More generally speaking, most Illinois voters are not happy with the direction the state is going in, as 59 percent said the state is on the “wrong track.” Just 40 percent believe it is headed in the “right direction.” This could spell trouble for Pritzker, per the survey.

“On its face, ( U.S. Judge Sue) Myerscough found, the sign language is a straightforward fact, the goal of which is ‘to inform consumers’ of the tax delay ‘and prevent gas retailers’ from ‘deceiving consumers by increasing gas prices by the non-imposed but previously scheduled’ tax increase. So let the word go forth that if motorists buy 20 gallons of gasoline at $5 a gallon, their costs, theoretically, will be reduced by 2.4 cents per gallon (28 cents). Instead of paying $100 for the fill-up, it’ll only be $99.72.”

“We have had four straight years of $4 billion declines in the unrestricted net position, which is like a loss, even as the state claims it’s a balanced budget,” Loyola University instructor Bill Bergman said.

In 2021, local health departments received approximately $230 million in federal tax funds to perform and improve contact tracing, case investigation, testing efforts, vaccination programs, and community outreach. But a study from the National Bureau of Economic Research gave Illinois a failing grade when combining health outcomes, economic performance throughout the pandemic, and impact on education. Now the program will receive another $10 million in federal tax money from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to continue its work.

In all, there is $17.9 million earmarked for rebates. It may sound like a lot but that only covers 4,475 drivers; The money could run out within months. There are now about 45,000 registered owners of electric vehicles in Illinois. About 3,000 of them were purchased in the last two months.

Illinois Rep. LaShawn Ford, who has for years championed legislation to restore voting rights to convicts currently behind bars, said the time may finally be right to get it passed — when the General Assembly is back in session in November. His team says approximately 30,000 Illinois prison inmates were ineligible to vote in this week’s election.

Sales taxes for qualified clothing and school-related items will be reduced from 6.25% to 1.25% for a 10-day window from August 5 to 14, saving consumers $50 million.

The race for the Second District seat is expected to be intense this summer and fall, as Democrats seek to block Republicans from flipping the majority on the court and potentially cutting into the Democratic stranglehold on Illinois politics and constitutional law.

“Even with the high prices, people are going to still go,” AAA spokesperson Nicholas Jarmusz said. “They will find ways to trim other aspects of their travel budget or their household budget.”

Sherry Cheesewright, who owns Sherry’s Fireworks in Clinton, Indiana, said Illinoisans are a big part of her business – and business has been steady this year despite a slight increase in prices related to 40-year-high inflation. “I bring them in from, my gosh, Charleston, Decatur and Champaign. Last night a guy drove an hour and a half from a town I haven’t even heard of. Once they find me, they tend to come back here.”

AAA data shows skyrocketing gas prices have hiked Illinoisans’ average fill-up from $57 last year to $92 today. Of that, more than $19 is for local, state and federal taxes.

The governor didn’t reissue the COVID-19 executive order limiting county inmate transfers to state prisons, but on June 24, 2022, he did reissue the order limiting DHS from taking inmates deemed unfit for trial. “If the governor is using COVID as the reason to not transfer, well, COVID still exists in our jail too, but the problem is these inmates need help,” Sangamon County Sheriff Jack Campbell said.

That includes some income tax rebates, property tax rebates, a suspension of the state’s 1 percent tax on groceries, and a six-month pause on the scheduled inflationary increase in the state’s motor fuel tax.

Pritzker, who fueled speculation about White House ambitions this month with a speech in the first presidential primary state, New Hampshire, and has raised eyebrows with generous donations to battleground state governors, added that he’s not pushing for a challenger to step forward.

“I’m running a campaign to get Democrats elected and to beat Republicans,” Pritzker said when asked whether helping the primary campaign of a conservative Republican could backfire. “And I want people to know what we believe in and what they believe in. And so, the messages that I’ve talked about on TV are all messages about amplifying the differences between Democrats and Republicans.”

“We are now a protected class our hair is a protected class how bout that,” state Sen. Mattie Hunter said.

Democrats pumped up Mr. Bailey in advertising as a pro-life, pro-gun Trump supporter, knowing it would appeal to GOP primary voters. While many Republicans are ready to move on from Mr. Trump, Democrats find it politically useful to keep him around. It’s hard to take seriously their anguish about the condition of democracy when they gamble on helping Trumpian candidates. They’d better hope the GOP tsunami isn’t so large

IDHS and the agency’s secretary Grace Hou will be fined $100 a day until the inmates that were deemed unfit to stand trial and need mental health services are placed in appropriate facilities.

“And Pritzker is not exactly Barack Obama, charisma-wise, either. But he knows where to find the right chords on the old pipe organ.”

Attorney General Kwame Raoul noted federal law prevents the digitizing of firearms records which makes it cumbersome for investigators to search and utilize those records. However, thanks to a series of legal exceptions, the platform contains more than 100,000 records from approximately 200 Illinois agencies dating back to 2009.

Tammy Batson from the Northern Illinois University Department of Economics is not too optimistic food prices will return to normal. “Do I think a lot of the new prices are here to stay? I do think so. I don’t see a lot of drop in prices coming ahead.”

The timetable for the U.S. Steel Corporation plans remains unclear, but the company says it could take around two years to transform the site into a pig iron production facility.

When asked what would be on his second term agenda, beyond staying the course, the Chicago Democrat listed two items, both dealing with education. Specifically, a college education ought to be “free” for anyone who comes from a family whose earnings are at or below the state median, Pritzker said. The second: further increase funding for child care and related pre-school programs so that anyone earning 300% of the poverty level would qualify, up from the current 225%. That would make families earning “about $50,000 a year” eligible for help.

“The same move to the extreme was evident” on both sides.

While Illinois has elected GOP senators in the recent past, Duckworth defeated the most recent Republican to hold a seat — moderate Sen. Mark Kirk — by more than 10 points in 2016.

Under House Bill 4813, food service providers that participate in any of the USDA’s child nutrition programs are exempt from contract bidding requirements. Gov. JB Pritzker said the legislation encourages school districts to give preference to contracts that promote the health and well-being of students, source local food products, and value the welfare of animals.

The position is up for grabs for the first time in 23 years after longtime Secretary of State Jesse White chose not to seek reelection.

The average price of a gallon of gas June 29 in Illinois was $5.41 – 54 cents higher than the national average of $4.87, but 87 cents higher than neighboring Missouri. Chicago drivers were paying $5.96.

“But what’s good politically for Pritzker is not necessarily good for Chicago or Illinois. At least that’s what Pyrrhus of Epirus meant when he warned of victories that come at too high a cost. Over the years, Griffin has paid over $200 million in state income-tax revenue the state needed. Cumulatively, his well-paid employers have contributed much more. Griffin has also made $1.5 billion in philanthropic donations that paid for, among other things, food programs for schoolchildren and the poor in Chicago, construction of miniature soccer fields across the city, and an 18-mile path along the lakefront that separates runners

Bailey vs. Pritzker; Miller beats Davis; Ramirez, Casten, Sorensen win Dem Congressional races; and an otherwise Legislative bloodbath.

South Dakota was second nationwide for most inbound migration, according to the survey, while Nebraska and Illinois were in the top 10 for moving out. When looking at these states specifically, it’s hard not to notice the starkly different tax situations. Illinois and Nebraska are high tax states while South Dakota does not have an income tax and has an overall low tax burden.

From Bloomberg: “Griffin and his company were behind the $363 million purchase of a 2.5-acre vacant site at 1201 Brickell Bay Drive, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified discussing a private transaction.”

Around 8:30 p.m. Richard Irvin and Jesse Sullivan conceded to Bailey for the Republican nomination.

DeVore has developed a reputation for taking on Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker in court, suing him over the state’s school mask mandate. He also filed suit against school districts that sought to mandate COVID vaccination among teachers, and Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot after her administration mandated COVID vaccines for city employees.

“But while the state’s coffers suffer, (Gov. JB) Pritzker will be doing just fine. He is a scion of a billionaire family, whose members include former secretary of commerce Penny Pritzker, who was an Obama campaign donor. Another Pritzker sibling, meanwhile, exemplifies how the family has used its vast wealth to promote liberal causes: specifically, the cultural normalization of transgenderism. “

Two of the hottest housing markets are downstate where sales and prices were up. The median price for a home increased in May year-over-year by 27.3% in the Kankakee area, and 23.4% in the Carbondale/Marion area.

“It’s no wonder people and corporations are leaving. But the tragedy is that these are public-policy issues that are relatively easy to fix. There is a lot to gain if state leaders listen to those advocating the well-being of all Illinoisans, rather than continuing their political tradition of sacrificing the state’s future to offer short-term gains to powerful special interests.”

Tuesday is Illinois’ primary. The general midterm election is Nov. 8.

Suzanne Deuchler served 18 years as a Republican state representative from Aurora in the General Assembly, after serving four years representing the West Side of Aurora on the Kane County Board. She served on the Education, Appropriations, Banking, Transportation and Environment committees in the Illinois House.

“A Bailey primary win turns the November election into an extension of a national culture war, rather than a verdict on the Pritzker administration’s failure to give more than lip service and budget line items to distract from what’s really wrong in Illinois. Our billionaire governor’s administration lets down the little guy.”

CEO Josh Sharp said the Illinois Fuel and Retail Association could pursue an appeal, but he’s doubtful that the case would make it to an appeals court before the July 1 deadline. He  encouraged all members to follow the law and post the required signage that IFRA distributed last week.

“We’re not equipped to handle what their needs are, their mental health treatment,” said Sangamon County Sheriff Jack Campbell. “We’re not a mental health facility; we’re a detention facility. So it’s imperative that these inmates get transferred so they can get the help they need to recover.”

Leslie Hiner, of the organization EdChoice, said Illinois does have a school choice program funded by donors. “In Illinois you do have a tax credit scholarship program that has been operating for the last couple years, and it’s growing, which is a good thing.”

Colorado voter Tara Kohl, Illinois voter Perry Zhao, Oklahoma voter Mike Hampton on their top issues as their states head into the primary elections

So far, over 70% of the funds contributed to the committee formed to pass Amendment 1 has come from unions. Among the unions donating are government unions such as AFSCME Council 31, the American Federation of Teachers, the Illinois Education Association, the Illinois Federation of Teachers and the Service Employees International Union. These same government unions helped fund the failed progressive tax amendment in 2020.

A national republication of our Wirepoints column.

The $45 million will support 148 programs run by organizations operating on relatively small budgets in communities designated as socioeconomically disadvantaged. Grant amounts varied, with most in the mid-to-low six figures. Cook County, where Chicago is located, received $305,137.

The unemployment rate dropped in 11 metro areas in Illinois in May, stayed the same in Decatur and increased in Kankakee.

Republican leaders think a moderate nominee for governor could beat Gov. J.B. Pritzker. But the party’s base seems to prefer a far-right state senator — and he is getting help from Mr. Pritzker.

“This time — where’s a scorecard when you need one? — it was former state Sen. Thomas Cullerton…But if the defendants are coming fast and furious, the sentences imposed upon wrongdoers remain weak. Those caught selling a couple ounces of cocaine can go away for a long time. Compared to that, being a white-collar criminal and/or a corrupt public official is the safer path to follow.

“We will see 20,000 or potentially 30,000 [abortion seekers] because people do need to exercise those rights,” Pritzker said during his appearance on Meet the Press, adding that Illinois saw 10,000 women from surrounding states, including Texas, come to Illinois last year for abortions.

More than 45,000 people received abortions in Illinois in 2020. Most of those who got abortions in Illinois were residents, with 36,000 patients from counties across the state. Yet, the majority of in-state patients were from a select few counties in the northeastern part of the state near Chicago — Cook, DuPage, Will and Lake — as well as St. Clair County near St. Louis.

More than 60% of the Illinois facilities are in Chicago and its suburbs, the analysis found, but 85 of the state’s 102 counties have at least one potential source of the chemicals.

“There was not enough attention paid to the skills gap,” said Sarah Hartwick, vice president of Education and Workforce Policy for the Illinois Manufacturers’ Association. “Employers are saying there is a significant skills gap in math, reading and even the essential soft skills.”

DCFS’s Keith Polan acknowledged that if the system was working how it is supposed to, the agency would have immediate placements for the young people once a judge ordered their release, regardless of the obstacles. But as things stand now, it is better to leave the kids locked up after their release date than place them somewhere outside of jail that doesn’t meet their needs.

The Illinois Fuel and Retail Association plans to share that message on stickers they are now required to display on every pump now that a federal judge has rejected their attempt to stop them. The group’s lawsuit said the sticker requirement mandated by the Illinois Legislature and Gov. J.B. Pritzker is forced political speech.

CNBC ranks Illinois as the third-least friendly state to businesses. The Tax Foundation found Illinois’ business climate declined 10 spots in the past five years – the only state to drop in the Midwest. And Gov. J.B. Pritzker added $5.2 billion in new taxes on Illinoisans, specifically targeting businesses with $650 million in new taxes amid a pandemic recovery.

The biggest job gains over the past year have been in education and health services, leisure and hospitality, and professional and business services.

Under the state climate act, the state Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity is responsible for implementing dozens of investments in workforce development related to clean energy, including funding 13 training hubs across the state. The department is looking to have some of the hubs running by the end of the year.

The six defendants were charged as part of an investigation by the Illinois Attorney General’s Task force on Unemployment Benefits Insurance Fraud.

M. Todd Henderson and Anup Malani of the University of Chicago Law School: It is easy to be jealous of Griffin’s billions, but the politics of envy make us all worse off. Instead of focusing on income inequality, Pritzker should celebrate wealth creators, regardless of whether they widen the gap between the rich and the poor. Adding a few billionaires will increase income inequality here, but that would be a boon to government revenue. When it comes to policies, Illinois would be better served by ones that attract successful entrepreneurs, not ones that drive them out of the state.

“Karl the con sets his gaze upon the Illinois race for governor. He recently penned an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, labeling leading GOP gubernatorial candidate, State Senator Darren Bailey, as a “fringe” candidate who cannot compete in the general election vs. Governor JB Pritzker. But Bailey’s policy prescriptions and worldview are hardly “fringe” within the Republican Party of the 2020s.”

Illinois House Bill 3118, affectionately known as “The Bee Bill,” amends the Environmental Protection Act to restrict the use of pyrethroid pesticides. The law also requires that the EPA make rules for licensing commercial applicators of such pesticides in residential areas, and says the EPA can make any necessary rules to implement the new law.

Researchers hope broadband expansion will help rural parts of Illinois attract and retain health care workers by increasing access to telemedicine. They also hope to address population decline downstate by making it more feasible to work remotely in some areas, said study co-author Frank Manzo IV, of the Illinois Economic Policy Institute.

“Call it the ‘Game of Thrones’ strategy, minus the dragons, sex and bloodshed. Call it, too, a calculated effort to manipulate the Republican primary outcome and smooth Pritzker’s path to reelection….And we voters have little choice but to stay tuned and vote, knowing the next four years of Illinois government hang in the balance.”

Comment: It’s more than reported here. We will report our own estimate.

Southern Illinois is among the most vulnerable places in the country this summer, according to a forecast published by the North American Electric Reliability Corp., a regulatory authority that monitors risks to the power grid.

Saying the case could result in Democratic votes not being counted, the Democratic Party of Illinois has asked to be allowed to argue against a lawsuit brought against the state of Illinois by a group of Republicans, challenging a state elections law that allows election officials to count mail-in ballots up to 14 days after Election Day, even if the ballots aren’t postmarked.

“While paying state sales tax is the norm for most Americans, most U.S. states don’t charge taxes on groceries as they’re considered a necessity for survival. But some states require their residents to pay taxes on groceries. Illinois is one of the states that impose a tax on groceries.”

The decision makes Citadel the latest investment firm to move its headquarters or to open an office in a more tax-friendly jurisdiction during the pandemic, as quality-of-life factors took on new importance. D1 Capital Partners and Elliott Management are among the firms that now have a presence in Florida, making it a new satellite of New York and Connecticut for the hedge-fund industry.

On Chicago’s gun violence, the president compared the nation’s third largest city to Afghanistan. “Where many people would be shot over a weekend, and many killed in many cases, and it was terrible,” he said. “It’s gotten worse. It’s not even believable. That’s not living in a safe place. That’s not even getting close to living in a safe place. .. It’s like we’re in a third word country.”

The SEC proposal, “Enhancement of and Standardization of Climate-Related Disclosures,” was entered into the Federal Register last April. The federally mandated rule would force companies to disclose greenhouse gas emissions.

In Illinois, nearly 40% of state tax dollars come from personal income taxes. The second highest category of tax income for Illinois is general sales taxes at 24%, followed by selected sales taxes at about 18%, and corporate taxes at 10.3%.

Other states have created actual motor fuel tax holidays, as Biden proposes, rather than delaying the next increase, as Gov. JB Pritzker is doing. Connecticut suspended its 25-cent-a-gallon tax in April.

The sticker that is causing the controversy reads: “As of July 1, 2022, the State of Illinois has suspended the inflation adjustment to the motor fuel tax through December 31, 2022. The price on this pump should reflect the suspension of the tax increase.” The issue will go to federal court on Friday.

“I think Joe may decide to run again in 2024, but I’ll tell you what — JB’s got a future in the Democratic Party and I think it’s higher than the governor of Illinois,” said Bill Shaheen, a DNC member from New Hampshire who attended Pritzker’s speech at the state party convention last weekend.

Recently filed campaign finance reports for federal seats representing northwest Illinois show no near challengers for incumbents.

Based on home affordability, unemployment and other measures in the first quarter of 2022, New Jersey, Illinois, and inland California had the highest concentrations of the most at-risk markets in the first quarter of 2022 – with the biggest clusters in the New York City and Chicago areas. Most southern states were less exposed.

The 1% grocery tax applies to “food for human consumption that is to be consumed off the premises where it is sold,” except for “alcoholic beverages, food consisting of or infused with adult use cannabis, soft drinks, or candy, and food that has been prepared for immediate consumption.”

Doug Brown, an engineer with Springfield’s city-owned City Water Light and Power, continues to warn of the potential of power supply issues. “This isn’t something that’s going away next year. It’s going to be around for maybe five, seven years. We don’t know.” He confirmed that Illinois state government operations won’t be part of the rolling blackouts.

President Biden Wednesday called for the suspension of the federal gas tax for 90 days, something that could save drivers a little more than 18 cents a gallon. He urged states to follow suit. “Already, some states have acted. In Connecticut and New York, the governors have temporarily suspended their gas tax as well. In Illinois and Colorado, governors delayed theirs to give families a bit more breathing room as well.”

In February, IHSA board members voted to change its playoff seeding system for most football classes, approving a 1-to-32 seeding proposal for Class 1A through Class 6A. Now, however, the board has reversed course, voting to return to a system under which teams in classes 1-A through 6-A are split into north and south divisions and then seeded. High gas prices drove the decision.

Former state Sen. Thomas Cullerton, 52, plead guilty in March to accepting nearly $250,000 for a fraudulent job entailing little to no work for Teamsters Local 734. He was also a sponsor of the bill asking voters Nov. 8 to put union power guarantees in the Illinois Constitution.

If the courts ultimately rule in favor of the state, the Illinois Fuel and Retail Association will provide member gas stations with signs to post. The proposed sign reminds motorists that “Illinois politicians have more than doubled the gas tax since 2019.” It also states lawmakers “have decided to delay their tax hike until after the election.”

IDPH staff was on-site to respond to this outbreak hours after the tests came back positive. Hartigan explained last week that the department provided IDVA staff with full protection, testing, and additional care for those testing positive and any close contacts.

See Wirepoints’ rebuttal to this linked here. 

Rolling blackouts, in 15-minute increments, are a last-ditch effort to prevent much wider and longer-lasting outages. CWLP says the chance of those rolling blackouts will likely be greatest in July… and warns the problem is only expected to get worse next summer.

“To hear Pritzker deny it and the press dismiss his denials, the Chicago multibillionaire thinks he’d fit in well behind the desk in the Oval Office. And to read media accounts of Pritzker’s speechifying before audiences of partisan Democrats, he killed.”

