The Extended Pritzker Universe is basically what I was trying to create with my #DuckGang posts about the junior Senator from IL - @SenDuckworth, when Joe Biden was choosing his running mate
Call them the Pritzker Pals. They are left-leaning, politically. They’re depressed by the Biden administration. They are â this is the key â incredibly dangerously online. And they want to meme Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) into the White House.
Launched last month, the âSocialists for Pritzkerâ account quickly amassed over 10,000 followers, for wisdom like âwhat if we got J.B. one of those big swords from Final Fantasy.â More irony accounts have sprung up in its wake, like âAnarchists for Pritzkerâ and âCapitalists for Pritzker,â sharing overlapping memes in which enemies flee from the first-term governor. Most imagine Pritzker the way that 4Chan memes imagine Trump, as a conqueror with supernatural powers; one imagines the governor literally devouring the Secretary of Transportation.
âPeople see him as a nice placeholder while the left sort of catches its breath,â said the anonymous activist behind the Socialists for Prizker account, in a phone interview. (The account owner was granted anonymity to more openly answer questions about the account and where it came from.) âI donât think that AOC or any other rising, movement-left star is going to be ready and well-positioned to win in 2024.â
What explains this â a joking-but-not-really groundswell behind the most politically successful member of the Pritzker family, which owns the Hyatt hotel chain? Part of it is left-wing disappointment with the Biden presidency, shared by many Democrats who don’t necessarily want to tweet about it. Part of it is a theory that the Democrats’ frontbench (Biden, Vice President Harris) is too old and/or unpopular to run and win another national election.
And then there is Pritzker’s size, which the advocates see as relatable and endearing, with a nod at how some Pennsylvania voters seem to like 6′8″ Lt. Gov. John Fetterman more than other, smaller, more traditional-talking moderate Democrats. Felix Biederman, a co-host of the left-wing Chapo Trap House podcast, has shared pro-Pritzker takes and called him a âunicornâ for hapless Democrats: âHe is enormous, doesnât come off as particularly intellectual, and has good instincts.â
* The meanies on Twitter have always made fun of Pritzker’s weight, but these #PritzkerPals folks have embraced it…
* If a special session on gun laws and gun violence is called, what should the topics be?…
2/2 We must call a special session to address crime on our streets. We need to demand law and order and prosecute criminals. We need more police on our streets to keep our families safe. Public safety must be a top priority. #twill
— Darren Bailey for Governor (@DarrenBaileyIL) July 4, 2022
* From Dan Lipinski’s recent softball interview on WLS…
For 16 years, I believed that I represented my constituents who put me there. I was not there to represent the Democratic Party and take directions from from Nancy Pelosi.
In 2004 Lipinski’s father ran for re-nomination in the Democratic primary. After easily winning the nomination, the elder Lipinski announced his retirement. As the Democratic committeeman for Chicago’s 23rd Wardâwhich is virtually coextensive with the Chicago portion of the 3rd districtâhe was able to persuade the state Democratic Party to select his son to replace him on the ballot. The move was somewhat controversial; since the younger Lipinski had not lived regularly in Illinois since 1989 or run for elected office before, but it allowed him to sidestep the Democratic primaryâthe real contest in this heavily Democratic district.
Somewhat controversial? Putting it mildly.
And then he breezed through the primaries with strong regular Democratic organization support (including and especially Speaker Madigan) until Marie Newman beat him in 2020, while Madigan was somewhat otherwise occupied.
Q: Do you realize how unhappy this news makes Sean Casten?
A: Well, look, I’ve heard from Democrats, they have been pleading with me not to run because I’m going to hurt Sean Casten, Democratic Party nominee. But I’ve also heard from Republicans who have said that they’ve they’ve done a poll, they’ve seen a poll that shows that I’m going to hurt the Republicans more than than the Democrats. So I have both. I have officials and operatives in both parties urging me not to not to run, but I think that just shows that they are, they’re both scared.
