting we’ve done along with the Governor,

At its meeting yesterday, the board agreed with a hearing examiner that “justifiable grounds” exist “with some basis in fact” to believe that Proft coordinated with Bailey’s campaign in efforts to promote Bailey, then a state senator, and bash his Democratic rival, incumbent Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who was re-elected.

Gov. JB Pritzker’s proposed budget puts $50 million toward the project. if the legislatures in Illinois and Michigan approve the proposed spending, the combined $114 million would cover the 10 percent project costs which the eight Great Lakes states were expected to collectively share. Michigan and Illinois both feature Democratic Party trifecta control of state government.

The governor’s Fiscal Year 2024 budget includes more than $350 million to provide homeless prevention services and expand emergency housing options through Home Illinois, an initiative of the Illinois Department of Human Services. DHS Homelessness Chief Christine Haley stressed that racial equity will be at the forefront of this plan.

“There was above average population growth in tax-friendly states and below average population growth in the least tax-friendly states,” analyst Melody Kasulis said. “That’s a general take away from the study, but that being said, Illinois being at the bottom did have a pretty stark population decline.”

State leaders touted legalization as a chance to repair the damage done to communities of color which were hit hardest by the war on drugs. But according to the state’s report, in 2022, 88 percent of the state’s dispensaries are white majority owned.

As the Bears look for help to make their next move, this time from Chicago’s Soldier Field to suburban Arlington Heights, their original hometown is joining with more than 100 cities and towns in signaling to state lawmakers that broader tax-increment financing reform — viewed by some as a prerequisite for any Bears incentives — should be punted.

“Those things house hundreds of gallons of oil,” Ford County Emergency Management Agency Coordinator Terry Whitebird said. “At this point there’s no definite amount of how much was spilled.” The Ford County Board recently adopted an updated, more-restrictive wind turbine ordinance, only to see the Illinois General Assembly take site restrictions out of the hands of county and

Jim Dey: “Parties to the case are mum. But the dispute dates to 2016, when the Illinois Department of Human Services and Tap In CEO Sally Carter signed a series of grant agreements. After the funds were transferred to Tap In, the agency dropped off the radar screen, as far as state officials were concerned.”

“It’s not just about wind or solar,” said Ogle County Board member Benjamin Youman. “What’s next? What are they going to take away from local control?” The Ogle County Board is looking into if they can challenge the law.

State Rep. Mike Coffey has continued his ownership of Saputo’s early in his appointed term in the 95th House District. His Monroe Street Italian restaurant uses polystyrene, cardboard, and tinfoil for carry-out, and most restaurant owners, he said, are willing to use more eco-friendly options but it often comes down to what the product allows. “As far as mandating things to small businesses, I’m not really in for mandating,” he said.

“It’s opening up three different conversations, a broad message that this is something serious that we need to address…because corruption and the appearance of corruption is very corrosive to the legitimacy of the political process,” said political science professor Kent Redfield.

“It’s devastating news for our community,” Rep. Dan Caulkins said. The pharmaceuticals company will terminate all benefits from employees at the end of the month; It will be unable to pay severance or provide COBRA health insurance coverage to former employees.

The Illinois State Board of Education says the Wirepoints report is misleading, with data cherry-picked from the state’s poorest districts. But State Rep. Dan Caulkins said it’s right there in black and white. “Are we succeeding? Are we educating children in this state? Are our kids – the bright kids – staying here working?”

State Rep. Brad Holbrook said years of increased taxpayer spending on education hasn’t shown results. “We’ve been putting money into these programs for a long time, and there is little evidence to suggest that these programs are accomplishing anything in terms of reading or math proficiencies.”

“In the face of this unprecedented assault by states hostile to abortion rights and their enablers in the courts, we are pledging to work together to strengthen abortion firewalls across America. This fight isn’t over,” the joint statement reads.

In the four separate federal cases against Illinois’ gun ban, a status hearing is set for Friday in the southern district to consider possible consolidation and coordinated response schedules for the state’s reply to motions for injunctive relief. Those cases all challenge the state’s ban, but use different arguments in their filings.

A bill that would allow restaurants, hotels and other public places to designate “all-gender multiple-occupancy” restrooms passed out of a House committee Wednesday, sending it to the full House for consideration. House Bill 1286, sponsored by Rep. Katie Stuart, is similar to one that passed through the House in 2021 but died in the Senate.