Lawmakers at a McLean County Chamber of Commerce briefing Tuesday at Illinois State University said they expect utility rates will be the big thing during the fall veto session of the General Assembly.

The name copi is a nod to how “copious” the fish are, officials said in a statement, copious being a generous description of the way the invasive fish have overrun Midwestern waterways. The trick has been to get people in the U.S. to try Asian carp, fish that are eaten in other parts of the world but not so much stateside.

It’s a disturbing trend reported in other cities, now seen here: Brazen thieves caught on camera crawling under a truck and draining fuel from the gas tank. It’s just another sign of what people will do when gas prices soar above $5.00 a gallon.

The executive director of the Illinois State Rifle Association says the issue is likely to end up in court.

The fireworks ban prompts Illinoisans to take their business to neighboring states, costing Illinois both tax revenue and jobs. Pennsylvania, which has roughly the same population as Illinois, brings in $10 million in tax revenue annually from fireworks sales.

“We will follow the law and post the signs if the courts require us to do so,” Illinois Fuel and Retail Association CEO Josh Sharp said. “But we are going to make sure our customers understand the whole story about our state’s gas tax, not just the part some of the lawmakers in Springfield want to talk about.”

Vice President Kamala Harris will first stop in Chicago to speak at the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials 39th Annual Conference, and then travel to Plainfield to highlight the Biden-Harris Administration’s efforts in addressing the maternal health crisis.

Mary Beck, who works at Penn Aluminum International in Murphysboro, has filed a federal charge against the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 702, saying it had no legal authority to deduct from her paychecks and use the funds for political activity. Additionally, her case states union officials violated federal labor law by refusing to respond to her requests to stop dues deductions.

The Illinois Fuel and Retail Association has gone to court to block the state requirement that gas stations post signs stating that the legislature suspended a gas tax increase through December 31, 2022 – but if the court does not strike down that requirement, it will provide signs to all gas stations stating that lawmakers have doubled the gas tax since 2019… creating the second-highest gas tax in the nation… and relegating the required language to a corner of that sign.

A tracking tool installed on many hospitals’ websites has been collecting patients’ sensitive health information—including details about their medical conditions, prescriptions, and doctor’s appointments—and sending it to Facebook.

Former State Senator Thomas Cullerton pleaded guilty in March to ghost-payrolling with the Teamsters Union; He confessed to improperly getting $248,000 from the union for doing no work.

Greg Hinz: “After losing the headquarters of Boeing and Caterpillar, but gaining a chunk of a Kellogg that’s now breaking into three pieces—it’s obvious that Illinois has hope but can use some help in retaining and attracting corporate HQs and the jobs and prestige and come with it. That help has arrived, in the form of the proceedings of last weekend’s convention of the Texas Republican Party.  Whatever its intent, the party wrote a script of what not to say in an era where attracting top talent is

In May, the industries that saw the most gain were leisure and hospitality, educational and health services, and construction.

Southern Illinois is among the most vulnerable places in the country heading into the summer, according to a forecast published by the North American Electric Reliability Corp., a regulatory authority. The area, along with large parts of Michigan and Wisconsin and other states linked to the regional grid, has been put on notice that it is facing a “high risk of energy emergencies during peak summer conditions.”

In a 4-3 partisan opinion, the Illinois Supreme Court again has refused to directly answer whether the state’s Firearm Owner Identification program passes constitutional muster as a restraint on federal gun ownership rights, leaving a woman who faces criminal charges under the law facing years of legal limbo, strung along by the court’s Democratic majority.

“The variety of motives and strategies behind the SSI movement is exemplified by the politically-influential Pritzker family in Chicago, Illinois, Bilek writes: A motivating and driving force behind the Pritzkers’ family-wide commitment to SSI has been J.B.’s cousin Jennifer (born James) Pritzker—a retired lieutenant colonel in the Illinois Army National Guard and the father of three children.”

Illinois could see over 200,000 more votes in its general elections as a result of expanded vote-by-mail services, but the higher turnout will not necessarily give an advantage to either major party and might yield better-informed voters.

“Our vacation this summer with our family, kids, and grandchildren is gonna be southern Illinois. We’re not going to travel too far,” Mark Staff said.

A new law requires water utilities to notify healthcare and senior living facilities of water supply disruptions that could lead to water quality problems, such as legionella and other pathogens.

“Caterpillar’s departure, even more than Boeing’s, is a tacit statement that Illinois, in this Fortune 500 company’s judgment, is no longer the best place to run a business.”

“It’s certainly true that the state has the obligation at trial to prove its case “beyond a reasonable doubt,” hence the innocent until proven guilty claim. But that proposition applies to trial, not the process of charging a defendant with a crime. “

“We also have to lift up our small businesses.”

The Illinois governor’s rallying cry for defeating Republicans caught the attention of Democrats in the Granite State, where presidential candidates have flocked over the years to introduce themselves.

The network, which connects the University of Chicago with Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont, is a rudimentary version of what scientists hope someday to become the internet of the future. For now, it’s opened up to businesses and researchers to test fundamentals of quantum information sharing. With a $500 million federal investment in recent years and $200 million from the state, Chicago, Urbana-Champaign and Madison form a leading region for quantum information research.

There were frequent standing ovations for Pritzker, who spoke more loudly and forcefully compared to his day-to-day in-state events. He tried to end his 35-minute speech with a rallying cry and a note of optimism.

The governor has signed House Bill 5549, which requires that for every $3 million in the state’s special African American HIV/AIDS Response Fund, the fund must maintain at least one Black-led Center of Excellence HIV Biomedical Resource Hub. Its fund balance was $4.5 million as of June 13, according to the Illinois Comptroller’s database.

It is an unprecedented time for Illinois farmland sales. For young farmers in Illinois, sky high land prices are preventing them from buying.

The eastern milksnake was designated the official snake of Illinois Thursday by Governor JB Pritzker.

Illinois 2020 marriage rate: 3.9 per 1,000 — #4 lowest among all states. Change in marriage rate since 1990: -4.9

Rantoul got $8.05 million, none of which it has allocated yet. The village does have plenty of ideas, though: Administrator Scott Eisenhauer shared a document of more than 15 suggested uses for the federal funds, straight from the mouths of trustees and residents. Among the ideas were investing $1 million in youth social services, giving $100 to every household to reduce utility bills, building a homeless shelter and setting up more small-business grants and loans.

Adam Schuster, of the Illinois Policy Institute: “Granite Staters who know the benefits of the ‘New Hampshire Advantage’ should have their guard up when Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker comes to town this weekend to headline the state Democratic Party convention. Illinois is not known for having a limited, effective, or efficient government or for having low taxes – hallmarks of the ‘New Hampshire Advantage.'”

Ahead of June 28’s primary, Trump’s “Save America” rally is scheduled for June 25 at the Adams County Fairgrounds in Mendon, Illinois.

Senate President Don Harmon told The Center Square they are reviewing the audit findings “and possible next steps.” Auditor General audits are often the subject of hearings held by the Legislative Audit Commission, but no hearing date is scheduled.

“Being able to put hundreds of dollars, even thousands of dollars, back into people’s pockets so that they could better afford those things, very important,” Gov. JB Pritzker said. “That’s why the legislature worked so hard on this budget to get that done.”

The study was done by WalletHub and ranks the 50 states from best to worst in terms of the average length of the work day for males, childcare costs, and the share of men in good or better health.

Local 150 representatives said a lack of building materials had caused work on a I-90 project near the Jane Byrne Interchange scheduled for Friday to be postponed. The strike may also have a ripple effect if other construction-related unions honor picket lines.

Despite continued growth in payrolls as a whole, Illinois is still missing 146,300 jobs relative to pre-pandemic levels, with the missing jobs being spread across nearly every metro area. Bloomington is the only metro area in the state to recover from early 2020 job losses.

Illinois does a particularly poor job of figuring out how much money is needed to pay its public pensions: The past decade has seen the projections miss by 16%, which meant taxpayers needed to give $13.7 billion more than was estimated. If the estimates are off by the same percentage for the coming decade, taxpayers will face another $21.3 billion in unanticipated costs.

The head of the Illinois Department of Human Services has been ordered to appear in Sangamon County court to respond to charges the agency failed to comply with orders to accept two county jail inmates at mental health facilities. Both had been deemed unfit to stand trial April 7, with DHS required to find treatment for the two.

Even with nearly 13,000 new jobs created statewide in May, the state unemployment rate was unchanged from April at 4.6 percent. The biggest job gains last month were in hospitality, educational and health services, and construction.

That shatters the previous record by $70 million. Film projects created 13,800 jobs both behind and in front of the camera.

The dismal stock market performance this year will negatively affect the Illinois pension system. Jonathan Williams, chief economist for the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, says it is a double whammy for Illinois taxpayers.

“The circuit court was directed to enter a modified order dismissing defendant’s information on the alternative nonconstitutional ground, thereby allowing the normal appellate process to proceed,” the majority opinion said. “The circuit court concluded, however, that it would not be in the ‘best interests of justice’ to enter such an order.”

Ann Miller, of the Illinois Policy Institute: “Illinois’ high tax climate sends border families running for the hills and rightfully so. Without real relief by reversing the doubled fuel taxes and automatic increases, families will continue to feel higher costs for everything, even after other inflationary pressures ease.”

Good information on the judicial process generally.

Auditors called the level of fraud “unprecedented,” with “fraudsters using highly sophisticated techniques to take advantage” of the pandemic’s unique conditions. The audit also found that the state agency failed to “maintain accurate and complete” data on people filing claims through the program. The Pritzker administration declined to make the head of the state unemployment agency, Kristin Richards, available Thursday to answer questions about the audit.

Peoria will again consider spending federal tax dollars on a violence assessment after all as the city council weighs whether violent crime is a health problem, a law enforcement issue, or a combination of factors.

Part of Gov. JB Pritzker’s $46.5 billion 2023 budget, which starts July 1, included a six-month delay in this year’s automatic gas tax hike. The delay means drivers face two gas tax hikes in 2023, when the tax is expected to hit 45.2 cents per gallon.

Illinois law now states a person is unable to give consent when intoxicated regardless of who provided the substance, and now includes expanded health care accessibility for sexual assault survivors after Gov. JB Pritzker signed two bills Thursday.

Currently, the Illinois Department of Transportation uses the design-bid-build project delivery method where the department designs a plan in-house, then reviews bids from contractors. Supporters said design-build would expedite the process by allowing a single entity to both design and start construction on the project.

Said Rep. Jim Durkin, “We need accountability. We need this legislation now more than ever to reign in a thoughtless prison review board but to also reign in a governor who prioritizes criminals over police.”

County board members approved a contract Tuesday night to hire two new deputies. Those deputies will be assigned to accompany DCFS workers in homes during visits.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker and the Democratic Governors Association are spending an estimated $32 million labeling Mr. Irvin’s principal primary opponent, state Sen. Darren Bailey, as “too conservative for Illinois.” To deny Mr. Irvin the nomination, Democrats are spending far more depicting Mr. Bailey as a strong conservative than Mr. Bailey is spending on his own campaign.

Greg Hinz: “The first step toward a comeback is to recognize reality and deal with it…. I’d like to be able to report that city and state leaders are in crisis mode and furiously working to deal with the problem. I can’t. Though not everyone is talking about everything, what I’m mostly hearing is a bunch of excuses, explanations and subject-changing. ‘Look at all the other good stuff that’s happening,’ they’re saying. ‘We’ll be OK.'”

The latest Illinois public schools report card data reviewed by Wirepoints President Ted Dabrowski shows many schools get high marks from the state education board and graduation rates are up but most of them can’t read at grade level.

“I’m shocked and disappointed by Caterpillar’s decision to move its HQ from Illinois,” U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth said on Twitter. Duckworth has advocated policies unfriendly to business as a senator. In March, she called for a federal “tax on excessive profits” by oil companies.

Jim Dey: “Not only did Left Coast voters remove a pro-criminal prosecutor from office in a recall election, they sent a message increasingly embraced by citizens across the country, including Illinois. People — Democrats, Republicans, independents and the apolitical — don’t like crimes being committed under their noses, particularly when the responsible law-enforcement officials make their lack of concern clear.”

Decades ago, Chicago politicians curried favor with voters by distributing Thanksgiving turkeys and Christmas hams. Garbage cans with an office-holder’s name on it were also a frequent freebie. But, the avalanche of federal stimulus funds has allowed Gov. J.B. Pritzker, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle and Mayor Lori Lightfoot to up the ante and then some during their re-election campaigns.

Said the president of the Illinois Independent Craft Growers Association, Scott Redman, “It means the state is open for business. Had we been on hold much longer, it would have been catastrophic.”

The report by Axios Chicago reveals that 19% of cities including Chicago, Niles, Naperville and Morton Grove have reported less than 11 months of data to the FBI in 2021. The report also shows that 66% of Illinois departments, including those in Aurora, Peoria, Huntley, and Crystal Lake, reported none at all.

The Fair Food and Retail Delivery Act prohibits third-party delivery companies from posting a menu, registered trademark, or any intellectual property on their website without the restaurant’s consent.

At least 16 residents and six staff at the state-run veterans home in Manteno have tested positive for COVID-19 and one COVID-positive resident who was in hospice died Wednesday morning, according to the Illinois Department of Veterans’ Affairs.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker has failed to deliver on property tax relief during his term – the average family paid $1,913 more during his administration.

The Democrat is slated to speak at the Granite State’s annual party convention on Saturday, fueling speculation that his sights are set on running for president in 2024. His campaign is downplaying the event, saying he’s kicking off his East Coast swing with a trip to D.C. to lobby party officials to bring the 2024 Democratic National Convention to Chicago.

State Sen. Rachelle Aud Crowe has been confirmed by the United States Senate to serve as the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Illinois.

Illinois has only 13.8 behavioral health care professionals for every 10,000 residents. That’s in comparison to the national average of 21.4.

Governor JB Pritzker signed the bill Wednesday morning.

April marked the 11th consecutive month of job gains. The state unemployment rate has been decreasing since December 2021. But Illinois is still missing 146,300 jobs since before the pandemic.

Officials with the Illinois Department of Public Health said the state has renewed an agreement with SHIELD Illinois “that offers every public school outside of Chicago the opportunity to use the University of Illinois System’s innovative, saliva-based COVID-19 testing platform at no cost for the 2022-23 school year.” Testing in Illinois is paid for with federal funds from the CARES Act, American Rescue Plan and Operation Expanded Testing.

The Supreme Court Police Parity Act passed the Senate on a 100-0 vote last month.

“In state capitols and think tank meeting rooms, a rosy picture has often been painted of the ‘just transition,’ in which workers laid off from coal mines or power plants are retrained to install solar panels or tighten building envelopes. In Southern Illinois, this scenario seldom actually plays out…(T)he idea of a just transition looks different in communities that never benefited from fossil fuels in the first place… To them, it doesn’t necessarily mean funneling coal workers directly into clean energy jobs, but rather bolstering an entire region’s economy and providing opportunities for those who never had a chance to

Politicos will be paying attention to Pritzker’s visit, said Chris Mooney, a political science professor at the University of Illinois Chicago. “You go to New Hampshire at this time to say, ‘I’m interested (in being president). That’s an absolute message that is intentionally being sent, I would suggest, by the Pritzker campaign because what they have to do is start feeling out and this is what this is a process of. It’s what happens all the time. It’s the most cliché first step in a presidential campaign.”

Speaking in New Hampshire is a highly unusual move just a week-and-a-half before Illinois’ own primary election. Pritzker himself does not face a primary opponent June 28, but the half-dozen Republicans vying to face him in the fall are having fun with his impending visit to a state important to candidates for president.

While it would be about $17 million higher than the refund ComEd proposed in December, a utility watchdog estimated a typical residential customer would save “less than $5″ in the form of a credit on bills.

“Caterpillar’s decision to leave Illinois after calling it home for many decades is a devastating loss to Illinois’ business community,” House Republican Leader Jim Durkin said. “The reasons for this decision could not have been more clear – Illinois’ business climate no longer works for this company.”

It’s the second major employer moving out of the state in a month. Illinois recently ranked 48th in the nation in a survey of CEO’s and business owners conducted by Chief Executive Magazine ranking the best states in which to do business.

It’s not quite time for rolling blackouts, but an alert issued Tuesday by the Midcontinent Independent System Operators, which serves much of Illinois, could be the first step in preparing for such actions. “The reason for the Event is because of Forced Generation Outages, Above Normal Temps, High Congestion,” the alert notification said Tuesday.

The study of economic inequality found Black Illinoisans experienced unemployment, homelessness and exclusion from the labor force at the nation’s most disproportionate rates compared to its white residents. Illinois was worst among states, but the District of Columbia’s Black residents faced greater inequality.

As public safety reform is set to take hold, complaints continue about Gov. JB Pritzker’s choice to commute sentences of violent criminals.

As for the potential of brownouts or blackouts, Justice said they are currently unlikely. “I’m not saying it won’t happen, I’m not saying it can’t happen but at this point, we’re not forecasting any of that,” Justice said. While conditions are tight, Justice said the reliability of the power grid is currently not at risk.

A national republication of our Wirepoints column.

“The wealthy, powerful, and sometimes very weird Pritzker cousins have set their sights on a new God-like goal: using gender ideology to remake human biology.”

The study, by ATTOM, said the average effective tax rate on a single-family home was 0.9% nationwide in 2021. Rockford metro residents pay an effective property tax of 2.16%, second only to the Rochester, New York metro (2.22%).

Jim Dey: “…a study by Wirepoints analysts Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner…found thousands of young people graduate each year from Illinois high schools unequipped for either higher education or a good job…What they say is not a problem is as interesting as what they say is. ‘Illinois education doesn’t need more money,’ Dabrowski and Klingner contend.”

“During the COVID-19 pandemic, Democrats created a culture of idleness and dependency, as evidenced by the 11.4 million jobs open in this country, 11 million work ready adults that could fill those jobs, and billions of dollars in increased spending,” said Illinois Rep. Rodney Davis. “If families have any chance at keeping up with skyrocketing inflation, which is raging above 8 percent, we have to incentivize work – and that starts with requiring able-bodied SNAP and Medicaid recipients to join, or rejoin, the workforce.”

“We want to make sure that our spaces are accessible to all Illinoisans—including those with latex allergies,” said Governor JB Pritzker.

Researchers compared all 50 states across 26 factors that are indicative of a good time, including number of attractions, restaurants per capita, access to national parks, and even ideal weather.

Sources close to the governor confirm he will be in New Hampshire this Saturday to speak at the annual convention of that state’s Democratic party in Manchester. New Hampshire is scheduled to hold the first primary of the 2024 presidential season; along with the Iowa caucuses, it kicks off the official part if the presidential race every four years. Visits there by politicians invariably are seen as an effort to draw attention to potential candidates.

Sangamon County State’s Attorney Dan Wright wants the Illinois Department of Human Services (DHS) held in contempt of court, saying DHS has repeatedly failed to set transport dates for inmates who were deemed unfit to stand trial.

“It has been a long time since Congress acted on gun safety so I am glad to see there was some success,” Gov. JB Pritzker said. “It is not enough, we do more here in Illinois than what is being promised in that package, but progress is progress.”

The only recall Illinois has is a measure to recall a governor, implemented after former Gov. Rod Blagojevich was arrested in 2008, but critics say it’s a high threshold.

The latest Illinois public schools report card data reviewed by Wirepoints President Ted Dabrowski shows many schools get high marks from the state education board and graduation rates are up, despite evidence that many schools are failing students. “Many of them, most of them can’t read at grade level, so we’ve got a real disconnect, it’s a real indictment on the public school system of Illinois.”

Starting July 1, the state will invest more than $175 million in additional funding for child care and early childhood education.

Gov. JB Pritzker has signed 401 bills sent to him this calendar year, leaving just 10 of those passed by lawmakers this year awaiting his action as of Monday.

“It’s not a long-term measure, but I think it’ll have a decent impact this summer and fall and winter,” Champaign Center Partnership Executive Director Xander Hazel said.

Passed as House bill 5496, the law spends 642 pages amending several statutes to uniformly replace the word “accident” with the word “crash” in relation to automobiles, motor vehicles and traffic accidents. A second word change, passed into law as Senate Bill 3865, ends the use of the word alien to describe non-citizens throughout Illinois law.

