Kentucky-based Churchill Downs Inc. completed its $326 million acquisition of a majority stake in Rivers Casino in Des Plaines despite state gambling regulators concerns that the new ownership group does not include enough women and minorities.
The Illinois Gaming Board gave its initial approval of the sale on March 1, pending the execution of final documents to seal the transaction. At the time, board members said they wanted Churchill Downs to make a “good faith effort” to bring in more women and minority investors over the next 90 days so they would comprise up to 10 percent of the ownership interest.
Gaming board officials confirmed this week the transaction was finalized June 4, despite the fact that there had been no stock sales to female and minority investors, something that had been a statutory condition of granting the original license in 2008 to a consortium that included Midwest Gaming and Entertainment LLC, Rush Street Gaming LLC, and a Canadian private equity firm, Clairvest Group Inc.
During a June 13 meeting in Chicago, Illinois Gaming Board Chairman Donald Tracy said that even though the deal had closed, he wanted the board to continue reviewing the transaction and to take up the issue again at the board’s next meeting Aug. 1. […]
Tracy made that comment during what turned out to be his final meeting as a member of the board. He has since resigned and Gov. J.B. Pritzker has accepted his resignation.
The governor also signed his support for consolidating the more than 630 municipal public safety pension funds to increase investment returns and save money. He said those funds are missing out on higher returns.
“Best practice is to have one pool of assets from which you’re investing collectively,” Pritzker said. “You can get into much better investment vehicles and do better.”
[Rep. Mark Batinick, R-Plainfield] said municipal police and fire pension costs contribute to the state’s second-highest-in-the-nation property taxes.
“The increased cost at the local level for local pensions dramatically increases property taxes,” Batinick said. “So if you’re going to attract business, if you’re going to grow the economy, if you’re going to stop bleeding people out of the state, you’re going to need to attack from all angles.”
Batinick said consolidation of local police and fire pension funds is much more realistic through legislative action than trying to amend the state constitution’s pension-protection clause to reduce owed benefits.
Pritzker said he’s formed a pension consolidation task force, but it has yet to produce a report.
“They’re doing really outstanding work behind the scenes to deliver to me recommendations that I hope will lead to some legislation,” Pritzker said.
Several bills promoted by the Illinois Municipal League over the past few legislative sessions to consolidate public safety pension funds have failed to advance out of the legislature.
* The Daily Line’s A.D. Quig has been at the Cook County Democrats’ pre-slating session almost all day. Her Twitter thread is worth a read, but this one stuck out for our purposes…
We're still on Circuit candidates. Audrey Cosgrove, a native SW Sider, paints a vignette of growing up near House Speaker Mike Madigan, seeing him bringing starched shirts home + a precinct captain carrying an elderly neighbor down the stairs so they could make it to vote (!).
In a recent story published in the Indianapolis Business Journal, Patrick DeHaan, of the cost analyst company Gas Buddy, speculated that come the first of July, many Illinois motorists will make the short trip to Indiana to take advantage of lower fuel costs.
The Hoosier State charges a 29 cent per gallon fuel tax, which is 9 cents per gallon less than the per gallon tax Illinois is about to impose. […]
Two of those places stand to be the neighboring Indiana towns of Morocco and Kentland. For many of us, these towns can be reached in 30 minutes or less by car, and a bit more investment in time will be justified by the cash savings.
Morocco, Indiana is 34.4 miles from the Daily Journal’s office. Figure the miles per gallon at 27 (much less if you drive a pickup) and that’s a bit more than 2.5 gallons of gas round trip.
I couldn’t find gas prices for Morocco, but according to DeHaan’s Gas Buddy, just to the south in Kentland the best price is $2.67 per gallon - 20 cents more per gallon than the price at Kankakee’s Murphy USA truck stop.
If you think it’s worth it to spend over an hour of your precious time (actually closer to two hours with the stop) and $6.68 in gas to save $1.80 in Motor Fuel Tax (plus a few cents more on sales tax) on a 20-gallon fill-up (for gas, by the way, which might still be more expensive than at the Murphy USA station), then, by all means, be my guest.
* Way back in 1976, DCFS entered into a consent decree that was designed to make sure Latinx kids in the state’s foster parent system had caregivers and social workers who spoke Spanish. You can click here for some background on the Burgos Consent Decree.