Former Congressman Dan Lipinski said his supporters gathered more than 5,400 signatures to get him on the ballot in November (he needs 5,000) and that heâll announce today if heâs going to run for Congress as an independent in the newly drawn 6th Congressional District.
âOver the past week Iâve heard from people all over that theyâre fed up with the 2 parties & that our country needs a new, better direction,â he tweeted.
However, after careful consideration I have decided to forgo a run this year. Instead, I will focus my attention on helping build the emerging âIndependents Movement.â I already have had discussions with U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger about teaming up in this effort. […]
The New York Times reported that a group of donors is looking to raise money and recruit Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin to run for president as an independent along with a Republican running mate. This group may also be looking to support candidates running for Congress in 2024 and perhaps start a new party.
*** UPDATE 1 *** An eagle-eyed reader pointed out that Lipinski said earlier this month that he’d taken a Democratic primary ballot in June. That would’ve disqualified him from running for office for anything this year other than as a Democrat…
A person who (i) filed a Statement of Candidacy for a partisan office as a qualified primary voter of an established political party or (ii) who voted the ballot of an established political party at a general primary election may not file a Statement of Candidacy as a candidate of a different established political party, a new political party, or as an Independent candidate for a partisan office to be filled at the general election immediately following the general primary for which the person filed the statement or voted the ballot.
In retrospect, the points where Illinois law broke and failed to stop Crimo are apparent. The problem is that making red-flag laws less porous requires a statute that either is a confusing kludge or raises troubling civil-liberties questionsâor bothâall in the service of a relatively simple goal of preventing dangerous people from getting guns. In effect, a strong red-flag law risks trampling on Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights in the name of protecting Second Amendment rights, while weaker red-flag laws may barely work at all. […]
But reliance on family members is an inherent weakness in red-flag laws. Relatives are best positioned to know when someone is in distress, and may feel most at risk from a loved oneâs threats, yet they are also most likely to forgive a child or sibling or parent and to feel protective, rather than call the police on them.
Maybe, then, police should have more leeway to deny permits or, as in the case of Crimoâs threats, arrest a suspectâbut any system that gives police greater discretion risks abuse and replicating existing inequities in the system. A white young man from a prominent local family (Crimoâs father was a candidate for mayor not long ago) might end up getting a pass, while a less fortunate young man of color would be blocked. (I have previously written about how Black Americans do not, in practice, enjoy the same Second Amendment rights as white Americans.)
Eschewing discretion and mandating that police act more strictly might produce more equitable results, but would risk violating due-process rights and protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. Writing such a law in a way that would pass muster with a judiciary as hostile to gun control as the current one is unlikely. […]
Red-flag laws as they exist (and as they may expand under the new gun law) are probably a good thing, even if their only effect is to drive down the gun-suicide rate. But the Highland Park shooting demonstrates that existing red-flag laws have important limitations, and trying to strengthen them is likely to present serious downsides. If the goal is to reduce the risk of mass shootings, there is a simple way to do that without disparate effects on different people: Make it harder for everyone to get guns.
* Gov. Pritzker was asked on CNN about what law changes he supports…
I think that there are probably three things that need to be looked at here.
One is changing some of the verbiage in the law on red flags so that something could have been filed, that would have prevented the FOID card from being issued.
Two is that we need to ban assault weapons, not just in the state of Illinois, but nationally.
And then third high capacity magazines. So there’s no reason why someone should have 90 bullets at the ready, 30 in each of the cartridges that he used, and that’s just something that I don’t think civilians should have. And I’ve talked to police since the shooting who would tell you that the size, the caliber of the bullets that were being fired is much larger than the size, caliber and speed of bullets that even police carry with them. Why do civilians need this? You know the name of the weapon that this shooter was using is the Smith and Wesson M&P 15. You know what M&P stands for? Military and Police, and that’s who perhaps should have these weapons, not civilians, being able to just walk in and buy one.
Officials said the DCFS Director of Illinois Marc Smith was held in contempt of court for the 12th time Thursday for failing to place a child in direct violation of court orders.