Matt Paprocki, of the Illinois Policy institute: “In the past four years, Illinois has passed 24 tax and fee hikes worth about $5 billion to taxpayers. Of those taxes and fees, about $650 million has been targeted specifically at businesses…Illinois politicians have told us for decades they are going to increase jobs and support businesses, yet their actions tell another story.”

Officials already lure corporations by touting their strong support for voting rights, racial justice and protections for LGBTQ individuals, but losing the constitutional right to abortion should further strengthen their hand with businesses from red states likely to outlaw the procedure.

There is a new study by psychology researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and University of Louisville that maintains that those people who maintain a “color-blind” racial philosophy are actually fostering racism. The question is whether the study in the Journal of Counseling Psychology will be used to support universities requiring affirmative anti-racism statements and other direct responses from faculty and students.

“He was an excellent attorney general,” Gov. Jim Edgar said Sunday. “He didn’t play politics at all with anything in the attorney general’s office, sometimes to his detriment. He just was a very ethical, decent person.”

”This select committee I voted against creating because I knew it would turn into a partisan circus if Speaker Pelosi did what she did,” Davis said. ”She didn’t seat us, didn’t seat two members of the committee, which is unprecedented. And that is something that has never happened in the history of the House,.”

Her attorney said graduate student Maggie Dejong “never violated any university policy…Yet the university issued no-contact orders against her, prohibiting her from fully participating in classes, including discussions about race relations and the police, simply because they deemed her or her beliefs as unwelcome.”

Bill Bergman, instructor of finance at the University of Loyola Chicago, said the system is in a worse position now than at the beginning of the year. “The state’s investments have performed very poorly over the last six to eight months. As a result, the pension plan is in much worse condition than it was eight months ago.”

In Illinois, foreign investors control 2.6% of agricultural land. The Illinois Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act requires a foreign person or corporation that buys agricultural land in Illinois to report the purchase to the Director of Agriculture within 90 days or pay a stiff fine.

Illinois residents spend on average $2,029 each month across the top 10 household bills, 1.3% above the national average of $2,003.

Wirepoints President Ted Dabrowski said now, nearly 27 months after the start of the pandemic, the lack of a dollar figure of fraud is unacceptable.

When you add up all the price increases due to inflation, Illinoisans are paying $4,386 more for the same goods and services this year compared with last year.

Jim Dey: “Policy analysts at Wirepoints recently took an in-depth look at K-12 public-school report-card data, and concerned parents will not be impressed. After discovering across-the-board failure of achievement in reading and math, they charged school officials with ‘absolute dereliction of duty.'”

“And I think we need to suspend the filibuster in order to have this vote on some real sensible gun control legislation,” Duckworth said.

Likely Republican voters are giving Gov. Pritzker’s reelection campaign exactly what it wants, which is so unlike them.

“The issues driving voters this year are inflation, crime, corruption, taxes, and schools. These are all Republican issues. A majority of Illinois voters are ready to vote Republican on these issues this year, if we offer a candidate who can stand out in the Republican crowd.”

“If they live in a big city like Chicago, New York and Los Angeles, they worry about becoming a crime statistic, floating away in that urban river of violence. If they live in rural areas, they’re forced to balance the need for paying for gas and a long drive to work with the need for food. They know something has gone terribly wrong with their country. But there is no other place for them to go.”

The announcement comes a day after U.S. Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer declined to issue a temporary restraining order against the new licenses in a lawsuit by two plaintiffs claiming the state’s residency requirements violate federal law.

Gov. JB Pritzker said there may be some ambiguity in the law to clear up. “I know they’ll get through this, look at all of what’s necessary,” Pritzker said. “But I want to be clear, she’s somebody that is always trying to do the right thing.”

Amendment 1 would enshrine permanent power for public unions in the state constitution which could mean higher taxes, higher costs, and potentially costly litigation for business owners.

U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin added that the need for such an investigation is important because it offers a chance to learn more about what happened. “These are all legitimate questions, not just for criminal prosecution, but for history.”

A national republication of our Wirepoints column.

The bill also seeks to expand behavioral health training, incentives the hiring of individuals in recovery from substance use disorder or mental illness, and makes it easier for advanced practice registered nurses to treat patients.

While the $750 million may cover only about a week of state spending, considering the overall $46 billion budget for the upcoming fiscal year, it still marks a near-tripling of its previous high-water mark. Per the spending plan signed by Gov. JB Pritzker for the upcoming fiscal year, it’ll receive another $280 million after July 1, bringing its balance to over $1 billion.

Mendoza says ultimately, she would like to see the rainy-day fund be 7.5% of the state’s current budget. That would be about $3.25 billion.

If the numbers hold, it would represent a brutal repudiation by Illinois’ Republican voters of Irvin, his array of mainstream party endorsements and, most pointedly, his $50 million benefactor, Chicago hedge fund tycoon Ken Griffin.

All Illinois residents, regardless of income, are eligible. The law does, however, state that the EPA should “prioritize the review of qualified applications from low-income purchasers and award rebates to qualified purchasers accordingly.”

This meeting comes as Illinois continues to lose out on battery plants to neighboring states. General Motors is building a $2.3 billion battery plant in Ohio, while Ford is partnering with South Korean company SK Innovation to build three battery mega-factories in Kentucky and Tennessee. And last month, Samsung and Dutch automobile company Stellantis announced that they’re building a $2.5 billion plant an hour east of Illinois’ border in central Indiana. Samsung had previously considered a site in Normal.

The number of counties at the “high” level marks an increase from last week’s 19 as some Chicago-area counties that had dropped down to medium last week returned to the heightened level.

Chuck Casto, researcher for the small business referral network Alignable, said Illinois businesses are concerned they may have to close their doors if prices continue to rise. “In Illinois, we’re looking at 49% of the people we polled said they were worried they might have to shut down because of inflation and everything that goes into that like elevated gas prices and elevated rent.”

“They wanted to shut down the coal plants. Coal plants got shut down,” state Rep. Tim Butler said. “Now your rates are going up because we don’t have enough energy in the market. And this is exactly what we told people was going to happen, and it’s coming to fruition.”

Republicans are calling for a special session to deal with rising gas prices.

Dr. Ngozi Ezike, in April, accepted an offer to lead Sinai Health System — one of the state’s top medical nonprofits. The Illinois Ethics Act requires department heads like Ezike to wait a year before accepting positions with companies that hold contracts overseen by their departments, or with companies their departments license or regulate. And while in office they cannot engage in job negotiations with companies that lobby their agencies.

According to the charges, former House Speaker Michael Madigan quietly greenlighted efforts to kill his own daughter’s legislation as he pressed ComEd to give jobs to two political allies, including a coveted position on the utility’s board of directors.

Rep. Rodney Davis has written a letter to Jan. 6 panel chairman Bennie Thompson, telling him to preserve all of the committee’s records, including its communications. “Given the on-going questions concerning the Select Committee’s compliance with federal law and House Rules, it is vital that the Select Committee preserve these records so that effective oversight may be undertaken,” Davis wrote, attacking the committee’s legitimacy.

The amended act heavily focuses on the grief parents feel during pregnancy loss and failed adoptions.

Illinois residents spend $2,029 each month across the top 10 household bills, 1.3% above the national average of $2,003. The report reveals 36% of household income is required to cover the bills.

“Illinois citizens need to understand these truths before they go to the polls and to be knowledgeable participants in the state’s tax and spending policies.”

The report singled out the structural pension issues in Illinois. “In some of the worst cases, states ignore the [actuarially determined contribution] and instead use state statute to contribute less than the ADC each year. Such is the case with Illinois. … Illinois uses state statute to contribute less than its ADC payment, leading to the massive growth of unfunded liabilities. This practice did not change in FY 2019 or FY 2020.”

Wirepoints President Ted Dabrowski said now nearly 27 months after the start of the pandemic, the lack of a dollar figure of fraud is unacceptable. “The fact we’re not being transparent about having to borrow billions and then having to pay it back with taxpayer money and we don’t know anything about it is horrible governance.”

As Erik M. Fink wrote in one scholarly article, “The notion of unions for incarcerated workers may seem far-fetched. Yet the idea has a long history.”

An amendment to the Recyclable Metals Purchase Registration Law effective May 27 makes sales of catalytic converters harder by requiring Illinois purchasers of them to keep records of transactions to learn a seller’s identity and report the sales to the Internal Revenue Service.

The DCFS investigation and seven-day suspension related to investigator Patricia Shannon’s performance leading up to her 8-year-old client’s death did not stop her from receiving a promotion to public service administrator; Her 2020 salary of $100,100 increased to $122,200. The promotion, according to DCFS spokesman William McCaffery, was based on Shannon’s seniority rather than merit. Workers are allowed to bid for open positions based on union rules, he added.

Solutions offered by the Illinois Manufacturers Association include state-funded financial incentives to support the stability of the state’s manufacturing workforce and changes to the state’s public education system to better meet the needs of an ever-changing workforce.

The states with the most unfunded liabilities are California ($1.53 trillion), Illinois ($533.72 billion), Texas ($529.70 billion), New York ($508.70 billion) and Ohio ($429.53 billion). These five states alone account for more than $3.5 trillion in unfunded liabilities, or about 43% of all unfunded liabilities in the U.S.

The study, conducted by Echelon, found a supermajority of Illinois Democrats, Republicans and independents supported changing the state constitution to address Illinois’ worst-in-the-nation pension crisis. 66% of Independent voters support the constitutional amendment along with 60% of Republicans and Democrats each.

A national republication of our Wirepoints column.

“Remember, we’re providing hundreds of dollars of relief directly to families that they can use for precisely this purpose, they can use it for anything they want, groceries or something else,” Gov. JB Pritzker said. “And they’re able to use that in addition to the cessation of the increase in gas tax in order to pay for gasoline.”

Pritzker claims his fiscal policy has done more than enough to address the state’s pension crisis.  “That’s why we are using this year’s budget surplus to pay down pension debt beyond the required amount, we have expanded the pension discounted buyout program, and we are achieving long-term investment returns in excess of the long-term targets,” he said.

Gov. JB Pritzker says this pandemic resembles a massive flood for Illinois because much like a flood, it has no set time duration. The Democrat noted he has used executive orders and disaster declarations to keep people alive. “We still have a pandemic. There is still a federal disaster that has been declared. So we’re going to keep providing the services that people need.”

“His political style seems quaint and odd at a time where members of Congress are much more apt to run hundreds of thousands of dollars in malicious advertising than, as (former U.S. Rep. and state Rep.) Johnson frequently did, hold town halls engage in debates or stop by a coffee shop. Rep. Johnson’s level of constituent service, civility to his colleagues and Democratic voters and refusal to sling mud in political campaigns was exemplary and is sorely missed in politics and government today.”

U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth said oil companies have stopped drilling in an effort to keep prices high. She said oil companies are using the war in Ukraine as an excuse to drive up prices.

Senate Bill 72 was deemed unconstitutional by the Cook County judge because the law created different classes of plaintiffs and defendants by creating larger payouts in personal injury and wrongful death lawsuits compared to other types of cases. The measure was passed during the last day of the 2021 legislative session by lawmakers and quickly signed into law by Gov. J.B. Pritzker.

Nationally, homes appreciated more than 25% from the fourth quarter of 2019 through the fourth quarter of 2021, according to recent Federal Housing Finance Authority data. However, Illinois homeowners missed a large chunk of the price growth seen in other states. Homes here appreciated by less than 16%, the third worst in the nation.

“We looked at each state through about 30 different metrics, including economic growth, and economic strengths and that ranges from GDP growth to startup activity, things that show that your economy is moving along, ” Analyst Jill Gonzalez said. “Illinois needs improvement.”

“It is important to be clear that Ameren Illinois does not generate energy and does not profit from electric supply charges. Electricity is procured by an Illinois state agency and the costs are passed directly to customers, dollar-for-dollar. Customers pay Ameren Illinois a delivery charge for maintaining the electric grid and distributing reliable power to homes and businesses. Delivery and supply are separate charges on the monthly bill.”

Alliance Defending Freedom filed a lawsuit against Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville (SIUE) after three no-contact orders allegedly chilled a student’s First Amendment rights. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of SIUE student Maggie DeJong, who received the orders after allegedly offending a student with Christian rhetoric.

In both instances, the horrible death tolls at LaSalle and Quincy were shocking, and families suffered. Both tragedies unfolded in state-run facilities for veterans, with poor decision-making by state officials in charge of the homes. Audits bore that out, and litigation arose in both cases.

Under HB 4201, each institution will be tasked to assign a benefits navigator to guide students to seek and apply for any federal, state, or local program that provides assistance or benefits for which they are eligible. Senate Bill 3991 amends the Illinois Higher Education Savings Program, also known as the Children’s Savings Program, which was established to start each baby born or adopted in Illinois with a $50 college savings deposit in the Treasurer’s 529 fund.

In Springfield, Budget Director Bill McCarty said they tried to budget ahead, expecting gas prices to increase. “Now I’ll be honest with you, none of us saw gas prices going up to the degree that they’ve gone up and it is a bit alarming to us,” McCarty said.

Fiscal watchdog Truth in Accounting reports every Chicagoan is on the hook for $135,700 when combining city and state debt. The cost of union benefits is driving that burden, with 69% of the city’s nearly $98 billion debt total owed to pensions and another 6.7% owed to other post-employment benefits like retiree health insurance.

Illinois’ Biometric Privacy Act prohibits private sector companies and institutions from collecting biometric data from unsuspecting citizens in the state or online, no matter where the business is based. Data cannot be sold, transferred or traded. Unlike any other state, citizens can sue for alleged violations, which has sparked hundreds of David-and-Goliath legal battles against some of the world’s most powerful companies.

It’s a program that the federal government started during the pandemic as a way to help hospitals free up space, but Illinois hospital leaders hope to see it continue long term as a way to make patients more comfortable, keep hospital beds open for others and save money.

Options on the table include a fee based on vehicle miles traveled, tolling, and congestion pricing, officials said. Another idea might be to increase vehicle registration fees EV owners pay, which are $251 annually compared to $151 for conventional cars.

Patrick De Haan from GasBuddy said motorists may find relief just over the state border. “Wisconsin, that is going to be where your fill-up is, and if you are heading down to St. Louis by the way, massive difference of about 50 cents a gallon from the Illinois side which is higher.”

The idea for the bill is to make these court proceedings as simple and painless as possible for the victims of these crimes, state Sen. Steve Stadelman said. The measure also protects the victims by keeping them away from their abuser.

More than half of businesses polled said they fear they won’t be able to stay open over six months. Illinois was in line with the national average, with 49% of small business owners concerned over inflation-driven shutdowns.

House Bill 4481 increases the number of cameras along expressways and state highways in nearly two dozen Illinois counties.

“The whole rough-and-tumble of classless politics was anathema to his character,” said his former chief of staff and protégé Mark Kirk, who succeeded John Porter in the U.S. House before being elected U.S. Senator in 2010. “He was representing the best-educated district in the country. The district wanted an independent leader, and he was that independent leader.”

“The thing about the Illinois Supreme Court is that it’s not an activist, ideologically driven court, historically,” said Chris Mooney, W. Russell Arrington Professor of State Politics at University of Illinois Chicago. “The state Supreme Court has done its best over the years to be very conservative, with a small c. That means it’s not about changing policy. It’s not about, you know, imposing some ideological test on things. It’s trying to find the easiest way, the simplest way, to resolve a case.”

Champaign resident Victoria Williams delivers food about 8 hours each day and spends $60 dollar each shift on gas. “It used to be quick money, but now it’s like it doesn’t even balance out at this point. By the time I fill up my tank, I don’t have money for anything else”

“The Governor regularly holds public events with press availability and welcomes press questions about the COVID-19 pandemic,” Alex Gough, a spokesman from the governor’s office, said in a statement. “Additionally, the Governor’s social media channels regularly provide information and real time updates as the health metrics evolve.”

The commission’s efforts come as Attorney General Kwame Raoul filed the state’s first civil hate crime lawsuit against a mother and son for harassing a Black neighbor by hanging a painted Black dummy resembling the plaintiff from a noose on a tree facing his house

Jim Dey: “The best thing going for the Republicans is the Democrats and vice versa. Each has the capacity to make the other look like an acceptable alternative to frustrated voters.”

Automotive Inc.’s factory in Normal, Ill., life is anything but. Shares have been hammered in recent months after setbacks on the factory floor, in one of the auto industry’s toughest operating environments in memory. Factories around the world routinely churn out models around the clock. About eight months after production on Rivian’s electric trucks started, executives recently marked a milestone in uninterrupted work days: The company’s plant ran at

Illinois primary voters are finding themselves in new congressional districts with early voting underway for the June 28 primary. Some districts have incumbents from the same party trying to keep their position.

“Wirepoints – an Illinois-based economic research company – analyzed migration data released by the IRS for 2020. The Internal Revenue Service information divulged that not only was there a mass migration from red states to blue states, but the re-settlers took with them tremendous wealth from Democrat-controlled states to Republican ones.”

The biggest losers: New York (-$19.5 billion), California (-$17.8 billion), Illinois (-$8.5 billion), Massachusetts (-$2.6 billion), New Jersey (-$2.3 billion), Maryland (-$1.9 billion), Ohio (-$1.4 billion), Minnesota (-$1.2 billion), Pennsylvania (-$1.2 billion) and Virginia (-$1.1 billion). New York, Illinois, Alaska, California and North Dakota lost the most as a share of 2019 income.

The subsidy for the nuclear plants wound up being an investment in price stability, a spokesman said. Because the rising energy prices made Illinois’ nuclear plants more profitable, the power they provide turned into a hedge against high electricity prices, rather than the bailout that lawmakers had envisioned last fall.

It’s the first time all such evidence is being processed within 180 days as required by a 2010 law, according to the governor’s office.

Among other actions, House Bill 260 allows for the use of expressway cameras along Jean-Baptiste Pointe DuSable Lake Shore Drive. This gives police the ability to use images from expressway cameras to investigate vehicular hijacking and other criminal activities, detect highway conditions and facilitate highway safety. This legislation is effective immediately.

Bill 4589 would raise awareness of health issues particular to men that are not currently or adequately addressed by IPDH, including prostate cancer, testicular cancer, smoking cessation, heart disease, and mental health.

The number of counties at the “high” level marks an increase from last week’s 15, but some Chicago-area counties that were under a high alert level last week have since dropped down to medium.

Republican State Rep. Joe Sosnowski says the statistics from Wirepoints are startling. The research points to fewer than 20% of eighth-graders in Rockford public schools reading at or above grade level. Only 60% of freshmen at RPS are on track to graduate.

Chad Oxendive, who works in a tree removal business, spends about $280 filling up his truck along with containers with gas to use for equipment. “You’re a working guy. You’re trying to get work done and you’re trying to pay your help and they’re trying to get to work too. It’s a kick in the pants everywhere.”

Senate Bill 2535 requires pharmacists and other professionals prescribing opioids to inform patients of the possible addiction to drugs. Under this legislation, patients also have an option to receive an opioid antagonist like naloxone and naltrexone if they choose. Another plan will block insurers and Medicaid from charging co-pays for naloxone.

“People looking to correct their criminal record should not be stopped from meaningfully participating in society because of a positive drug test for cannabis,” said State Sen. Jacqueline Collins.

The court’s decision to block the petition was based on the process the lawmakers took in adding the amendment to the November ballot. The judge deemed that because lawmakers got the amendment on the ballot legally, they cannot petition to have it removed.

New York removed the state’s motor fuel and sales tax on gasoline this week, cutting the cost for drivers by about 16 cents a gallon. A number of New York counties also moved to cap their local sales tax on gasoline. The suspension will bring an estimated $600 million in savings to New Yorkers this year, New York state Sen. John Mannion said on Twitter.

While former state Rep. Luis Arroyo was ultimately stripped of his pension by law after being found guilty, Illinoisans were still on the hook to pay the corrupt public official $53,694 each year until his sentencing for his personal use. These funds were never recouped by state taxpayers.

“Wirepoints, an Illinois-based research organization, took a look at the latest migration data released by the IRS and drew some conclusions that should leave Democrat-run states in a cold sweat, wondering how they’ll ever be able to maintain their profligacy.”