But the agency has never gotten its act together. And more than 40 years later, DCFS is still not in compliance. ProPublica Illinois…
The agency’s records show nearly 300 possible Burgos violations since 2005. That number is almost certainly an undercount because basic information about a case, including race, ethnicity and language preferences, frequently has been unreliable and, in some instances, was deliberately falsified by staffers.
DCFS cannot provide a consistent count of children of Spanish-speaking parents who are currently in foster homes where Spanish is not spoken. The agency initially provided data that showed more than 50 children in recent placements that could violate the consent decree.
DCFS spokesman Jassen Strokosch later said there were only two violations. In May, he said the agency performed a case-by-case review and reported that the correct figure was fewer than 25.
Finally, this week, Strokosch acknowledged “difficulties providing accurate numbers.” He added that now, “from top to bottom, we’re looking at better ways to do that reporting.”
Some placements may appear to violate Burgos but don’t because the agency might have prioritized other factors, such as the medical needs of the child, above language, he said. Other placements may violate agency policy but not Burgos, because the consent decree covers families in the Chicago area but DCFS policy applies the order statewide.
Still, Strokosch said, complying with Burgos and ensuring that Spanish-speaking families across Illinois receive services in their own language is a priority of DCFS acting director Marc Smith, who was appointed to the position in April by Gov. J.B. Pritzker. Smith is the agency’s 13th leader in the last decade. […]
For an agency that has long struggled with high-profile child deaths and crushing caseloads, it’s easy to see how Burgos has been ignored, said Rubén Castillo, chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois and the first federal court monitor on the consent decree. DCFS, he said, has been so overwhelmed by responding to crises that it has not prioritized issues specific to Latinos, who make up just 8% of the more than 16,000 children in state care.
It’s a long story, but it’s definitely worth a read.
* Some would obviously disagree with his assessment, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see what happens…
After winning passage of a state budget and an infrastructure plan that rely on hundreds of millions of dollars in increased taxes and fees, Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Wednesday made the case to a group of business leaders that his “rational, pragmatic, progressive agenda” is good for Illinois’ economy.
Pritzker, an investor and billionaire heir to the Hyatt hotels fortune, rankled many in the business community when he began his term by signing into law a statewide minimum wage increase and proposing a host of taxes to fill the state’s gaping budget hole. The new governor’s signature policy initiative — shifting the state from its constitutionally mandated flat-rate income tax to a graduated rate structure — also has received strong pushback from pro-business groups.
The governor told a lunchtime gathering of the Executives’ Club of Chicago that he doesn’t see any tension between his Democratic political beliefs and his experience as an entrepreneur and investor.
“I’m a businessman. I’m a progressive. I’m a believer in growing the economy and lifting up people’s wages,” Pritzker said.
Love him or hate him, you have to admit that Pritzker has completely changed the direction of this state. The $15 an hour minimum wage, a possible graduated income tax, legal cannabis, legal sports betting and expanded gaming opportunities, strengthened abortion laws, big tax hikes to fund a $45 billion capital program, etc., etc., etc. Bruce Rauner had equally transformational ideas (in much the opposite direction), but Pritzker actually got his done (except the graduated tax, which is now up to the voters).
On state policies overall, he said there’s no tension between being progressive and being business friendly.
“It’s not the public sector that creates jobs, it’s the private sector that creates jobs,” Pritzker said. “You can be a progressive and believe that and know that the job of government is to create an environment for all of you to succeed in the private sector.”
One example Pritzker noted was the increase of the state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour over five years. He said special, yet temporary, tax credits for small businesses will ease the cost burden.
American’s For Prosperity Illinois State Director Andrew Nelms said the best way to increase wages is to allow the free market to prosper.
“Look to states where there’s a tight labor market and you’ll see that businesses are having to pay higher and higher wages, and offer higher wages and better incentives in order to attract and retain employees,” he said. “So rather than government by fiat dictating what businesses ought to be doing, government ought to be creating a level playing field where all businesses have the same opportunity.”
The population of Cook County and six nearby suburban counties grew older and less white in the last year, reflecting broader national trends, according to new demographic information from the U.S. Census Bureau.