Under legislation filed by state Sen. Rob Martwick, a Northwest Side Democrat, tax rates on low-income single filers would be cut to as low as 4%, well under the state’s current 4.95% flat rate and the 4.75% rate the governor proposed. The tax rate wouldn’t even hit the 4.75% mark until a person’s annual income tops $100,000. At the opposite end, rates would max out at 6.95% on annual income above $500,000 for individuals and $1 million for couples

Sen. Cristina Pacione-Zayas claimed the restaurant industry has a long history of racism and gender inequity. The bill would create a “Blue Star Program” for restaurants certifying they do not take a tip credit, have participated in equity training, and have not violated the Illinois wage-and-hour law in the prior three years.

The Illinois Lottery recently announced sales of $1.8 billion and estimated returns to the State of Illinois of $468 million, for the first six months of the 2023 fiscal year. About two-thirds of the adult population of Illinois report they now play the lottery.

“As we work to transition to a cleaner energy economy, we need to make sure that we still have the energy needed to make sure the light switches turn on and that grandma can stay in her home with power in the winter,” state Rep. C.D. Davidsmeyer said. “In the summer, she needs to stay cool in that home and not have to leave because the overwhelming price of energy.”

Sponsors of the legislation said it would ensure patient dollars are directed to dental care by requiring dental insurance carriers to spend at least 80% of premium dollars on patient care rather than administrative costs and salaries.

“Many of the things we have invested in over the last couple of years have been to the benefit of our police departments across Illinois,” Gov. JB Pritzker said. “We are going to continue to do what is right for law enforcement.”

State Sen. Willie Preston argued there were many factors in play when it came to abysmal outcomes for students. “I don’t know that it’s fair to lay this all at the feet of teachers. I think there are other factors,” Preston said. “As a community, we just can’t focus on the dollars being put in the classroom. We have to reengage a working-class, rebuilding working-class communities.”

Janesville residents say it took at least five years to recover after GM’s remaining 1,200 workers and those employed at General Motors suppliers and related companies were laid off. The city was able to move on but not before hundreds of families left for greener pastures, which only exacerbated municipal budget woes and other economic problems.

The state has historic funding for construction projects under the Rebuild Illinois plan and federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, but industry leaders said Tuesday that thousands of engineering jobs will stay unfilled if lawmakers don’t help with workforce development.

In 2022, nearly 50 more children died while under the supervision of DCFS than in 2021. Director Marc Smith has received at least eight contempt of court orders after the agency failed to place youth in proper care in a timely manner. State Rep. Charles Meier said Smith needs to go: “It seems like in Illinois, we never learn from our mistakes.”

The Illinois Supreme Court Court ruled 4 to 3 Friday that a separate claim could be made for every single finger scan. “Seventeen billion dollars for statutory violations,” Phil Melin, executive director of Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse-Illinois, said. “That is going to kill businesses, and the Supreme Court said as much in their decision, I mean literally, White Castle won’t be able to pay that much money.”

The law is the latest passed in Illinois that expands protections for transgender individuals, following protections for gender-affirming care and a measure allowing people previously convicted of felonies to change their name “due to marriage, religious beliefs, status as a victim of trafficking or gender-related identity.”

Included in the budget was the new funding for EV rebates and an additional $10 million for high school vocational training for the electric vehicle workforce. Funding for the previous EV rebate ran out in January 2023.

The budget proposal for DCFS jumped to more than $2 billion – a 65% increase in the department’s annual fund since fiscal year 2019 – primarily for hiring nearly 200 new department workers and roll out a new case management system. There is also funding to expand broadband service and increase Medicaid funding as the federal government scales back its contributions.

“Public institutions of higher education have historically embraced a commitment to freedom of expression in policy,” reads SB0150, recently introduced by state Sen. Thomas Bennett. “In recent years, some public institutions of higher education have abdicated their responsibility to uphold free-speech principles, and these failures make it appropriate for all public institutions of higher education to restate and confirm their commitment in this regard.”

“It just makes our businesses competitive and more equal to our neighbors, which is nice,” said Diane Hahn, an officer for the Illinois Grape Growers & Vintners Alliance.

Wirepoints President Ted Dabrowski told The Center Square that putting more tax dollars into education does nothing. “Governor Pritzker has to stop celebrating what’s happening in education in Illinois and start focusing on the real problem, that’s that kids can’t read at grade level, and they can’t do math at grade level.”

Jim Dey: “Secession, of course, was a cry of frustration, a bombastic way of making the same point…that downstaters resent Pritzker’s decisions to govern on behalf of Chicago’s Gold Coast by kicking sand in the face of residents of more rural, less populated areas of Illinois.”