Jim Dey: “A growing population for the winner means an increasing tax base, economic growth and investments. For the biggest losers, it means more difficulties in paying down debts, high taxes and few investments for the future,” write Wirepoints financial analysts Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner.

Illinois lies somewhere in the middle of the pack in terms of school safety requirements. It is one of 43 states that require schools to have safety plans, according to the Education Commission of the States. But unlike a majority of those states, Illinois does not require law enforcement agencies to be involved in the plans’ creation. It also does not require law enforcement officials to participate in regular school safety audits as some states do.

While the 1,149 layoffs announced in May are less than half of the 2,480 layoffs reported in May of 2021, and only about 15% of the more than 7,500 layoffs announced in May of 2020, the most recent monthly mass layoffs still outpace pre-pandemic levels in May of 2018 and 2019.

“If these reports prove accurate, they describe conduct that would almost certainly contravene numerous [U.S. Bureau of Prisons] policies, as well as infringing the civil rights of individuals in BOP custody and possibly violating federal criminal statutes,” the lawmakers wrote in their letter to Horowitz.

Sarah Hartwick, of the Illinois Manufacturers’ Association Education Foundation, said that although there has been a recent uptick in interest in career technical education courses, some school districts have eliminated CTE courses.

“We do know that wage growth is slower in Illinois than in other states,” said Bryce Hill, senior research analyst for the Illinois Policy Institute. “It is very likely that inflation is taking a larger chunk out of Illinoisans’ income than it is in other states.”

The passage of Amendment 1 would guarantee higher taxes and state debt in Illinois. That’s because under Amendment 1 there is no limit on what government unions can demand, no limit on what state and local politicians can give away through negotiations, and no requirement that government units be able to pay for new costs.

In Illinois, jobs are becoming increasingly polarized with a “hollowing out” of middle-wage jobs around the state. This has largely been driven by shifts away from manufacturing, according to the report. This problem will likely be compounded in the coming years, with projections from the Bureau of Labor Statistics suggesting that middle-wage jobs such as administrative and production jobs continuing to decrease as low-wage jobs and high-wage jobs increase.

The lawsuit, which mirrors one recently settled with Facebook that resulted in many residents receiving checks last month, claimed the company violated the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act.

The lawsuit says two residents of Carroll County in northwest Illinois lynched an effigy of their neighbor, who is Black, to intimidate him. Cheryl Hampton and her adult son, Chad Hampton, both white, also allegedly displayed a Confederate flag and a racial slur in a window facing their neighbor Gregory Johnson’s home.

Jm Dey: “The lawyer, Ed Gillespie, made his point tongue in cheek, characterizing efforts to attack corruption as akin to ‘draining Lake Michigan with a spoon.’ While his line drew wide acknowledgment from a corruption-weary Illinois, the judge to whom Gillespie made that argument was not amused. ‘What am I supposed to do with that?’ U.S. Judge Steven Seeger asked at last week’s sentencing hearing for Gillespie’s client, former state Rep. Luis Arroyo…’Maybe judges need a bigger spoon.'”

Since 2021, IDOA has issued 88 craft grow licenses, 54 infuser licenses, 189 transporter licenses, and approved 10 community colleges to participate in Community College Cannabis Vocational Training Pilot Program, in addition to the 21 existing Early Approval Adult Use Cultivation Centers, previously approved under the Compassionate Use of Medical Cannabis Program.

Pritzker was asked if he will pursue legislative changes after the findings were released last month. “It requires not legislation but different staffing and leadership and we have done that,” Pritzker said Tuesday. “We not only did our own report but now there is also the auditor general report and we pointed out transparently what the challenges were at that home.”

For the “Middle of Everything” campaign, the award-winning actor traipses around the Prairie State wearing a jaunty blue beret and a gleeful expression. Playing the role of official tour guide, the Illinois native comes face-to-hologram-face with Honest Abe at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, gets her kicks at the Illinois Route 66 Hall of Fame & Museum and waddles with penguins at the Shedd Aquarium.

A $400 million investment in broadband internet infrastructure approved by Illinois lawmakers in 2019 could pay for itself by added tax revenues alone within four years of completion of construction, according to a new study.

“While Illinoisans mark Memorial Day, the administration of Gov. J.B. Pritzker has failed to fully explain how 36 state veterans died from COVID-19 in 2020. If the Democratic governor has a weakness for reelection, it is in the coronavirus massacre at the LaSalle Veterans Home. That is unless one counts the failure of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services to ensure adequate care for those the agency is supposed to protect.”

The new law also requires any court in a county with a population above 250,000 to offer the option of a remote hearing for that order.

Statewide, the unemployment rate was 4.4 percent, down from 4.7 percent in March and 6.4 percent last year.

Under Senate Bill 3019, a child sex offender would not be able to work at a carnival, amusement enterprise or county or state fair. The new law takes effect January 1, 2023.

Duckworth took with her three members of the Pritzker administration. A Duckworth spokesperson said, “Illinois is uniquely positioned for companies looking to expand manufacturing in the U.S., and the Senator hopes this trip will develop closer economic ties and partnerships throughout the region.”

Brad Weisenstein, of the Illinois Policy Institute: ” Of course, you’d expect him to grab onto the ‘Illinois is growing’ theme, because it lets him ignore the public policy issues that he’s made worse, including $2,165 in new taxes per family that are driving those families out.”

Brad Tietz, vice president of government relations with the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce, said not everyone was involved in critical conversations, if they were held at all. Also troubling was that two of the task force managers in charge of planning meetings and developing subject matter were contract lobbyists, Tietz said.

Under the law, nursing homes can qualify for higher payment rates as they hire additional staff to reach certain target levels. The law also establishes new reimbursement rates for services provided by certified nursing assistants, providing them with wage increases based on their years of experience in the profession, rather than their tenure at the specific facility where they work.

On an annual basis, the average Illinois worker will shell out $1,021 more for gasoline this year, $844 more for housing, $454 more for groceries, and $264 more for utilities. By the time you add up all the different ways inflation nickels and dimes you, the total cost adds up to more than $4,233.

Republicans spent $19.7 million on ads over the month, with another $10.5 million coming from Democrats.

Under House Bill 5193, safe gun storage will be added to existing safety education instruction taught in schools in Illinois. Automobile safety, CPR training, safety in the home, and safety while carrying out vocational training or work are all examples of what is already included in statewide safety education curriculum.

The report said Illinois should see strong growth in health care, child care, education and hospitality. Other opportunities exist in areas such as clean energy and transportation, and the task force called for policies that would ensure traditionally marginalized groups get fair access to jobs.

“State laws in Illinois, Texas, and California mandate that governments prove the connection between the charges they impose and the services they provide—but in reality, these laws have spawned an industry that writes elaborate user-fee studies showing, for instance, that waste-pickup charges should account for millions of dollars of city administrative overhead…These studies have less to do with actual costs than with letting governments charge whatever the citizen will bear.”

In seven states, all but one out west, the average price of a gallon of gasoline is at least $5 a gallon. Illinois is the non-west outlier, with the average price on Monday at $5 a gallon (rounding up from $4.996).

A republication of our Wirepoints column.

“In pursuit of the admirable goal of supporting 988 — the new way to reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline — a budget provision imposes a $5 million cut to the state’s already underfunded 911 system. Such funding approaches place 911 and 988 into toxic competition for resources, setting a problematic precedent when both systems require greater investment to save lives.”

According to the study, the 60-mile stretch of Illinois 3 between Godfrey and Waterloo is gaining recognition as a premiere heavy industry and warehousing corridor with distinct advantages over other areas around the country, such as the percentage of the direct jobs in manufacturing, transportation and warehousing that greatly eclipse the regional and national averages for jobs in those sectors.

Said Kent Redfield, a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Illinois Springfield, “You’ve got a whole bunch of new territory, a whole bunch of new population. It’s much, much harder to run in those situations.”

Another law creates the Health Insurance Coverage Premium Misalignment Study Act. It directs the Department of Insurance to oversee a study to explore rate setting approaches to investigate a misalignment of premiums in Illinois’ individual health insurance market.

Jim Dey: “Operating through political cutouts and press statements subject to multiple interpretations, Madigan embraced his image as a mystery man who eschewed the use of email and cellphones…It’s a different story now that investigators have pierced Madigan’s veil of secrecy, putting his private words in public court filings.”

U.S. Rep. Rodney Davis said a special Census could clear up any issues and get the proper formula for federal tax dollars to the state. But, he said the indication is the state continues to lose population and he blames Democratic policies.

More checks from privacy lawsuits are likely on the horizon. Google Photos and Shutterfly incurred similar class action lawsuits in Illinois, and have entered approval stages of multimillion-dollar settlements within the past year. I

“If 50% of their annual budget has seen an increase of 20% over the past year, which is a significant increase, that is going to present serious financial strain and put hospitals in a position to make difficult decisions.”

Resolutions from the Illinois General Assembly last year urged Pritzker to sign a pact with 17 other states that would pledge targets for sales of electric zero-emission large vehicles. The pact, a memorandum of understanding, sets a goal to get 30% of new truck and bus sales to zero emission by 2030 and 100% by 2050.

“Chicago and most smaller cities in this state have been gut-punched by violent crime. Police officers and replacement recruits are in short supply here and in areas throughout the country. Violence interruption and prevention needs to show tangible results, not only for the present, but for the future.”

The increase is the result of an interconnected system of companies, government agencies and the energy market. “Wholesale electricity prices are strongly correlated to natural gas prices and global and national trends have been pushing prices up,” said Anthony Starr, the director of the Illinois Power Agency.

Illinois’ average price is almost $2 more per gallon than a year ago. AAA said these are the highest recorded gas prices ever.

Students sat in the school’s music room recently, remembering their advocacy efforts to get a bill on Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s desk designating a state rock, a goal they achieved as a group during the pandemic. Dolostone, one of the most common rocks in Illinois, provides valuable nutrients to the soil, it’s a great building resource, and it comprises most of the bedrock of northern Illinois. Per student research, dolostone was the cause of a major mineral rush in Galena, Illinois, in the early 1800s.

This blog will explore the trends between the amended FY2022 budget and the FY2023 budget, as well as the differences between what the Governor proposed and the General Assembly approved.

Illinois gas prices have continued to climb to a state average of $4.96 on May 27. It hit a record of $4.98 on May 22, which beat the old record of $4.68 from 2012. The closest average gas prices May 27 were Indiana at $4.58 followed by Wisconsin at $4.35. Meanwhile, Missouri averaged $4.17 a gallon, a whole 80 cents cheaper than Illinois.

Rather than one-time handouts to households, structural reforms that increase the incentive to work and to innovate would expand potential output. Lawmakers could start by addressing the $1.8 billion dollar unemployment trust fund deficit that will result in higher taxes for producers. Illinois could work to reduce the cost of doing business in Illinois, which is No. 3 in the U.S. for the most regulatory restrictions.  The state’s high business taxes also reduce innovation.

A 2013 state rule forbid releasing even aggregate data, meaning a summary of information, about race and ethnicity as well as a batch of other metrics about patients who receive abortions. But that rule is tied to a law that no longer exists.

The number of legal marijuana dispensaries in Illinois is set to increase by more than 168 percent.

Of Illinois’ total population, more than 76% has received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose, more than 69% of Illinois’ total population is fully vaccinated, and more than 52% of the vaccinated population has an initial booster according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

One juvenile court judge asked: “What does a judge do when the department basically abuses a child?”

The $200 will be paid directly to utility companies and will be marked as a LIHEAP credit on the bill this July. All recipients of the Low-Income House Energy Assistance Program, as well as families who apply, should receive the payments.

While there is nothing wrong with a state governor or member of Congress trying to maximize federal resources for their state – they do that all the time as part of their job – one thing should be made crystal clear: The official 2020 census numbers released last August have not been changed. They have not been “adjusted,” “updated” or “revised.”

“Like other aging nuclear plants in the United States, Clinton is needed to help fight climate change and to provide a reliable source of large, base-load energy that solar and wind power just can’t yet meet.”

Arroyo’s lawyers argued a prison sentence for the longtime Chicago Democrat would do little to address the pervasive public corruption in Illinois, calling the act akin to “draining Lake Michigan with a spoon.” Judge Steven Seeger ultimately denied Arroyo’s plea for probation.

Jim Blessing, the vice president of regulatory policy and energy supply, told lawmakers this hike was caused by inflation, the Russian war in Ukraine, and coal plants closing.

This year, state lawmakers have been trying to make it easier for out-of-state mental health clinicians to get licensed in Illinois with a bill sent to the governor’s desk. Senate Bill 3617 also suspends requirements for social workers, professional counselors, and clinical psychologists with licenses that have been inactive for five years. The hope is to improve care by having enough workers available.

Joined by House representatives Marcus Evans and Kam Buckner, as well as some legislative staff, they made the trip to emphasize the importance of Democratic-led statehouses working together to “uphold the values of this nation” according to a press release, especially considering the role reproductive rights will play in the upcoming legislative sessions.

State Rep. Charlie Meier said an interruption of electrical service could be deadly. “What scares me are the words brownout and blackout as someone who took care of a parent for many years on hospice, and the machines I had running in the house.”

In Illinois, the two-year decline in public school enrollment is 3.42% – one of just 19 states that experienced a net 3% or greater decline in enrollment during the past two school years. Illinois tied for the 16th-largest drop in students attending public schools.

The suit asks a judge to prevent election authorities from counting mail-in ballots that arrive in the days following in-person voting, arguing that a ballot “is not a legal vote unless it is received by Election Day.” Illinois law currently directs local election authorities to count ballots postmarked by the date of an election and received within two weeks of the election.

A criminal complaint alleged Arroyo gave a $2,500 bribe to an unnamed sitting state senator who had been cooperating with federal investigators.

“This is, I think, the best sign of economic health or economic problems and that’s, are you winning the battle for people, are you winning the battle for wealth,” Wirepoints President Ted Dabrowski said. “Florida just continues to grow with people and investment and we’re at the other end … we’re losing our people, and we’re losing wealthy people. The people that we lose make a lot more money than the people we’re bringing into this state.”

The bill was sponsored by State Rep. LaShawn Ford, a prostate cancer survivor. The cancer was discovered when Ford was only 48 years old.

SB3889 forms a Children’s Mental Health Council to research and recommend legislative action for children with mental and behavioral disabilities, particularly around residential placement needs. HB4306 amends the Children and Family Services Act to require all youth in foster care be assigned a mental health provider to perform well-being assessments and forms the Holistic Mental Health Care for Youth in Care Task Force.

Illinois last year had made a run at the plant, which could serve Stellantis’ Belvidere plant. Insiders say the state fell out of the race awhile ago, and the Kokomo facility will be close enough to Belvidere to serve that factory if it is converted to EV production.

For passengers arriving at the rather faded terminals at Chicago O’Hare, it may not feel like it. But as of last year they are landing at America’s most important port, measured by value of trade.  For Chicago, where most flights are domestic, that was not so positive. But when people stopped flying because of the pandemic, the cargo holds of passenger planes were no longer available. Instead, more freight has been flown into specialised cargo terminals, like the one in Chicago. Since 2019 the amount moved through O’Hare has increased by 47% in value, and almost as much in volume.

Jim Dey: “Wirepoints analyst Ted Dabrowski said if one accepts the estimated population growth of 250,000 at face value, Illinois is ‘ninth worst in the country in population growth….All our neighbors are growing far more than we are,’ he said.”

“Covid-related restrictions mandated by the president, governors, mayors and federal agencies – whether ordering businesses and churches closed, requiring masks in schools or on airliners, or requiring people to receive new vaccines, among others – might have thrown up red flags during almost any other time in American history. During the last two years, however, even as governments executed powers they had not deployed in decades, if ever – these constitutional infractions seemed to draw little objection, even from organizations and advocates who long have touted their commitment to defending the rights of those living in America.”

If you want to know how Democrats maintain their monopoly in the Illinois capital of Springfield despite their flagrant mal-governance, look no further than their legally questionable gambit to conscript businesses into helping them get re-elected. Last week gas-station owners sued the state for violating their speech rights under the Illinois and U.S. Constitution. The lawsuit says the law requires gas retailers “to choose between making a political

Nearly five years after iPhone assembler Foxconn Technology Group unveiled plans for a factory that would transform this corner of southeastern Wisconsin into a high-tech manufacturing hub, only a few buildings occupy the 3,000-acre site, a huge power substation stands largely untapped and new roads are sparsely traveled.

U.S. Rep. Robin Kelly called the shooting “despicable,” and called on her fellow political leaders to take action: “Today some parents in Uvalde, Texas will experience the worst day of their lives – panicked, rushing to pick up their child from school, but learning their child will never come home. Too many parents know this pain. It’s despicable. We can’t go on like this.”

Former Merit Board CFO Jenny Thornley, also a former campaign volunteer for Gov. JB Pritzker, was charged in Sangamon County in September with stealing up to $100,000 in false overtime claims; She later accused a colleague of groping her in his office – an allegation determined to be unfounded.

One measure allows any hospital in a county of fewer than 125,000 residents to apply to the state health department to conduct operations from multiple locations within contiguous counties under one license.

As a freshman lawmaker watching the budget impasse unfold, Batinick said he observed that “so much of Springfield was theater”; Rather than hold committee meetings and hearings regarding the budget, lawmakers were instead having debates over “silly little things,” such as how to label fish on food menus or whether to require repainting of school busses to a different color when they are sold used.

Governor Pritzker’s letter to President Biden calls for adjusted population counts to be considered when allocating over $1.5 trillion in federal funds for Medicare, affordable housing, homeland security, and other essential programs. The letter requests that President Biden support any efforts to factor the new data into equitable funding allocations.

HB2775 bans discrimination in housing selection based on source of income, including non-employment income such as Section 8 vouchers or disability payments.

“If a pardon can allow an arsonist to become a fire chief and a cop, Amendment 1 could empower union bosses to help their favored members nullify employment restrictions on public safety positions. Unions could force a collective bargaining agreement that eliminates licensure or other restrictions imposed on public positions, with elected leaders restrained from opposing them by constitutional protection of union powers.”

In a separate conversation May 16, 2018, partially redacted, Madigan said, “If the only complaint about” an individual “is that he suffers from bankruptcy twice, so did Harry Truman.”

The report said states need to be mindful of what happens after the federal funds go dry to avoid the types of budget headaches they experienced in the Great Recession. “To help narrow the gaps, states shed almost 150,000 jobs and took actions that included Illinois borrowing $7.2 billion to cover government worker pension contributions,” noted Beverly Bunch, a professor at the University of Illinois Springfield and author of the report.

The program will expand to a $500,000 cap for eligible candidates, including both resident and nonresident compensation. Previously, the incentive only covered $100,000 for resident filmmakers. According to the Illinois Film Office, films, TV shows and commercials generated more than $360 million in the state and more than 7,000 jobs in 2020.

“It is truly disappointing to see how gleefully GOP candidates use gun violence to advance their campaign goals instead of joining together in a bipartisan manner to advance real solutions.”

The census snafu should have given our elected officials and the economic teams who work for them cause to take no more than a five-minute victory lap and perhaps enjoy one round of “I told you so’s.” Now that they’ve gotten that out of their system, it’s time to get back to work on fixing Illinois’ myriad problems. The best place to start is by creating policies that attract businesses, and the jobs they create, rather than repelling them. The solutions to many of this region’s most complex problems would flow from there.

Two different, three-justice panels of the Illinois First District Appellate Court turned aside appeals May 20 brought by different businesses who all accused Zurich American Insurance Company of wrongly denying them coverage for their lost business and opportunities amid the pandemic.

“It’s just been disappointing to sit on the sidelines and watch the current operators make hundreds of millions of dollars,” said Ambrose Jackson, a former hospital administrator who won one of the social equity licenses before the program was frozen. “All the social equity applicants are bleeding dollars, and every single month that goes by, people like me, those that the program is supposed to help, are getting hurt.”

The Farmers Market Permit Act will make it easier for farmers by streamlining and standardizing the Illinois farmers market permitting process. Among others things, it will make it easier for consumers to buy eggs at Illinois farmers markets.