Across the nation, more than 80% of counties grew older in the past year as the large baby boomer generation continues to age, according to a news release accompanying the new estimates for 2018. In all seven counties analyzed by the Tribune — Cook, Lake, McHenry, DuPage, Kane, Kendall and Will — the median age increased.
The percentage of white, non-Hispanic residents, meanwhile, decreased in those seven counties, though non-Hispanic whites continued to hold a majority in all Illinois counties except Cook.
Kane County had the second-lowest percentage of non-Hispanic white residents in the state, at 57%. There, Hispanic residents of all races made up nearly a third of the population. That group grew by 8%, or 13,487 people, since 2010, the census data shows.
Nationally, non-Hispanic whites represented 60.4 percent of the population in 2018, the Census Bureau reported. That’s down from 60.8 percent the previous year, as the white population shrank by 152,386 people.
From 2010 to 2018, [Cook County’s] African American population fell by 5.8% from 1,311,698 million to 1,236,170 — a loss of over 75,000 people.
Cook County’s white population also fell for the fourth year in a row, with the loss of about 21,000 people — a drop of 0.6%. […]
The Asian population, for one, has steadily increased. In 2018, the county’s Asian population reached 408,151. That was up more than 75,000 compared to 2010.
Hispanics also increased, with 78,000 more county residents since the 2010 census — a gain of more than 6%. That growth has slowed, however, to a modest 0.3% from 2017 to 2018.
…Adding… Press release…
Building on a record investment of $29 million for the 2020 Census, Governor JB Pritzker signed an executive order cementing the state’s comprehensive effort to ensure an accurate count in all communities across Illinois.
“In this year’s budget, we committed $29 million to prepare and execute the census in Illinois. That’s by far the largest per-person investment made in any state in the nation,” said Gov. JB Pritzker. “These resources will go directly to outreach and education, with grants to community organizations across the state engaged in this work, particularly in our hard-to-count communities. This executive order will also establish a Census Office within our Department of Human Services to lead this effort and a Census Advisory Panel to guide its work. This is an aggressive effort because that is what the work ahead requires.”
Recognizing that a Census undercount could threaten Illinois’ representation in Congress and its share of federal funding, Executive Order 19-10 establishes a new Census Office within the Illinois Department of Human Services and a bipartisan, bicameral Census Advisory Panel to guide its work.
The Census Office will administer grant funding and conduct outreach and education to ensure an accurate and complete count. Led by two co-coordinators, the office will use the full force of all state agencies and departments to complete its work. The Department of Human Services will file public reports online on a monthly basis to detail its budget, expenditures and distributions of funds to organizations throughout Illinois.
The Census Advisory Panel is made up of 12 members appointed by the governor and legislative leaders and will focus its efforts on “hard to count” communities. Specifically, it will advise the Census Office on drafting and ensuring a wide distribution of the Notice of Funding Opportunity, coordinating with the Illinois Complete Count Commission and ensuring all communities receive communications during the 2020 Census.
The executive order follows a record $29 million investment for census implementation, the largest per-person allocation made in any state in the nation. It was appropriated in the Fiscal Year 2020 budget, which was signed into law on June 5, 2019.
Illinois has 102 counties, so that patchwork of regulations is bad enough. But imagine the potential problems if 1,432 townships step in with their own rules.
Construction crews are already heading to Douglas County, where board members voted Wednesday in favor of giving EDP Renewables a permit to build a 48-turbine wind-farm complex.
Within hours of the long-awaited vote, EDP officials said the work to upgrade public roads to handle the construction activity is expected to begin within the next couple of weeks.
“I think the board in general is just relieved that we have come to this point, and I honestly think that all of us feel like our vote was the right vote,” board Chairman Don Munson said soon after Wednesday’s 5-1-1 vote, which brought a relatively quiet end to a long and at-times-loud process. […]
Wednesday’s vote had been postponed by about two weeks after a required public hearing on the issue drew a large crowd and a lot of public comments — both for and against the project.
* From the Stop the Douglas County Wind Farm’s Facebook page…
The sellout of Douglas County began this morning when the county board voted 5-1 (one abstention) to approve the permit application of Energias de Portugal to construct 48 nearly 600’ towers in two townships, with more to come-likely stretching across the county. Obviously only Bibby Appleby cares anything about the health and property values of the residents of this county. Thank you, Bibby McKay Appleby!