Townships and municipalities are the most common governments. The rest are special units such as museum districts, mosquito abatement districts, and tuberculosis sanitation districts.

The ex-Illinois House Speaker was recorded on a wiretapped phone call in 2018 discussing with lobbyist confidant Michael McClain a plan to arrange secret payments to a close political ally who had been implicated in a sexual harassment scandal, newly released court documents show. Madigan has always denied any involvement in the scheme.

The Springfield Police Department conducted “proactive details” last weekend in an attempt to break up what Assistant Chief Josh Stuenkel called “pop-up” parties, in which a group of 100 people or more gather in a certain location, usually late at night after local bars close. Citations were issued during a series of traffic stops, with six weapons being recovered related to the details, leading to seven people being arrested on weapons charges.

The April jobless rate fell to 4.6%, down one-tenth of one-percent from March. One year ago, unemployment stood at 6.6%.

Jim Dey: “(Gas station owners) filed a lawsuit this week in Sangamon County that challenges the constitutionality of a state law that requires stations to tout a gas-tax freeze passed by the Legislature and signed by Gov. JB Pritzker…The lawsuit notes that Pritzker and at least one legislator are already running political advertisements boasting of their roles in delaying the gas-tax increase for six months.”

Jonathan Selbin, one of the attorneys representing the putative class, compared ComEd’s bribery of Mike Madigan and associates to an arsonist lighting fires in a high wind: An arsonist wouldn’t need to personally torch a building in such conditions, as the wind itself would carry the flames, but ultimately any fire damage that occurred would still be the result of the arsonist’s actions.

“We celebrate in Illinois when we get an improvement to our credit rating that still ranks 50th out of 50,” state Rep. Andrew Chesney said. “Our biggest issue that we have in northwest Illinois is funding our current infrastructure and our current responsibilities.”

The most significant changes to ODRISA are the new penalties for violations of the rest and meal break periods. Specifically, the amendment provides that an employer that violates ODRISA’s rest and meal break provisions “shall be guilty of a civil offense” (previously, a “petty offense”).

“I cannot imagine anyone actually cheering for Illinois. We’re just not that way here. Pessimism is in our collective bones, partly because it has been beaten into our beings for so many years by opinion leaders, and partly because, well, we do indeed suck at so many things.”

“Senate Bill 1099, now at Pritzker’s desk, attempts to regulate what is known as third-party litigation financing. It has become a lucrative cottage industry in the litigation world in which strangers to the litigation offer loans to people who file lawsuits seeking settlements. As defendants’ cases wind through the court system and sometimes take years to resolve, these third-party funders approach them with an offer of a loan. There’s a catch, though: high interest rates.”

According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the following eight Illinois counties were at high community level risk for COVID: Boone, Lee, Stephenson, Winnebago, Champaign, Ford, Peoria and Tazewell.

The governor’s office announced four bills he approved Friday, in addition to a separate announcement of extending property tax exemptions for seniors, veterans and those with disabilities.

Senate Bill 1975, signed by Gov. J.B. Pritzker Friday, increases the general homestead exemption and senior citizens homestead exemption, reduces interest rates on tax deferrals for seniors and allows for automatic renewal of the homestead exemption for qualifying people with disabilities in Cook County, according to the governor’s office.

Ted Dabrowski, president of the nonprofit Wirepoints, said the latest estimate of a population gain in the state doesn’t make sense. “I think it is going to leave a lot of people confused because the data doesn’t square up with domestic outmigration numbers we see from the IRS. It doesn’t square up with U-Haul and other moving companies that show how many people are leaving Illinois.”

Laurence Msall, president of the budget watchdog group The Civic Federation estimated the state could receive at least $100 million in additional federal funding based on the new population data. “So many of our formulas are based on population. This is really good news for Illinois.”

The lawsuit states there is no “legitimate governmental interest” in compelling the signage. It quotes Rep. Mike Zalewski, a Riverside Democrat, who defended the provision in a committee hearing by saying an Illinoisan may see the sign and “maybe they’ll read about the good things we did.”

A republication of our Wirepoints column.

Approximately 4% of Illinois, or roughly 1.2 million acres, is formally protected, compared with the U.S. average of 13%; 96% of the state is privately owned. Interestingly, the northeast corner of Illinois, which is the most heavily populated, has the state’s greatest percentage of protected land, with 11%. It’s also where a number of threatened species have found refuge, be it in municipal parks, county forest preserves or state preserves.

Illinois priced $1.64 billion of general obligation debt Wednesday at spreads on par with current trading levels that have more than doubled this year due to market turmoil despite a round of upgrades.

While Grischow may have previously agreed with the plaintiff, her opinion changed in her latest order, saying FoxFire restaurant needed to prove the governor had plans to reimpose the indoor dining ban or similar restrictions.

Judge Patrick Murphy pointed out DCFS is supposed to be set up to care for difficult children, yet it then argues it can’t get a child placed because he or she is difficult.

“At the end of the day, we hope to get the law permanently struck down but in the meantime we’re looking for hopefully a temporary restraining order against the state from enforcing this law when it goes into effect July 1,” IFRA President and CEO Josh Sharp said.

According to RentData.org, in downstate Illinois, Champaign at $977 a month and Bloomington at $870 a month are both considered high compared to the national average. Other areas include Springfield with an average of $843, and Carbondale at under $800 a month.

Agencies are warning that families could be paying an extra $50 every month and that means businesses will be hit even harder. “When you consider what a manufacturer, a retailer, a restaurant will pay, it will be significantly higher,” said Mark Denzler, of the Illinois Manufacturers’ Association. “In a case of some manufacturers, they will pay millions and millions of dollars in higher energy costs.”

Chris Janssen, superintendent of Spoon River Valley schools, told ISBE members they’re losing enrollment. “Since the last day of school last year, we have lost approximately 15% of our students and half of those were to home-school situations. I can’t imagine we’re … the only ones in this situation.”

If Illinois really was undercounted by 1.97 percent, as the survey suggests, that would have meant that the population actually grew by more than 257,000, putting it at just over 13 million.

The flip side of the Illinois legislation is that if energy prices fall again, and the existing nuclear fleet in Illinois become uneconomic, Illinois will pay for the plants to remain open so that the state can continue meeting its decarbonization goals.

In all of 2021, ISP recovered 233 guns. They’re already at 119 for 2022. So far this year, there are 11 fewer shootings than last year and no homicides.

“Intersect Illinois cites a litany of Illinois’ economic positives: We’re the fifth-largest economy in the country, 18th-largest in the world. We’re home to 38 Fortune 500 companies, and 1,900 foreign companies are located here. More than 1,800 companies are active in the burgeoning electric vehicle market, and over the past five years, the state has seen a 200% increase in business startups.”

“Public utilities are private companies with a state-granted monopoly to provide a public good,” PIRG Illinois State Director Abe Scarr said.

During the past decade, state lawmakers have asked to change the Illinois Constitution six times while voters have failed to get any changes on the ballot. It’s because the Illinois Constitution has been interpreted to limit citizen-initiated petitions more severely in Illinois than in any other state.

Senator Rachelle Crowe, a moderate former prosecutor who has served in the Senate since 2019, was recommended for the presidential nomination by Sen. Dick Durbin, the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, helping move her nomination along at a rapid pace. She will resign her post in the Senate and will withdraw from the November ballot.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker has launched a $30 million tourism campaign that he hopes will bring more visitors to Illinois. Molly Hart of AAA said that with fuel prices in Illinois as high as they are, people are having to make some changes.

Following the “Great Resignation” where people left their jobs for various reasons, Dave Herrell, president and CEO of Visit Quad Citie, said a major obstacle that remains is a shortage of workers.

State Rep. Mark Walker explained, “This is an expansion from social workers that work for educational establishments and it was added as a response from local municipalities that they are eligible. We also believe we will have more programs like one for the joint first responders.” Walker acknowledged the cost could be up to $6 million in state taxpayer funds.

“Offering LGBTQ+ families with children a safe place to engage with peers in age-appropriate activities while being supervised by their families is intentional and affirming work that helps to promote and grow healthy social and emotional development,” the LGBTQ+ Center of Lake County said in a statement.

The Arizona-based company failed to get buyers their titles withing a 20-day period specified under law, and in some cases were between four and six months late, a spokesman for the Illinois Secretary of State said. He said Carvana unlawfully issued purchasers temporary vehicle registrations from other states, causing some customers to be ticketed after those temporary registrations expired after 90 days.

Pete Stavros, an Arlington Heights native whose dad was a union road grader with a Chicago construction company, developed the model for vesting hourly employees with equity ownership at no cost. In addition to an ownership stake, employees were allocated $1 million per year for enhancing the factory, investing in everything from air conditioning to new break rooms and a cafeteria. Productivity flourished, Stavros said, with revenue growing by 120% and the earnings margin increasing from 21% to 35% during KKR’s ownership of C.H.I.

“Because ghost guns are cheaper and easier to acquire than conventional firearms, they are more accessible to young people,” Gov. JB Pritzker’s office said in a release. Already this month, two teens in Illinois have been charged with possession of ghost guns, one of which was brought to a high school. Illinois State Police reported working on 28 “ghost gun” cases so far this month.

The broad-ranging measure abolishes cash bail beginning in January 2023, reforms police training, certification and use-of-force standards, expands detainee rights, and requires body cameras at all departments by 2025. Since its passage, the measure has been amended twice to accommodate concerns of law enforcement groups, pushing back certain effective dates and changing some of the initial use-of-force language.

Several U.S. states, including neighboring Iowa and Indiana, have passed permeant income tax cuts. But Governor Pritzker favors temporary relief for now. “The truth is that we want to be very careful in Illinois,” said Pritzker, who pushed the shopping cart for Laura Pfeiffer, who was out buying groceries for her family. “We just balanced our budget the last three to four years.”

Casino gaming got off to a slow start in Illinois in 2022, with just $181.3 million generated in January and February combined across the state’s 11 venues; The state has collected more than $60 million through the first four months of the year. Those numbers are independent of sports wagering in Illinois, which generated $162.4 million in operator revenue in the first quarter of 2022.

“Like Connecticut, Illinois also has an effective property tax rate of 2.11%. And like New Jersey, Illinois’s funded ratio of public pensions is less than 40%, with just 39% of the value of assets in its pension funded covering the value of its promised lifetime income benefits. Though home prices are cheaper on average compared to other states, its year-over-year home value appreciation is among the lowest rates in the 50 states analyzed in the state.”

The state is encouraging retailers to set aside formula for low-income Illinois families who are enrolled in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC). “We have a special obligation to WIC families. About one-half of babies born in Illinois participate in WIC in the first year of their lives” said IDHS Secretary Grace B. Hou.

“He’s had three years to get them back and he’s doubled the budget of DCFS so the question is where are the beds,” state Rep. Steven Reick said during a virtual news conference alongside other Republicans. “He’s deflecting, again. He’s deflecting the kind of responsibility that is his.”

Wirepoints president Ted Dabrowski said Gov. J.B. Pritzker promised to address property taxes when he was elected, but it hasn’t happened. “The state’s punishing tax numbers and Illinois’ outlier position nationally make an overwhelming case for reforming the cost drivers of Illinois’ property tax crisis, from pensions to public sector collective bargaining laws to education spending.”

Under the legislation, the Illinois State Board of Education is prohibited from requiring a school district to administer a standardized assessment for students through second grade, unless for diagnostic purposes. The proposal came in response to consideration from ISBE to begin testing younger grades in math and reading.

Illinois’ business climate already ranks 36th in the U.S., but that is 10 spots lower than it was a decade ago while neighboring states are all on the upswing of the Tax Foundation’s State Business Tax Climate Index. On the heels of state lawmakers failing to stop automatic employer tax hikes because they didn’t repay a federal loan and adequately refill the state’s unemployment trust fund, employers are getting the message they are unwelcome in Illinois.

A new law recently signed by Governor Pritzker requires universities to give students access to online versions of their course materials on the first day of class. These online alternatives would be priced significantly lower than printed textbooks.

“But the mandated furloughs indicate what this legislation is all about…Home confinement was originally implemented for at least two reasons — to relieve jail crowding and to allow jail inmates perceived to be less of a threat than some others to be held in a setting less severe than jail but still be confined. Now to turn them loose on the grounds that they have errands to run or appointments to keep makes no sense. Home confinement is supposed to be inconvenient because engaging in criminal behavior is a threat to one’s personal liberty.”

Jim Dey: “It’s no surprise Chicago politicians are the best money can buy…Marinated in Illinois’ corrosive culture, many politicians view public office as a business where self-service trumps public service. And they ain’t changin’ anytime soon.”

Pritzker says it won’t help to fire the director – even a director who has been held in contempt of court ten times.

The bill requires Illinois coroners to notify and consult the FBI if they are unable to identify a body within 72 hours of the body being found. The law only requires coroners to notify the FBI; it doesn’t require the FBI to get involved.

“Illinois is one of just seven states that charges a sales tax of 6.25% on top of the regular gas tax,” state Sen. Dave Syverson said. “As the price of fuel goes up, so does the tax. A state that used to be getting sales tax based on $2.80 a gallon, and now they’re getting sales tax based on $5.00 or more a gallon. They’re reaping an increased profit of 13 to 15 cents per gallon.”

The act specifically requires the final contract between a government unit and the union representing its employees be subject to inspection and copying. But government union leaders could override the act by demanding provisions in those contracts that prohibit public access. That would make those contracts secret. Taxpayers would never see them, yet be forced to pay for them and whatever costs they contained.

Pensions now eat nearly half of the state’s higher education funding, up from just 10% in 2007. Pension spending, adjusted for inflation, went from from $256 million to $2.11 billion, a 510% increase in 15 years, yet the State Universities Retirement Fund has less than half of what it needs to keep its pension promises.

Illinois is one of 33 states that applies a sales tax to diapers. The state tax on diapers is the general merchandise rate of 6.25%, while food and medicine are taxed at a lower rate of 1%.

Comment: We wrote here why Lisa Cook, currently with the Chicago Fed, has no relevant credentials and represents the worst of the cancel culture.

Sponsors of the legislation include Sen. Tammy Duckworth and Rep. Jan Schakowsky.

Jim Dey: “But all that high-minded rhetoric about facially unconstitutional legislation, the doctrine of laches and statutes of limitation obscured the real question the high court will eventually answer: Will two more of our lying politicians be able to stick it to the taxpayers yet again? That assertion may sound harsh, but facts show it’s not even arguable.”

Alisa Kaplan, executive director of Reform for Illinois, said ethics reform is not popular among legislators because they don’t like passing restrictions on themselves. Polls show Illinois residents have very low trust in their government but have also “adjusted to having low expectations,” she added. Illinoisans are good at spotting corruption, but “it’s not always easy for them to hold their officials accountable for it,” she said.

Over the last 22 years, on average, only 64 of Illinois’ 118 state House districts have been contested by a candidate from each major party. This year, that number is 82 with the June primaries approaching.

Asked about a COVID disaster proclamation that continues through May 28, the governor said, “You know, my philosophy from the beginning has been that this is about trying to keep people alive. It’s about maintaining lives and livelihoods. And I’ve leaned on the side of keeping people alive, because you can’t have a livelihood if you don’t have a life.”

The new graduation requirement is an outcome of recommendations for a diversity requirement made by ISU’s Campus Climate Assessment Task Force in 2017.

“Pritzker has touted pouring an extra $100 million into DCFS’ budget yearly, as well as an additional $250 million in the budget year that begins in July. But money alone will not fix what’s wrong at DCFS…(S)tate Rep. Rita Mayfield, a Waukegan Democrat, didn’t mince words about his leadership. ‘Every year you guys come back and ask for more money,’ she said. ‘You tell us the same stories that you’re going to hire more case managers. You’re going to address these issues and nothing happens. Your budget is one of the largest budgets in the state of Illinois, and we’re

Matt Paprocki, of the Illinois Policy Institute: “Lawmakers didn’t use the federal windfall to close the deficit in the state unemployment insurance trust fund or repay the federal loan used to prop up the fund during the pandemic. Now job creators and small businesses must do so, and they are facing job-killing state and federal payroll hikes.

“Illinois is going to be ground zero,” said David S. Cohen, a professor at Drexel University’s Thomas R. Kline School of Law in Philadelphia. “Illinois is just closer to more people who are going to be in states where abortion is going to be banned.”

A full list of 127 bills signed Friday is linked here, but a sampling includes bills that: provide that the State Board of Elections shall provide a certified remote accessible vote by mail system for the General Election of November 8, 2022; require a school district to provide a plant-based school lunch option to students; prohibit ISBE from providing districts funding for standardized tests for students in kindergarten through 2nd grade.

“Nobody should think that what we passed in [the state’s clean energy law] is reducing the amount of energy that we are able to provide across the state of Illinois,” he said. “What we are doing is incentivizing the creation of more energy production in our state. That’s what’s going on.”

Eighty-five percent of agritourism businesses in Illinois are small operations with revenues around $25,000 a year. Yet unlike similar businesses in 31 other states, in Illinois agritourism businesses are saddled with high liability insurance costs.

“There is tremendous power in the speakership — the ability and resources to reward and punish his colleagues with cash, people power and appointments. These donors can be seen as helping a qualified woman of color contribute to the public good. But they could also be viewed as trying to curry favor and get ahead with their powerful leader. That went on all day long in the Madigan era.”

A total of 23 counties in Illinois are now rated at the medium community level, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Champaign, Cook, DeKalb, DeWitt, DuPage, Ford, Grundy, Johnson, Kane, Kendall, Lake, LaSalle, Lee, Logan, Mason, McHenry, McLean, Ogle, Peoria, Sangamon, Whiteside, Will, and Winnebago counties.

The legislation requires any towing service working within the jurisdiction of a given police agency to submit an application for inclusion on that police agency’s tow rotation list. Divers will also need to go through background checks, insurance, and licensing.

The law will help with access to low cost 340B prescription drugs for patients who are uninsured and low-income. Lawmakers said 16 other U.S. states have passed similar measures.

AFSCME’s salary and compensation outpace the private sector, yet union bosses are not satisfied and want to continue the favored status they gained through indicted former Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan. Generous union contracts have contributed to driving Illinois property taxes to No. 2 nationally, the state and local tax burden to No. 1 and state finances to No. 50. And yet union bosses still want permanent power to continue the cycle.

“It’s impossible to say whether the initial report (on the 2020 coronavirus outbreak at the LaSalle Veterans’ Home) was incomplete because of incompetence, a predetermined decision not to look too deeply into what occurred, or both. Given the Pritzker administration’s embarrassment and anger over last week’s disclosures, particularly in an election year, none of those possibilities is off the table. But it’s important to note that the state’s human services department is part of the state’s executive branch that answers to the governor. The auditor general answers to the General Assembly.”

“These backroom deals in secrecy drive fiscal chaos in this state and also breed corruption,” Minority Leader Jim Durkin said.

State Rep. Amy Elik: “I was one of three House Republicans on our budget negotiation team; however, we were shut out of the discussions on the budget, and no appropriations working group meetings were held this year.”

Ameren Illinois, which provides electricity to 1.2 million customers in the Prairie State, warned that capacity issues could “leave parts of Illinois short of the power needed to meet customer demand during extreme temperatures this summer.” As one company executive said,  “We have been sounding the warning bell that the transition to renewable generation must occur in a steady and measured fashion and that moving too fast could drive up prices.”

“Equity was not a word that was used back then. But that’s what she was doing for people of color. … It just feels a little bit like it’s part of my DNA. I know it’s nurture, not nature. But I cannot imagine another set of views,” Gov. JB Pritzker said. His mother was also an activist, a finance chair for Democratic senators running for reelection in 1976 and the northern California women’s chair for the Democratic party. That meant people such as Barbara Boxer, Nancy Pelosi, David Goodstein and Gloria Steinem were in his childhood.

State Rep. Sue Scherer sponsored the bill that requires more home safety checks. She said in a statement, “After thoroughly reviewing the DCFS audit and speaking to the auditor general at length, I am at a complete loss for words.”

For the first time the law defines organized retail crime in the state and it is a felony. It also eliminates a jurisdictional issue for prosecutors, such as when a theft happens in one county and the items are sold in another. Online market places will also be required to collect and verify the identity of people trying to sell a lot of items at once.

Illinois is moving to create an equity-based funding formula for higher education, potentially setting up a clash among the state’s 12 public universities over a limited pot of state dollars. A commission established by state legislators is exploring ways to reallocate those dollars to help Black, Latino and low-income students. But one early and central discussion point at the Commission on Equitable Public University Funding is likely to create tension: Should appropriations be tied to the demographic composition of a school’s graduates?

On Thursday’s broadcast of CNN’s “At This Hour,” Rep. Mike Quigley stated that increased oil production is “so critical to addressing the inflation issue,” and responded to the Biden administration canceling oil and gas leases by stating companies “can up production now on the wells they have.”

The new law makes it so if an Illinois resident lost their driver’s license within the past three years solely due to prior unpaid child support they can now get a school bus driver permit.

This tenth contempt of court order involves a young girl who entered DCFS care more than a year ago. Since entering DCFS, the girl spent about 45 days in a foster placement.  The rest of the time, she has been in what’s characterized as shelters and also psychiatric hospitals.

About 3 percent of survey respondents indicated the state’s coronavirus response was a top issue.

March jobs growth was spread across eight of the 15 metropolitan areas that contain parts of Illinois, according to data recently released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. While the largest numeric increase came from the Chicago-Naperville-Arlington Heights metro area, which added 9,400 jobs, the largest percentage increase came from Kankakee, which grew payrolls by 0.47% or 200 jobs during the month.

Don Schaefer, vice president of Mid-West Truckers Association, said the high cost of diesel is affecting the cost of moving products in and out of Illinois. “It costs about a dollar a mile just in diesel fuel alone, that doesn’t include the cost of paying the driver or the benefits that go with it.”

State Rep. Tom Demmer said there are “hundreds” of examples of spending for projects from Democrat-only legislators “(t)hat simply say ‘to go to this organization for operations,’ whatever that means. The state has no ability now to tie that to any performance metric, to try to reach any specific goal with it. It just says ‘to operations.’ There is no oversight, there is no check and there is no balance.”

A newly released audit of Illinois’ troubled child welfare agency shows it has failed to provide adequate medical care for children and has not properly tracked possible neglect cases. The Illinois Auditor General’s review of the Department of Children and Family Services also found failures to conduct home safety checks before children are returned to their parents.

House Bill 4243 is an effort to keep students advancing through grades even with unpaid bills. Previous law did not address the withholding of grades, transcripts or diplomas for students for financial reasons, only academic performance and social issues.

“What the hell were they doing?” Cook County Public Guardian Charles Golbert said of that finding. “That’s the most basic, essential thing that you do when you have a report that children are at risk. Everything else flows from the safety assessment.”

Sen. Tammy Duckworth introduced the legislation in March. She says a committee would be created to review prices and the justice department would then pursue any companies accused of price gouging.

A big push for the bill is that it could save the state $800,000 a year in plate production and preserve the styling of newer and classic cars.

Kyle Hillman, director of Legislative Affairs at the Illinois chapter of the National Association of Social Workers, said this law was triggered by recent tragedies involving social workers at Illinois’ Department of Child and Family Services.

Gerrymandered legislative maps that create uncompetitive districts and election rules that test clerical skills are all part of how Illinois politicians keep Jane Q. Public from running for office.

Charles Lipson recounts the remarkable story of the brave Illinoisan who challenged loyalty oaths and today’s Illinoisans who betray what he fought for.

California, Illinois and Pennsylvania could run into budget trouble in a few years, because they’ve been using a one-time surge of money from the federal government to pay for long-term expenses, fiscal experts warned Wednesday.

With early voting set to begin across Illinois on May 19, a large group of voters is still up for grabs. About 36.9% of respondents say they are undecided about the top of the ticket.

The president visited a farm in Kankakee to highlight measures he hopes will boost crop production, including increasing the number of counties eligible for insurance for double cropping. Over 600,000 acres of wheat was harvested in Illinois in 2021, and this year’s crop is expected to fetch a hefty price.

With 82 statehouse races expected to be contested – the most in at least 24 years – the number of ballots cast could reach 4.3 million. That would be the highest non-presidential year figure in recent history.

Pritzker said other precedents set by the Supreme Court, such as marriage equality, are also threatened and that Congress is going to need to protect and codify a lot more rights in response to the “radical right-wing Supreme Court.”

Former Sens. Michael Noland and James Clayborne have been successful so far in their legal efforts, prevailing in 2019 in Cook County Circuit Court before Judge Franklin Valderrama. But Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza, the defendant in the case, filed a direct appeal to the state’s highest court arguing that Valderrama got the decision wrong.

“While most of the bills were uncontroversial and broadly supported, the floor debate prior to the passage of several of them mirrored the rhetoric of an ongoing campaign season in which every constitutional office and seat in the General Assembly will be up for a vote in November.”

Of the 1,213 days Pritzker has been in office, 790 have been under a disaster proclamation. That means he’s had emergency powers for more than 65% of his term.

DuPage County has missed out on 18 months of marijuana tax revenue — a potential loss of up to $4 million — from a failure to properly notify the state to collect the money on the county’s behalf. County board members back in October 2019 imposed a 3% retail tax on all sales of recreational marijuana in municipal areas of DuPage.

In Illinois, philanthropic organizations are stepping in to help pay for transportation, lodging and child care for patients coming from out of state, and the city of Chicago is allotting $500,000 to help pay for those costs as well.

Dr. Allison Arwady, commissioner of the Chicago Department of Public Health, says that the city’s positivity rate has soared to nearly 5% in recent weeks, and she expects metrics to continue to rise in the coming days.

“It remains to be seen what type of opposition she’ll draw in 2024. Democrats can certainly be expected to mount a vigorous campaign to win the seat, particularly if partisan control of the high court is up for grabs.”

Wirepoints President Ted Dabrowski said “it’s worth celebrating for a second,” but there’s a long way to go. “I think we need to temper the excitement from the government. We had 22 downgrades before we finally saw these recent six upgrades, so we have 16 more to go just to get back to the levels we were in 2009.”

At the University of Illinois alone, there are 71 DEI personnel, which is four out of every 100 faculty members. At Northwestern University, there are 52 DEI faculty members.

The President’s schedule includes stops in Chicago and Kankakee.

ISP also recently announced it is opening a fourth FOID kiosk.

The Co-Responders Pilot Program in the police departments of Springfield, East St. Louis, Peoria, and Waukegan will establish co-responder units that will work with social workers and mental health professionals on calls involving those who may need mental or behavioral health services.

Gov. JB Pritzker signed the Funeral and Burial Assistance Act into law Tuesday. Qualifying families will be able to receive up to $10,000 in assistance – an amount slightly above the national average cost of funeral and burial services – paid directly to funeral and cemetery establishments.

Johnson never lost an election. He started his career on the Urbana City Council in 1971. He went on to the Illinois House of Representatives, and eventually, to represent the 15th district in Congress.

“The use of biometric information has expanded across the world,” said Ed Yohnka, of the ACLU of Illinois. “Illinois has been a place that has really protected the privacy of individuals who live here.”

Holder White has been a judge at various levels since 2001, when she was sworn in as an associate judge in the state’s Sixth Judicial Circuit, which includes Champaign, DeWitt, Douglas, Macon, Moultrie and Piatt counties. In 2008, she became a circuit judge, and in 2013 was sworn in as the first Black justice on the Fourth District Illinois Appellate Court.

Rivian is a significant employer in Normal, Illinois and recipient of state government incentives.

Losses across both stock and bond markets delivered a double blow to the funds that manage more than $4.5 trillion in retirement savings for America’s teachers, firefighters and other public workers. These retirement plans returned a median minus 4.01% in the first quarter, according to data from the Wilshire Trust Universe Comparison Service expected to be released Tuesday. Recent losses have further eroded their holdings.

The issue: whether it was inappropriate for a pair of lobbyists, Mike Manatos and Tom Manatos, to explicitly invite donors to the event to discuss with the congressman the probe of the football team and its owner, Dan Snyder.

Even with recent budget increases – lawmakers have increased the DCFS budget by at least $100 million each year since 2019, including by $250 million this year – the effort to build back the lost placements has been slower than the decline. Gov. JB Pritzker continues to support  Department of Children and Family Services Director Marc Smith, saying his resignation wouldn’t solve anything.

The Illinois Freedom Caucus, modeled after the House Freedom Caucus in Congress, is made up of some of the most conservative voices in Illinois politics and is chaired by Rep. Chris Miller. Illinois is fifth state in the nation to start a caucus associated with the State Freedom Caucus Network.

Sheila A. Weinberg, of Truth in Accounting: “Illinois voters will once again go to the polls without knowing the true state of the government’s finances. If the state had to use the same accounting rules as the rest of us, the financial statements for its general and other budgeted funds would report the truth.”

House Bill 1568, signed into law by Gov. J.B. Pritzker Friday, aims to improve those benefits for some. The law states that state police troopers, investigators for the Secretary of State, Department of Revenue, Illinois Gaming Board, and investigators for the Office of the Attorney General would all be eligible for early retirement and an extra five years of pension payments.

Republican Illinois Supreme Court Justice Rita Garman would have been up for retention this year, but the timing of her retirement means the other six justices will appoint someone to serve in her 4th District seat until the 2024 elections. She has served on the high court since 2001.

The amendment was written so broadly it leads to a host of alarming consequences for Illinois residents.

“From the start, this whole Irvin thing has had the vibe of a campaign apparatus seeking out and building a candidate instead of the usual other way around.”

“The Pritzker administration has not been transparent or forthcoming about what if any long-term plans are in place for Illinois prisons, which is a major reason why this process needs legislative oversight,” said state Sen. Jason Barickman. “The Pontiac Correctional Center is an important economic and employment anchor for the region. Any discussion about the future of the facility should have all of the stakeholders at the table.”

“As of this July 1, the base salary for an Illinois legislator is $72,906 a year. The median household income in Illinois is $68,000.”

Supermarkets now must show the regular and sale price of items as they are rung up so customers can immediately learn if they are getting discounts.

Illinois is also dealing with a 60% increase in unemployment claims when compared to 2019, which is the fourth worst in the nation behind only Indiana, Kentucky, and Michigan.

Illinoisans currently pay 24 new taxes and fees, including the doubled gas tax, since Pritzker took office. His election-year “relief” follows $5.24 billion in new taxes he’s imposed. All these added taxes make tough economic times hurt Illinoisans more than other states’ residents.

“Democrats nationwide and especially in Illinois are failing on the economy, crime, and education standards. Now they believe they have a platform they can campaign and win on: a progressive social agenda. This is the type of ‘flashy’ agenda that Gov. Pritzker wants to run on. An agenda that gets his tweets featured on national news, that fires up his progressive base, and that distracts from his failed governing record.”

In addition to rating governments on meaningful financial criteria, in March the biggest of the top three credit-rating firms began to apply an environmental, social and governance, or ESG, rating system.

“While many of us now use smartphones for directions, paper maps remain an important resource,” said Illinois Transportation Secretary Omer Osman. “When your phone dies or you drive out of range, paper maps will show you the way.”

“…(Illinois Department of Veterans Affairs chief of staff Anthony) Kolbeck ‘inquired about a site visit and about rapid tests and inquired about getting antibody treatments. From the documents reviewed, (health department officials) did not offer any advice or assistance as to how to slow the spread at the home, offer to provide additional rapid COVID-19 tests and were unsure of the availability of the antibody treatments,’ the auditor’s report states.”

“It would be foolish not to acknowledge the risks involved here. But it would be equally foolish to ignore the risks inherent in taking no action.”

Gov. J.B. Pritzker and the Democratic Party will host a high dollar fundraising reception with President Joe Biden in Chicago on Wednesday evening, with the top ticket price $365,000, the Sun-Times has learned.

Between hundreds of children dying in DCFS care, lack of residential beds, caseworker deaths, and a general overload of the system, the department has faced several attacks and calls for reform. The department resides under the executive branch of the state government, meaning current Governor JB Pritzker is the person who can have the ability to completely rebuild the agency.

“Credit to Boeing, though, for inflicting their own punishment: exile. The wicked flee when no man pursues.”

To be sure, this map will most likely help Democrats in their quest to hold onto the House. But it’s also possible that they’ve bitten off more than they can chew.

By state Rep. Andrew Chesney.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed 35 bills Friday, including measures impacting education, driving and public safety retirement.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed into law Thursday a measure that borrows $1 billion to extend the existing pension buyout program for Illinois state employees for two more years.

“Boeing’s decision to leave Illinois is incredibly disappointing—every level of government in our state has worked to make Chicago and Illinois the perfect home for Boeing’s headquarters for the past 20 years,” Illinois Sens. Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth said in a joint statement.

According to a review of pension audit reports for nine of the major public pension funds — including five in the City of Chicago and three state pension funds — a combined total of nearly $112 million was invested in Russian equities, bonds and other assets at the start of the invasion. Compared to the roughly $155 billion in total investments those funds comprise, the Russian slice is only a fraction of 1%.

“There are major plants in central and southern Illinois that right now are trying to figure out how they’re going to run their operation in eight years because wind and solar don’t generate steam,” Illinois Manufacturers’ Association President and CEO Mark Denzler explained. “There are major facilities that employ thousands of people and jobs that average $100,000 a year. They’re calling me and telling me we don’t know how we’re going to operate in eight years.”

Boeing Co., a leading defense contractor and one of the world’s two dominant manufacturers of airline planes, announced Thursday it is moving its global headquarters from Chicago to Virginia.

The report shows that Illinois serves the fewest people per government unit of the ten largest states.

After the audit’s release, Gov. J.B. Pritzker, without naming names, blamed Republicans for what he said was their questioning of COVID-19 mitigation measures. “You know all the people, the people who represented the area, the Republicans in general, you heard many of them, and some of them are still saying it even now, that ‘you didn’t need to wear a mask, don’t worry about it. Some of them aren’t even vaccinated or have chosen to tell other people they don’t need to get vaccinated. We were fighting all of that and the pandemic.”

More than 1,200 workers are involved in the construction process, with 200 jobs employed long-term to operate the facility. Over the course of its first 20 years, officials estimate $60 million to $100 million in property tax revenue for local DeKalb taxing bodies.

“The upgrade to ‘BBB+’ reflects fundamental improvements in Illinois’ fiscal resilience including full unwinding of pandemic-era and certain pre-pandemic non-recurring fiscal measures, meaningful contributions to reserves and sustained evidence of more normal fiscal decision-making,” the agency said in its announcement.

With 19,000 workers still laid off, according to Michael Jacobson, president and CEO of the Illinois Hotel & Lodging Association, Illinois’ hotels and lodging businesses are struggling to find their feet. “The biggest headwind we face is the perception around crime and public safety,” he said. “It’s not unique to just Chicago; it’s really an issue we’re seeing issues with across the state.”

“This will motivate both sides but it’s probably going to help Democrats most by motivating their base,” Edgar said. “It will have a huge impact, and I don’t know that it will be good. It’s going to be a one-issue campaign” in statehouse and congressional campaigns.

The report from the Illinois auditor general, released Thursday, says the Illinois Department of Public Health “did not offer any advice or assistance as to how to slow the spread at the Home, offer to provide additional rapid COVID-19 tests, and were unsure of the availability of the antibody treatments for long-term care settings prior to being requested by the IDVA Chief of Staff.”

“Responsible fiscal management means taking every action possible to address our pension obligations while honoring promises made to current and retired workers – promises made by governors and legislators on both sides of the aisle,” said Governor JB Pritzker. “The expansion of this bipartisan pension buyout program builds on Democrats’ work this session to save taxpayers nearly $2 billion in pension liabilities by paying down our pension debt in advance.”

Says broker Deb Sarsany, “I don’t know if there’s a word in the dictionary that actually describes it.” In March of 2021, there more than 200 homes on the market in Sangamon County. But this year, there are just over 100.

The Illinois Association of County Veterans Assistance Commissions says Illinois was 52nd in the nation in providing benefits to veterans despite having the 10th largest veteran population before the legislation was passed.

At issue is whether the state can favor license applicants who live in Illinois; Federal courts have struck down similar requirements in Maine, Michigan and Missouri, potentially opening licensing to much greater competition nationwide.

“For a party that says they’re all about individual freedom, [Republicans] are hellbent on taking away freedoms from so many women,” Gov. JB Pritzker said on CNN Monday. “And remember, if they come after Roe, they’ll come after everything. Gay marriage is next. Then other protections for minority and marginalized communities.”

Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul has joined a coalition of eight attorneys general. They say the full cancellation is needed to address the “sheer enormity” of debts owed, along with repayment and forgiveness systems leaders called “systematically flawed” and the disproportionate impact of the debt burden on millions of U.S. borrowers.

Illinois Manufacturers’ Association’s Mark Denzler told lawmakers the situation is repelling investment in Illinois. “And I can’t tell you enough the number of companies I hear from across the state that say ‘we are losing our energy advantage, we are losing that battle,’ and it’s one of the few things we have at our advantage, and we are giving it away.”

House Bill 4736 creates the Co-Responders Pilot Program to have police in certain parts of the state begin a joint effort with multiple social service agencies. Peoria, Springfield, East St. Louis, and Waukegan will all be participating in the pilot program. The measure passed the legislature last month but has yet to be sent to the governor.

“I probably wouldn’t even see it,” said driver Donna Lobdell, of Edwardsville. “I think it has to do with politics, and I don’t think they should be forced to do it.”

Alignable, an online referral network for small businesses, has released its April rent report. It shows while many state’s rent delinquency rates among small businesses are declining, Illinois’ has actually increased at the second highest rate in the country. According to the survey, 34% of small businesses in Illinois suffered from rent delinquency in April. Only New Jersey had a higher percentage.

While the Fed aims to bring down inflation, many states – flush with cash – are handing out money to their residents or introducing record spending plans. While these moves are politically expedient for politicians concerned with reelection, the increase in state transfers to households worsens the problem and provides only modest, temporary relief.

“It’s not just that they’re taking away reproductive rights,” Pritzker said. “It’s that this is a slope that they’re headed down that is going to take away all of the rights that were granted as a result of the right to privacy. It’s a constitutional right to privacy, determined by the court 50 years ago and reinforced along the way, and now they’re taking it away.”

Among the foes of expanded testing is Chicago Teachers Union President Jesse Sharkey, who said standardized assessments “deny qualified Black and brown students access to a fully adequate education, disinvest in and close schools in communities of color, and dismantle Black and brown neighborhoods anchored by long-neglected schools. Instead, our students need the resources to unpack and recover from the trauma of the pandemic and the decades of inequity that preceded it.”

A national republication of our Wirepoints column.

Jim Dey: “The truth is that proponents held hearings where interested parties, including Champaign County State’s Attorney Julia Rietz, discussed criminal-justice issues. But neither she nor other prosecutors or law-enforcement officers saw the actual bill until it was introduced and quickly passed. What exactly was in the legislation was a surprise then, and the results after Jan. 1, one way or another, will be as well.”

Said Darren Reisberg, “At a time when you’re seeing the critical race theory issues pervading across the country, the state board was able to push for culturally responsive teaching and leading standards here in Illinois. That will guide the way educator preparation programs prepare educators to go into classrooms. Even though we had a minority of stakeholders pushing against us, we didn’t back down.”

Illinois was fourth in the country in foreclosure starts with 3,534, and Chicago led all large metro areas in the country, outdistancing New York and Los Angeles. Among 223 metropolitan statistical areas with a population of at least 200,000, those with the highest foreclosure rates in the first quarter included Rockford with one in every 634 housing units.

Abortion access now could be a key issue in this year’s Illinois elections.

House Bill 5016 creates a pilot program to allow remote learning for students of Consuella B. York Alternative High School that are in the custody of the IDOC. If successful, the program could roll out in other alternative schools across Illinois.

According to the complaint, the Such family received an “Order for Quarantine of an Individual” from the Cook County Department of Public Health April 22, purportedly requiring that their child, identified in the suit as R.S., remain away from school until May 1. R.S. had purportedly been exposed to Covid-19 while at lunch at the school April 21.

In Illinois, abortions are legal up to 22 weeks after gestation and there is no more parental notification requirement. Illinois has the Reproductive Health Act on the books with expanded abortion rights. Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed that into law in 2019.