Now it’s time to take serious action against the board, and we need your help. There is a GoFundMe account (see this page for details), or you can send donations to KMAC, PO Box 47, Camargo, IL, 61919.
It ain’t over yet, kids.
The GoFundMe effort has raised just $465 in the past month.
* ADDED: No, President Trump, wind turbines don’t cause cancer: Still, the President’s casual offhand remark that perhaps the noise from a wind turbine could cause cancer appeared to resonate in Newman Township, an old coal town where more than 90 percent of voters supported the Republican in 2016. A surprising number of local residents repeated the rumors that perhaps the arrival of new wind turbines could somehow lead to a spike in cancer.
* Finally, a bit of good news for the ALPLM. From the New York Times…
In 1864, Abraham Lincoln made a rare wartime trip out of Washington to visit a charity event in Philadelphia raising money to care for wounded soldiers. He donated 48 copies of the Emancipation Proclamation to be sold for fund-raising.
But it turns out he received a gift in return: a Bible whose pages were edged with gilt and decorated with the words “Faith,” “Hope” and “Charity” after I Corinthians 13:13 — a holy book at a time when Lincoln was turning increasingly to Scripture to understand personal tragedy and national trauma.
Now, more than 150 years later, historians have discovered the Bible for the first time, a unique artifact of the 16th president’s life that they did not even know existed. Given by his widow to a friend of Lincoln’s after his assassination, it has remained out of sight for a century and a half, passed along from one generation to another, unknown to the vast array of scholars who have studied his life.
As of Thursday, it will go on display for the first time at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Ill., a bequest from the family of the Rev. Noyes W. Miner, who lived across the street from the Lincolns in the Illinois capital and spoke at the slain president’s funeral. After preserving the Bible over the decades, Miner’s descendants recently came forward to disclose its existence and donate it to the public.
* This email from GOP Sen. Jim Oberweis, who hopes to take on freshman Democratic US Rep. Rep. Lauren Underwood, has been going around lately, and it made me curious for obvious reasons…
I mean, was that even real?
* So, I reached out to the candidate…
The copy of the email is personal communication that referenced a larger discussion regarding the desirability of supporting female candidates in the Republican primary. I responded to an individual who was part of this larger discussion by pointing out the gender and racial diversity of the likely GOP slate for 2020.
As for my self-description as a “token white male,” it was intended to be ironic given the traditional demographics of Republican Party candidates, but, in hindsight, was a less than optimal choice of words. I apologize.
Illinois Supreme Court Justice P. Scott Neville, Jr. on Thursday launched his campaign for a full 10-year term to the state’s highest court. The Committee, Citizens for P. Scott Neville, Jr. announced endorsements from over 50 elected officials, community leaders, and retired judges from a cross section of Cook County.
Justice Neville has served on the Illinois Supreme Court since 2018, when retiring Justice Charles Freeman selected him for the appointment to his seat. Justice Neville is the second African American, following Justice Freeman, to serve on the Supreme Court in its 200 year history, and he is the only African American or person of color on the Court today.
A native of Bronzeville on Chicago’s South Side, Justice Neville’s legal career has been defined by his tireless dedication to fairness and equality. His legal decisions have made him one of the most highly respected jurists on the bench in Illinois.
In addition to announcing key endorsements, below, the Committee on Thursday released a campaign video, “Trailblazer,” linked here, highlighting his lifelong commitment to equal justice for all.
Justice Neville has said “No person will be unseen and no person will be unheard,” “Everyone wants the law to treat everyone fairly. Every day of my career, I’ve fought to ensure that we have a fair system, and I look forward to continuing that fight on the Illinois Supreme Court in the years to come.” […]
Justice P. Scott Neville, Jr., the 117th justice of the Illinois Supreme Court, seeks election for a 10-year term on the State’s highest Court in the March 17, 2020 Democratic primary. Prior to his appointment to succeed retiring Justice Charles Freeman in 2018, Justice Neville served as an Illinois Appellate Court judge from 2004-2018 and Cook County Circuit Court judge from 1999-2004. Admitted to the Illinois bar in 1974, he is a graduate of Culver Stockton College and Washington University School of Law and co-founder of the Alliance of Bar Associations.