Despite being among the states that beat pre-pandemic revenue trends, Illinois has taken no significant action to address its nation-leading tax burden. The brief relief offered in the new budget does almost nothing to address that burden or make the state more attractive to new residents or businesses.

Gov. JB Pritzker has attempted to minimize the role his administration played in the daily management of the outbreak, but the report will indicate there was daily contact between the home, the Illinois Department of Veterans’ Affairs, Illinois Department of Public Health, and the Governor’s office, specifically Deputy Governor Sol Flores.

But university economists say ongoing concerns about inflation, rising interest rates, and fears of a possible national recession leave Illinois’s economic picture uncertain.

The latest ruling came on Thursday in a case filed in Christian County on behalf of 46 employees of the Illinois Department of Corrections from 18 separate facilities who objected to the requirement to show proof of vaccination against the virus or submit to regular testing.

The huge spike up we’ve seen is clobbering trucking companies, which employ one out of every 14 workers in Illinois. “What this really impacts is consumers, because eventually our industry has to pass along higher fuel costs,” said Matt Hart, Executive Director of Illinois Trucking Association.

The governor’s executive order notes that face coverings are still required in health care and congregate settings such as correctional facilities and homeless shelters. Meanwhile, schools and daycare centers are still encouraged to follow CDC and state agency recommendations on social distancing, testing, ventilation, and contact tracing. Employee vaccine and testing requirements are also still in place in congregate care settings, schools, and daycare centers.

Illinois’ revised plan will replace old diesel engines with all-electric school buses, public transit, Class 4-8 local freight trucks, and light-duty charging infrastructure to reduce nitrogen oxide emissions from mobile sources in areas of Illinois that are disproportionately impacted by the effects of climate change and air pollution.

House Republican leader Jim Durkin blamed Gov. JB Pritzker for failing to deal with the problem, saying Director Marc Smith should resign. Pritzker shot back pointing to Republicans who have voted against recent budgets that have added funds to DCFS, noting all nine children involved in the contempt citations were quickly placed in residential settings.

“To me, the best social program is a job,” state Rep. Mark Batinick said. “One of the things that are hurting these areas is a lack of investments in the area frankly just due to ridiculously high property taxes.”

Pew researcher Joanna Biernacka-Lievestro said a shrinking or slow-growing populace can be both a cause and effect of weakened economic prospects. The report noted the states with long-term population declines, like Illinois, all fell near the bottom of economic growth over the 12-year recovery from the Great Recession.

DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said the Biden administration has established a Disinformation Governance Board, and U.S. Rep. Lauren Underwood pushed for the department to do more. “What I’ve heard you describe is internal organizations. What we are looking for is external communications with the American public, including those for whom Spanish is their predominant language to make sure that the information the department around mis- and disinformation campaign is reaching those individuals.”

Judge John A. Noverini objected to filling out the form, saying several questions appear to have a political agenda. The questions at issue include, “What efforts, if any, have you made in your community to include people of a different race, color, religion, sex, national origin, ancestry, age, marital status, physical or mental disability, military status, or sexual orientation than you as a lawyer and/or judge in the legal profession?”

Comptroller Susana Mendoza addresses the latest upgrade, and how much more the state has to do before long term tax relief is a realistic option.

Jim Dey: “Retired University of Illinois law Professor Steve Beckett said the sign mandate reflects ‘an awkward time where government is telling people what they can say and can’t say.’…Beckett said Pritzker can argue ‘there is a legitimate public interest in seeing the public is informed of’ the gas-tax delay. Conversely, gasoline retailers dispute whether ‘interest’ is sufficient to allow Pritzker to force them to tout his tax delay and penalize them for not doing so.”

“The real validity of the Moody’s increase – as well as expected similar increases from other credit-rating agencies – will be seen once the impact of the COVID-19 stimulus has waned.”

Sangamon County State’s Attorney Dan Wright said they will have a higher burden of proof to hold violent criminal detainees until trial: “First-degree murder, second-degree murder, a large grouping of sex crimes, robbery, residential burglary.”

“Dan Seals and Intersect Illinois — a 12-employee public-private partnership formed in 2016 by then-Gov. Bruce Rauner that counts many of Illinois’ biggest and best-known corporations as funders — are telling Illinois’ story through their new ‘Be in Illinois’ campaign. He described it as a very targeted, tailored marketing campaign to attract out-of-state companies.”

The bill, titled “Authorization for Use of Military Force to Defend America’s Allies Resolution of 2022,” would give Congressional approval for the President to send forces to Ukraine should Russia use chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons.

“When a coalition of groups representing Hispanics, Blacks and Republicans challenged the Illinois Democrats’ gerrymandered map, a three-judge federal panel said there was no legal problem because partisan gerrymanders are not unlawful…The 13th District, which includes Champaign-Urbana, has been described as the most gerrymandered in the nation, its worm-like shape splitting another district in two as it winds its way from Champaign-Urbana to the Missouri border.”

Parent Briana Ray wants to be clear about her groups motivation and stated, “We are not unhappy with our schools, board or teachers but we don’t appreciate government overreach that ties not only our school leader’s hands but also parent’s hands because we don’t have school choice.”

Justin Williams with the Metropolitan Planning Council explained that Illinois is set to receive $565 million out of the $15 billion worth of federal funding allocated to lead service line replacement. But based on the percentage of the lead pipes in the nation, Illinois’ share should be more like $1.8 billion. Williams said that in Chicago it’s also a racial equity issue.

“A city with a regional, national, even global outlook, Chicago doesn’t have time for Decatur or Peoria — except to steal their corporate headquarters. In recent years, ADM moved its executives from Decatur to Chicago, while Caterpillar’s moved from Peoria to Deerfield. Telling those cities ‘the jobs didn’t leave Illinois’ is no consolation.”

The 911 fund has more than $80 million in it, but the police chiefs say diverting any of that money could hamper emergency call centers around the state.

Gov. JB Pritzker was joined by the Illinois Housing Development Authority and local elected officials in Chicago Friday to promote the Illinois Emergency Homeowner Assistance Fund for struggling homeowners.

Western sanctions on Russia have disrupted fertilizer shipments and increased shortages, driving input costs even higher than they were last fall. So, should Illinois wheat farmers increase the amount of wheat they plant in the fall? Green said it is too soon for him to decide.

With 19,000 workers still laid off, according to Michael Jacobson, president and CEO of the Illinois Hotel & Lodging Association, Illinois’ hotels and lodging businesses are struggling to find their feet. The industry was one of the hardest hit by the pandemic and government economic restrictions, but in other states like Wyoming and Montana, leisure and hospitality payrolls have recovered, Muddy River News reported.

People in Illinois whose face appeared in a photo on Google’s Photos app could be in line for as much as $400 each, under a new $100 million settlement given an early nod in Cook County court.

If House Bill 4556 is signed into law by Gov. J.B. Pritzker, pharmacists will be able to provide, for some patients, tests that determine if certain drugs have been laced with fentanyl.

“Why would anyone brag about a delay in a tax increase by implying that it is a tax cut?  The answer is that politicians gladly spread misinformation to the public when they are trolling for votes.  Is a 2-cent delay more important to consumers than the 10-cent increase in sales tax?”

When billions of funds are showering down from those dark, billowing federal government clouds, you can be sure some of those funds will fall on those really needing help. Sad to say, the vast majority of those funds will fall on those that are convinced they deserve, and thus, demand those federal funds.

“These so-called experts are complaining that Pritzker and Lightfoot are playing taxpayers for fools over the politics of gas, which is so expensive now because of inflation and other domestic policy choices (thanks Brandon) that many Americans can barely afford to completely fill their gas tanks just to get to work….How dare these critics utter such nonsense about the governor and the mayor! Don’t they have faith in our elected officials? It all makes me so, so very sad. Since when have taxpayers ever been played for fools, idiots, nincompoops, and chumbolones by Chicago mayors and Illinois governors?”

The latest ruling comes in a case filed in Christian County on behalf of some Illinois Department of Corrections employees who objected to the requirement to show proof of vaccination against the virus or submit to regular testing.

Illinois Representative Mike Quigley said the U.S. was lagging behind in support for too long, but now officials feel the urgency. “This isn’t a weaning off process anymore. And the U.S. needs to help its allies as quickly as possible because winter is always coming.”

For residents in ComEd’s northern Illinois territory, the average electric bill will likely drop while central and southern Illinois prices are set to spike.

Families of fallen Illinois state workers can now have access to their loved one’s insurance with no premium costs. Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed the bipartisan measure Friday.

Ted Dabrowski, president of the nonpartisan, nonprofit organization Wirepoints, said there are several reasons why Illinois is not business friendly.  “We’re too corrupt. Our taxes are way too high. We have way too many regulations and we have massive debts, and that is plenty of reason enough for companies to not want to locate in Illinois, not to mention the state is shrinking in population so it’s not a growth state to put your business in.”

“One thing that we’re saying and that our members are saying is that we have a testing regime that has gone too far, and is not helping children learn,” Illinois Federation of Teachers president Dan Montgomery said.

“So, according to her testimony, hospitalization is $600 a day for the first month and $1,000 a day thereafter. In this case, DCFS paid the hospital $348,000 out of the Illinois taxpayer funds…not federal funds, to keep this kid locked up beyond the date of medical necessity,” Cook County Circuit Judge Patrick T. Murphy said. “You could have bought the Taj Mahal for the cost of this placement. This is bizarre!”

Townships and municipalities are the most common governments. The rest are special units such as museum districts, mosquito abatement districts, and tuberculosis sanitation districts. And there are 17 townships in Illinois with identical boundaries to their cities – meaning residents pay two separate tax bills for two sets of bureaucracy that could easily be handled by one government unit.

Michael Mini, executive vice president of the Chicagoland Apartment Association: In the spirit of equity, the Chicagoland Apartment Association urges those policymakers to consider how increased valuations of apartment buildings will impact the price, quality and future supply of rental housing for more than half of Chicago’s residents. Any efforts to shift the burden from homeowners to other property types should not dismiss the fact that renters are taxpaying residents, too.

Civic Federation’s Laurence Msall: If members of the General Assembly are still serious about meaningful property tax reform and providing relief to taxpayers, they need to thoroughly examine the structural oddity that is Illinois government.

“This is where the high cost of goods and obtaining goods, energy prices and a tight labor market are all exacerbating cost increases that employers can’t absorb anymore and are having to push on to their customers,” said Todd Maisch, president of the Illinois Chamber

The study, released by Pew Charitable Trusts, provides an early look at the retirement plan launched in 2018 the state treasurer facilitates. Secure Choice automatically enrolls workers at Illinois businesses with at least 25 employees that do not currently offer a retirement program. Employers do not have to match the contributions.

“500 beds were let go under the prior governor, 500 residential beds,” Gov. Pritzker said. “You can’t snap your fingers and put those back it takes years to build back residential beds… If they have to lag in those facilities, while we find them a residential bed longer than any of us like, that not something any of us like.”

“There are many reasons why the last-minute budget votes benefit lawmakers. The lack of transparency makes the process less contentious, making it more difficult to mount cohesive opposition. Often, pork-barrel projects designed to help lawmakers back home are slipped quietly into the bills, and once a budget is passed into law, it becomes difficult to untangle later on.”

However, the governor also explained why he does plan to file another disaster declaration for the next month: “We’re listening to the CDC about that, and the White House, and also keeping our own counsel about the cases and hospitalizations so that we’re tracking it…We are still in a pandemic. Let’s be clear, the federal government has a disaster proclamation in place. So does the state of Illinois.”

Illinois’ top education official urged schools to stop working with police to ticket students for misbehavior, hours after an investigation by ProPublica and the Chicago Tribune revealed that schools across the state were evading laws designed to prohibit the fining of students.

In Illinois, $5.1 billion in ARP ESSER funding was awarded to the state Board of Education for its reopening plan that implemented strategies with “an emphasis on equity and diversity.” The plan provided school districts with training on topics like “anti-racism” and equity, and allocated a percentage of funds to create a statewide coalition to help school districts offer grants for projects addressing “issues pertaining to interrupted learning

Chicago allocated $293 million to mitigate negative economic effects of the pandemic and $179 million in cash transfers, job training and community violence interventions. Chicago is receiving $1.9 billion in ARPA relief after tapping $1.3 billion for budget relief to make up for lost revenues. Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s administration is using the remaining $600 million of funds along with $660 million of new general obligation borrowing to fund more than $1.2 billion of social, climate, environmental affordable housing, violence prevention, homeless reduction, economic, health and other infrastructure investments.

The Illinois Section of the American Society of Civil Engineers graded the state on everything from roads to drinking water. Since the last time the report was released was 2018, there were some improvements. Roads and transit went from a D to D-plus, dams went from C to C-plus and inland waterways from D-minus to D.

The budget package lawmakers approved in the early morning hours on the final day of session earlier this month creates the Statewide 9-8-8 Trust Fund. The Department of Human Services will use the fund to establish and maintain a suicide prevention and mental health crisis system. To fund the new 9-8-8 program, the budget transfers $5 million from the Statewide 9-1-1 Fund.

Illinois ranks among the biggest producers of soybeans in the country. U.S. Department of Agriculture data showed the state to be the largest producer of soybeans in 2021, producing over 672 million bushels. Illinois is currently fourth among all states in biodiesel production and third in consumption with around 160 million gallons consumed annually.

While demand for employees and a large pool of still-unemployed workers will likely be enough to continue driving Illinois’ current labor market recovery, population decline – particularly among those of prime working-age – threatens the long-term stability of the state’s labor market.

Three separate lawsuits, filed by the states and environmental groups Thursday in New York and California, ask judges to order a more thorough environmental review before the Postal Service moves forward with the next-generation delivery vehicle program. Plaintiffs contend that purchases of fossil fuel-powered delivery vehicles will cause environmental harm for decades to come.

“It’s not like we lock people up who are innocent, awaiting trial,” Will County State’s Attorney James Glasgow said. “I do everything I can to make certain that if I can’t prove a case beyond a reasonable doubt, I dismiss it.”

Jim Dey: “(Mike) Madigan, of course, doesn’t have much to do with (Secretary of State candidate Alexi) Giannoulias’ primary campaign against Chicago City Clerk Anna Valencia. But in a contest with no real issues, he must figure being seen as anti-Madigan is more effective than promising winter-resilient license plates.”

Rounding out the Top 4 are diffraction gratings used in VR glasses made in Champaign, spacecraft parts for the Orion Capsule made in Rockford and the snack Fruit by the Foot manufactured in Belvidere.

Pritzker paid for his own flight; Intersect Illinois, a nonprofit business and economic development group funded by an Illinois state grant, paid for the flights of five members of Pritzker’s staff to attend the conference. Pritzker and his staff members also attended business meetings with trade groups, electric vehicle companies and officials from CME Group and BP Pulse

“The bottom line is that growing up without a father is a huge factor in America’s violence problem and one that needs to be addressed. The state laid the groundwork with the creation of the Illinois Council on Responsible Fatherhood in 2004, 18 years before Florida signed its bill. It’s high time that Illinois commits to funding it.”

Among them, the Better School Lunches Act removes the requirement that certain school districts must accept food-service agency contracts based on the lowest price bid and puts tax dollars to work to request that schools make a good-faith effort to increase purchasing of food and services from local, healthy, humane and sustainable businesses in Illinois.

So far, the state is on track to exceed last year’s haul, but the rate of growth has somewhat plateaued. Industry experts say this is in part due to the tax structure of legal products, which incentivizes some to obtain their weed through illicit street sales. The growth of new dispensaries has also been stalled due to a slew of lawsuits over the lottery process for awarding new licenses.

Across Illinois, police are ticketing thousands of students a year for in-school adolescent behavior once handled only by the principal’s office — for littering, for making loud noises, for using offensive words or gestures, for breaking a soap dish in the bathroom. Another state law prohibits schools from notifying police when students are truant so officers can ticket them. But the investigation found dozens of school districts routinely fail to follow this law.

In Illinois, the estimated cost of living for a family of four stands at $86,153 for 2022, slightly lower than the national average and the 17th highest among states.

The nuclear bailout was expected to cost ComEd ratepayers $700 million over five years, but rising energy prices combined with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have suddenly made the three nuclear plants more profitable.

State Rep. Jackie Haas: ” It was more clear this year than in the years before that Democrats wanted to pass this budget under cover of the night and without input from Republican legislators. This budget might be the most blatant political budget we’ve ever seen.”

State Rep. Charles Meier said Gov. JB Pritzker has not done what he promised. “There are innocent children dying because of this administration and their lack of taking ownership of this problem. He said he was going to change this three and half years ago and where are the changes?”

“Teachers are fleeing the profession in record numbers with each passing year, and requiring them to teach against their values is a major reason why,” Regional Office of Education No. 11 Superintendent Kyle Thompson told the Illinois State Board of Education during a public comment period last week.

“There’s no political speech involved there, at all,” Gov. JB Pritzker said. “And, here’s what we’re doing. We’re lowering the impact on people of the rise in prices of gas all across the world, but lowering the impact for the people here in Illinois.” Asked why there wasn’t a required sticker for when the gas tax doubled in 2019, Pritzker didn’t respond.

Two bills on Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s desk would spend $20 million to add license plate monitoring cameras to 6,600 miles of highways in 22 counties. While lawmakers argue the bills could assist in the investigation and prosecution of crimes, the Illinois State Police note they have been unable to quantify the number of crimes solved by the cameras during the Cook County pilot program.

School district consolidation is an issue throughout Illinois, which has 852 school districts and nearly half of those districts serve only one or two schools.  As a result of all that duplication, Illinois leads the nation in administrative overhead.

Households and small businesses that get their power from Commonwealth Edison will be unprotected from commodity price spikes in the high-demand summer months unless state regulators take fast action. For the first time in the 14 years since the state took over the job from utilities of negotiating with power generators, the Illinois Power Agency was unable to reach an agreement on an electricity price in northern Illinois for the entire months of July and August, as well as part of June.

“Although lawmakers met mainly via Zoom the past year or so, and the Illinois credit rating remains lower than any other state in the nation, legislators gave themselves a raise of $2,700…Which begs the question: Why do so many Illinois lawmakers continue to be grifters and find themselves targets of federal probes? Perhaps it is inbred in our state’s political system, but corruption is always mentioned as one of the reasons residents vote with their moving vans and leave Illinois.”

According to an analysis by the Illinois Policy Institute, a complicated tax system and restrictive licensing has cut into the state’s revenue stream.

Every child born or adopted in Illinois after Dec. 31 will receive a college savings account managed by the State Treasurer’s Office with a $50 starting deposit under the Higher Education Savings Program. Three years after the Illinois General Assembly first passed the program in 2019, legislators allocated $2.5 million to fund it.

Senator Dave Syverson says Medicaid for undocumented immigrants won’t be funded by the federal government. Therefore, legal citizens will have to cover the bill through state taxes.

Officials said the bills will simplify the licensing process for educators, lower licensing fees and create more opportunities for prospective educators.

According to Illinois Realtors, statewide home sales were down 9.2% in March compared to February.

“Illinois is diverse in every sense of the word as defined in the DNC’s April resolution: racially, ethnically and geographically — that is Illinois has rural, urban, suburban and exurban voters —in a state that stretches from Wisconsin on the north to Kentucky on the south. That Illinois is a union stronghold will also be part of the argument Democrats in Illinois will make, since organized labor — from the public unions to the trades — is a backbone of the Democratic Party.”

Seven other Starbucks locations in Illinois, including six in Chicago, have also filed for a union vote. They are part of a larger, nationwide wave of Starbucks unionizations that began when a location in Buffalo, New York, voted in December to become the first unionized Starbucks café in the U.S.

One of the provisions that worries law enforcement officials the most is the ending of cash bail Jan. 1. One state’s attorney said. “With this new law, our hands will be tied. What sane citizen in this state of Illinois would want the state’s attorney’s hands tied, the police hands tied, and give all the perks going to violent offenders. That’s what this law does.”

State Sen. John Connor said, “HB4316 is a follows-up last year’s Faith’s Law, which expanded the definition of grooming to educator-related situations not covered in criminal law. In a situation where a prosecution does not occur for a predatory teacher, this permits those school districts to track that information and share it with other districts.”

The bills received the backing of ISP, the state’s attorney general and broad majorities in the legislature. But civil liberties advocates and lawmakers from each party aired concerns about potential misuse of the cameras, a lack of clarity regarding how camera placements will be chosen, and that an individual would be prohibited from accessing their own camera footage via the Freedom of Information Act.

“Take the welcome increase in bond ratings. How good does it look in the context of the state’s financial standing? Wirepoints financial analyst Ted Dabrowski notes, ‘Illinois still needs 19 more credit upgrades just to get its rating back to where it was in 2009.'”

The bill extends the current B10 sales tax exemption until 2023 and then increases the biodiesel blend level subject to the tax exemption to B13 in 2024, B15 in 2025 and B19 in 2026.

Pritzker’s administration set aside more than $50 million from the COVID stimulus funds for violence prevention in the budget that passed last year. The funding, to be administered through the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority, offered a unique opportunity to flood resources into neighborhoods impacted by violence. But with the fiscal year almost over, the state has spent only $56,764, one-tenth of 1% of the money, as Illinois experiences its worst gun violence in decades.

Illinois spends 23% less on higher education than it did in 2007. University pension spending grew by 510% in that time. It doesn’t take a math major to see why tuition has increased 46%, making the average in-state tuition in Illinois the fifth-most expensive in the nation and the highest in the Midwest.

Illinois’ 15% increase was less pronounced than the 34% national increase, the state’s 53 documented instances marked the highest total in recent history. An ADL spokesman said college campuses have increasingly become hotbeds for white supremacist and antisemitic flyering campaigns, including at the University of Illinois-Champaign-Urbana, the University of Illinois-Chicago and the University of Chicago.

Said Dick Simpson, a political scientist at the University of Illinois Chicago, “Gubernatorial campaigns have gone from being $20 million campaigns to $100 million campaigns. To be successful, a candidate now needs to raise at least tens of millions. And much of that is spent on negative advertising. It’s a new phenomenon.”

Jim Nowlan: “That’s The Deal: A good, prestigious job, with a great pension, all in return for turning a blind eye to Lady Justice on those infrequent political cases that affect the party and its interests, such as pensions, term limits and gerrymandering. Most wannabe jurists consider it worth the trade. They wouldn’t be offered the judgeship if they didn’t.”

When a group of Democratic state senators joined Republicans in rejecting two of Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s nominees to the Illinois Prisoner Review Board last month, it became clear that crime has become such a big issue in this year’s elections it is even driving some divisions within the governor’s own political party. How a little-known state board became a flashpoint for controversy also demonstrates how much has changed about politics and crime in just a few short years.

Among the 17 states where population declined over the year, losses were greatest in New York (-1.58%), Illinois (-0.89%), Hawaii (-0.71%) and California (-0.66%). Losses in these states were driven by people moving away.

Illinois House Republican Leader Jim Durkin stated, “The Governor has had three and a half years to get this agency under control – he owns this ongoing tragedy. Since the Governor has failed to take action, I call on Director Smith to resign for the good of the children in this state.”

According to a survey by the Illinois Association of Regional Superintendents of Schools, 90% of Illinois schools are currently experiencing staffing shortages.

“And only 5% think it will subside within the next six months,” said Joe Wall, of 10,000 Small Businesses Voices for Goldman Sachs. “So, there’s not a whole lot of optimism about the near future in terms of it getting any better.”

“Office space affordability is expensive, labor costs are more, and corporate taxes are very high there, all three of those things make it a little bit harder to run a business there,” analyst Jill Gonzalez said.

“The incentive is $1,500, which puts Illinois in line with what other states have done already,” ABATE of Illinois’ Josh Witkowski said. “There’s about eleven other states that have electric motorcycle incentives out there… It also prioritizes low income applicants.”

Illinois is not considering lifting its mandate for hospitals and other health care settings “at the moment,” said spokeswoman Jordan Abudayyeh. “We would mandate it anyway,” said Dr. Richard Freeman, regional chief clinical officer for Loyola Medicine. “Anybody in the hospital, all our personnel are still masked, visitors still have to be masked. That is not going to change in the foreseeable future.”

“Everyone knows that one of the biggest issues is inflation. One of those areas that hits the hardest is at the gas pump. There’s no question it’s an election gimmick,” said Sen. Steve McClure.

This bill is a part of larger reform for the agency that many representatives are hoping for. Sen. Doris Turner said she wants to take a legislative and administrative approach to reform the agency. Partially, this means adding more laws protecting and supporting the agency, she said, but it also includes reforming the way the agency operates.

The economic tracker from Harvard University shows that as of January this year, total small business revenue decreased by nearly 5% compared to 2020 in Illinois with more than 10% fewer small businesses across all sectors in that same timeframe.

“Mike Madigan is responsible more than anyone else for forging the state’s complex and costly energy policy during his 36 years in power. Energy bills are one of the focal points of the corruption probe into Madigan’s tenure.”

“Democrats have a long tradition of actually being responsible with taxpayer dollars, though Republicans have done a much better job of portraying themselves as the fiscal watchdogs,” Senate President Don Harmon said. “But I think our actions speak louder than their words, and our balanced budget this year is the best that I’ve seen in 20 years.”

Said Mike Abrahamson, policy manager at the Partnership for College Completion, “Basically, in Illinois, right now we’re one of the few states that for the vast majority, I think 99.5%, of our funding is given out based heavily on how we gave it out last year, not necessarily on a system that considers what students adequately need to succeed. How can we turn the system from being one of the few in the country that really doesn’t have much of a system behind it to potentially leading the country in terms of equity?”

Commercial building permits through less than four months of 2022 (79) are almost half of last year’s total for the year (172). Many of those are in manufacturing that have a greater economic impact.

During the Illinois State Board of Education’s April hearing last week, Shannon Adcock from the parents’ rights group Awake Illinois told board members they’re on notice. “With two years of failed pandemic policies and an abysmal state schools report card, classroom activism and socialism is replacing academics and worrisome mental health stats of our youth. A sleeping giant has awakened, and we go by moms and dads.”

In Racine County, Wisconsin, home to some 350 industrial firms, two local economic-development groups have combined efforts to roll out a promotion dubbed the Digital Manufacturing Campaign. Its aim is to draw skilled manufacturing workers from the nearby greater Chicago area. Workers in the Windy City are a tempting target because Illinois manufacturing employment, after a steep decline in 2020, remained flat last year.

Crowe has represented the 56th District in the Metro East region since 2019; She had served as an Assistant State’s Attorney in Madison County for 12 years before joining the Senate. Her Madison County based district has trended slightly more conservative in recent years, and her redrawn district left her considered one of the most vulnerable Democrats in the Senate this fall.

The hottest job markets in America are in five different states, but they have a lot in common. They’re in midsize cities, all with a population under 2.3 million. They’re in states with fairly low income taxes, or none at all. And their climates allow for outdoor activities all year round. They are: Austin, Texas; Nashville, Tenn.; Raleigh, N.C.; Salt Lake City; and Jacksonville, Fla. Larger cities remained at the bottom of the rankings this year. New York took 41st place, Chicago was 40th and Los Angeles was 26th.

A total of 769 school districts are slated to be reimbursed for the shortfall, which officials with the Illinois State Board of Education attributed to a coding error dating back to the launch of Evidence-Based Funding for Student Success Act, which was signed into law by former Gov. Bruce Rauner in August 2017.

Dr. David Nayak, who runs the Strength to Love outreach clinic in Chicago, says Chicago is on track to see over 60 children die from gun violence in 2022. But this crisis not only affects Chicago. “For example, in Peoria, Illinois in 2021, five children under the age of 17 were killed by gun violence. And in East St. Louis, seven children were killed.”

Sens. Tony Muñoz of Chicago, an assistant majority leader, and Steve Landek, who doubles as mayor of Bridgeview, withdrew their names from the June 28 primary ballot, each likely clearing the way for their political allies to take over the respective seats. Neither Muñoz nor Landek has been accused of any wrongdoing.

City Manager Dan Langloss said if the city was already at 100% funding the cities pension payment would be at $500,000. The hard truth is the cities payment this year is $2.5 million and it is fast approaching $3 million. Langloss said the city, even with the economic growth, cannot afford to pay that much yearly.

House Bill 4316 will require superintendents to notify school boards and parents when there is a sexual misconduct allegation found to be supported. It will make schools do employee history reviews on new hires to be sure a teacher who was fired from a school for sexual misconduct isn’t trying to move to another district.

Among them, House Bill 4365 would allow school districts to provide funding for a student’s out-of-state placement, and HB 4677 allow the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District’s Board of Commissioners the authority to consider approving issuance of Pension Obligation Bonds.

There is new legislation requiring water utilities to notify health-care and senior living facilities of water supply disruptions that could lead to water quality problems, such as legionella and other pathogens.

Jeffrey Mears was one of six members to leave the Prisoner Review Board in recent weeks after the appointment process came under scrutiny by Republican members of the Senate.

And while Medicaid bills are traditionally worked out in a bipartisan “working group,” this one drew strong opposition from Republicans because the language about noncitizens had never been discussed in any public hearing or working group meeting.

By county, the unemployment rate decreased in 101 counties and increased in one.

The jobless rate in the Springfield area last month was 4.5 percent… down from 4.8 in February, and nearly two full percentage points lower than the 6.4 percent rate in March of 2021.

“To be frank, it’s an election year when everybody’s up,” said Sen. Robert Peters. “I think for both sides, that meant there was a real picking and choosing about which ones were going to be the fights.”

“(F)igures tabulated by (Kent) Redfield from statewide political campaign records show that between 2013 and 2022, Pritzer and Griffin have contributed more than half a billion dollars to political campaigns and causes. Let that sink in. Two men spent half a billion bucks for political campaigns…That includes governors races and statewide constitutional offices in 2014 and 2018; Chicago’s mayoral races in 2015 and 2019; state legislative races in 2014, 2016, 2018, and 2020; the 2020 fair tax amendment fight; and the 2020 Thomas Kilbride Supreme Court retention race.”

A 2019 law championed by Gov. JB Pritzker seeks to combine more than 600 local public safety pension funds into two funds. However, his plans are being delayed by a pending circuit court lawsuit and mistrust about shifting local funds to a state entity, particularly among the police pension plans.

The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has approved a policy that will require faculty to contribute to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion efforts to earn tenure or a promotion. For now, it’s optional. In a few years, it’s a requirement, according to a policy dated March 26. This effectively institutionalizes coerced speech.

Spokesperson Paul Wappel says the state spent $41 million last year to clean up all that trash that piled up on Illinois’ roads.

Chicago and Illinois have more lead line connections to homes than any other city or state and, though it’s been a known problem for years, replacement has been slow. Officials have said the costs are too high for state and local governments to complete so many replacements.

The one thing business owners believe could derail it all would be new COVID restrictions. But, while inflation will impact everyone traveling this summer, businesses hope the worst is behind them.

“We have a much better idea today of what we need to do as a state to be prepared for surges if they should occur,” Pritzker said. “We also know how to mitigate the surges much better than we did in the last two years. That’s gonna allow us to avoid the devastating impacts, as long as those surges aren’t higher than we’ve ever seen before, which I don’t expect them to be.”

Mark Konkol: “Every four years, the Democratic Party suddenly decides to care about Illinois’ working-class poor, neglected minority neighborhoods and forgotten farm towns. After the votes are counted on election day, the political survivors hike taxes and hope we forget four years later when they concoct a budget that puts cash in the hands of voters — if they have the votes to pull it off. This year, thanks to Madigan’s supermajority, the cycle continues.”

The party primary is June 28.

Ted Dabrowski, in an article for Illinois Policy in 2016, said dictating how transportation funds can be spent has no place in the Illinois Constitution. “The Illinois Constitution’s purpose is to spell out the fundamental rights of citizens and the basic operational structure of government,” he wrote. “It’s not supposed to legislate or appropriate.”

State Sen. Jason Barickman told the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University, “The analogy would be, we had a gaping wound on our leg that was hemorrhaging, and I think it has been bandaged well, but it is not healing.”

Since 2020, mental health-related issues are on the rise, especially among young people, after many children were left to stay inside and away from other people during the pandemic. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, mental health-related visits are up by 24% since 2020 for children ages 5 to 11, while visits by children ages 12 to 17 have gone up 31%.

“It plays to all of the public’s worst fears,” Sen. Jason Barickman said of the late-night legislating, noting lawmakers were making major decisions with little information on little rest.

Gov. JB Pritzker credited the upgrade to the recently passed $46 billion state operating budget, and the fact that the state dedicated an added $500 million to its pension system and retired $900 million in other interest-accruing health insurance debts.

Said Josh Sharp, CEO of the Illinois Fuel & Retail Association, “This whole ploy to force our members into posting these signs just shows you how scared some in Springfield are and some of those that are running statewide in November are for perhaps being blamed for those high gas prices. And frankly, they should be blamed.”

The services were terminated as of 2018 due to financial cuts. Over the four years, the Mattoon Fire Department took their case to the Appellate Court and ultimately found a substitution clause which forced the city into reinstating the service.

Juvenile Court Judge and former Cook County Public Guardian Patrick Murphy found Smith in contempt of court in a case involving a 15-year-old boy who has been held at a psychiatric facility even after it was determined to no longer be medically necessary as of Jan. 31, 2022. DCFS also is accused of failing for months to get a neuropsychological exam done for the boy’s special needs.

State Rep. Deanne Mazzochi, said it is time to put an end to the shady dealings involved with these cameras. “How many indictments is it going to take for either the Pritzker administration to act at IDOT or the legislature to act in the General Assembly to finally say enough is enough.”

“I am signing on as a plaintiff because my family has been so negatively impacted by teachers’ strikes and work refusals,” CPS mother of four Sarah Sachen said. “Amendment 1 poses a danger to my family; more CTU strikes would mean a deeper learning loss for my children and further burdens for me.”

Lawsuits have prevented the state from handing out the new licenses, which continue to keep social equity applicants on the outside. And on top of it all, the State of Illinois just asked Victoria Williams of ACC Illinois for $10,000 more to renew the license she’s never used.

The state reimburses local governments for projects and doesn’t provide the money upfront. Because it often takes more than one year to complete a project, appropriations are included across multiple budgets.

Michael Jacobson of the Illinois Hotel and Lodging Association said, “Our two major asks were the hotel jobs recovery and the unemployment insurance trust fund. I know there is more still to be done, we still have left a pretty good-sized hole.”

Gov. J.B. Pritzker acknowledged more needs to be done with Illinois’ high property taxes. “We’re gonna continue to work on that,” Pritzker said. “I think that there are a lot of proposals that have been made that we ought to work on getting through.” A sustained complaint from city halls and school districts is unfunded state mandates.

Senate Bill 3144 sets up a government task force to investigate the implementation of universal representation for covered individuals in immigration removal proceedings. It passed earlier this month.

In total, lawmakers’ base salaries have increased 8% under Pritzker, and they will be earning a minimum $73,345 a year when the new budget starts July 1. The U.S. average for state lawmaker pay is $34,348.

Illinois has the lowest number of marijuana-related business licenses per capita of any legal state. Additionally, Illinois’ cannabis taxes are the third highest on average and because of complex multi-layer taxation can be the highest for some products.

“As for Illinois, the stakes are high. Due in no small part to the fiscal mess and its accompanying high taxes, Illinois has been bleeding population…Political spin will not cure what ails Illinois. Recovering from the state government’s well-deserved reputation for fiscal ineptitude will take time, discipline and, unfortunately, taxpayer pain.”

“Some of the things that create issues for manufacturers are the long term [public employee] pension debt and what that means for their bills,” said Mark Denzler, president of the Illinois Manufacturers’ Association. “We have higher than average costs for property taxes and for workers’ compensation.” There’s no reason Illinois shouldn’t be the national leader, he said, but manufacturers want stability and some of Illinois’ policies don’t help.

Scott Reeder: “How much fuel should be taxed is a valid public-policy debate. But instead of making a tough call on reducing state revenue and bringing gas taxes down to be in line with other states, our lawmakers chose a flimsy fig leaf of a sticker to cover their culpability in making Illinois one of the most expensive places in the nation to fill up.”

The lawsuit alleges that the cartel dates back to a partnership in 2014 between Mike McClain, co-defendant in Mike Madigan’s corruption case, former U.S. Capitol Police Chief Terrance Gainer and Green Thumb Industries CEO Benjamin Kovler, heir to the Jim Beam alcohol fortune. That partnership evolved into a larger group, which includes Akerna, a publicly traded cannabis software company controlled by the Pritzker family, according to the suit.

“Illinois has miles to go before we can consider our marijuana markets equitable and live up to all the program’s promises, but each batch of monthly reports shows we’re clearly a customer destination. Not a bad deal, even if those folks don’t buy gas when they’re in town.”

According to ISBE, Illinois schools still have more than 2,100 unfilled teaching positions. The data shows that these remaining vacancies are concentrated in chronically struggling schools, underfunded schools, and schools serving low-income communities.

Illinois lawmakers passed a law in 2021 that openly defied NCAA rules, allowing athletes in the state to profit off endorsements. The group behind the bill thought they were putting Illinois at the forefront of the NIL trend. And they did — for a day. One day after Governor Pritzker signed the bill, the NCAA lifted all of their amateurism rules. It was a free for all.

The Ban Secret Deals coalition is calling on state and local officials to introduce legislation similar to state Sen. Robert Peters’ Honesty in Economic Development Act to put an end to the secret deals. Peters’ legislation stalled in committee during the spring legislative session.

“Lots of politicians employ policy gimmicks in election years, but Illinois has turned the practice into a high art.”

In December, the Illinois Legislature passed new rules that require all fees to be split evenly between the local bars and the “terminal operators” – the companies that own and supply the gambling machines. “The only guy who gets hurt on this, or the only business to get hurt, are our small businesses. The ones who weathered the storm of the pandemic,” Councilman Sid Ruckriegel said.

Local municipalities retain the right to establish their own mitigations, including masking requirements on public transportation, the governor’s office said.

Josh Sharp with the Illinois Fuel and Retail Association said their board voted Tuesday to file a lawsuit. He said there’s a place for signs about fire safety or octane ratings, but the speech compelled by the law Pritzker signed “is of a different sort” during an election year. “…(A)nd to us, again, forcing retailers to post those signs under the threats of fines or penalties is unconstitutional.”

“Our plans and our mitigations are in place as they have been, we want to encourage local governments and businesses to take actions that they think will keep their patrons, their local residents safe,” Pritzker said. “We’re going to continue to report on how we’re doing as a state very importantly so that people can take the mitigation measures home and decide for themselves how they want to operate.”

Politics aside, Adam Schuster with Illinois Policy Institute said the budget doesn’t do anything to bring structural reforms like changing the state’s pension system, something he says takes about a quarter of every tax dollar the state brings in. “So throwing more money at a black hole of debt is not the way to solve Illinois’ pension crisis.”

Senate Bill 3023 passed both chambers unanimously and would allow for reimbursement by the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services’ Sexual Assault Emergency Treatment Program if a victim of a sexual assault chooses not to share that assault with their medical provider.

The content of the signs isn’t quite as important as the message being delivered to Illinois’ gas station owners: “Push our campaign agenda, or we’ll treat you like a criminal and fine you $500 per day.”

Crossing the state line is the difference between paying the nation’s second-highest and second-lowest gas taxes. And for Illinois gas station owners near state lines, it means losing business. “It’s like a tale of two cities,” said Robert Forsyth, president of MotoMart Inc. “Missouri is doing quite well in terms of fuel demand. And Illinois is doing quite poorly.”

Civics teacher Froylan Jimenez: “A former Illinois state senator-turned-U.S.-president once said: ‘A budget is more than just a series of numbers on a page; it is an embodiment of our values.’ This statement captures the fiscal decisions the Illinois General Assembly has taken recently.”

A statement from ILGOP Chairman Don Tracy reads, in part, ” What Pritzker’s budget doesn’t do is give permanent tax relief to overtaxed Illinoisans, fully replenish the unemployment trust fund, or construct a path to budget stability for when the federal bailout cash runs out soon.”