Officials with the Office of the Cook County Public Guardian, said this is the 12th time the director has been held in contempt. This specific order involves a 15-year-old girl whom DCFS has kept locked up in a psychiatric hospital where she has been ready for discharge since January 14th, 2022.
Thursday, pursuant to a motion filed by Judge Patrick T. Murphy of Cook County Juvenile Court held Marc Smith in contempt of court and ordered fines of $1,000 per day. Fines for this order will begin July 28th.
In February the court ordered Smith to place the girl by 5pm on March 5th. He failed to comply.
On May 12th, DCFS stated to the court she would be by June 15th. Thursday, DCFS stated that the girl would be placed during the week of July 25th.
The girl has been in a psychiatric hospital for more than 170 days since she was able to be discharged. The court found the director in contempt of court.
The head of the Illinois Department of Human Services has been ordered to return to Sangamon County Circuit Court on charges of ignoring another court order to transport a county jail inmate into state custody.
The court ruled Friday that Grace Hou, secretary of IDHS, must appear in court July 15 to respond to charges of ignoring an order to place Christopher Hall, 38, of Beloit, Wisconsin, in the Andrew McFarland Mental Health Center for psychiatric treatment.
Hall, who had been charged last year on four counts of first-degree murder, aggravated discharge of a firearm, being an armed habitual offender and unlawful possession of a weapon by a felon in the shooting death of Hason Willis, 43, of Springfield, was ruled unfit to stand trial in May and ordered to be placed at McFarland.
However, the order said that as of Friday, he had not been placed there, remaining in custody at the Sangamon County Jail.
Ogden and Fry conducted a poll in the days leading up to former President Donald Trumpâs visit to the Quincy area for a U.S. Rep. Mary Miller endorsement in late June.
The poll of Republicans in the Downstate 15th Congressional District taken June 22-24 (Trumpâs visit was the 25th) found Miller leading fellow U.S. Rep. Rodney Davis by 8 points, 46-38. When undecideds were pushed to decide, Millerâs lead jumped to 10 points, 55-45. She won by 15 points, 57.6-42.4.
But if you look at the results from each day, you can see a definite trend. On June 22, Millerâs lead was less than 3 points, which is about where many of the pundits speculated the race stood at the time.
On June 23, as word spread more widely about Trumpâs impending visit, Millerâs lead expanded to 9 points, 48-39. And by June 24, the day before Trumpâs speech, Miller led by 12 points, 48-36.
Now, these are really small subsets in a single poll. But Republican gubernatorial candidate Darren Baileyâs results in CD15 in the same poll also showed a slight upward trendline, from 52 on June 22, to 53 the next day, to 55 on June 24.
âBased on where our final polling was on several races, it seems possible that that momentum continued through Election Day,â explained Ogden and Fry owner Matthew Podgorski, who is also a Republican Party official and candidate.
âCandidates that would benefit from a Trump bump all did better than expected just days earlier,â he continued. âIf highly motivated âTrump/Baileyâ voters showed up on Election Day while others gave up, several other races may have been affected.â
Podgorskiâs statewide polling, for instance, had Tom DeVore ahead of Steve Kim in the GOP attorney generalâs race by 4 points. DeVore won by almost 10. Podgorski had Kathy Salvi beating Peggy Hubbard, the most visible Trumpist in the U.S. Senate primary race, by âa much larger margin than the [5-point] victory,â Salvi wound up with, Podgorski told me.
Hey, maybe Podgorskiâs polls just werenât accurate and heâs making excuses here. Itâs been tried before by others. But I have thought since well before primary day that the Trump visit would likely reverberate throughout the state, up and down the Republican primary ballot.
The 2nd Illinois Supreme Court District might also be a case in point. The regulars and people like far-right Republican activist Jeanne Ives all backed Lake County Circuit Judge Daniel Shanes in the primary.
Instead, Mark Curran, who is known for his outrageous public remarks (âWe are taking on the Establishment, the Party Hacks, the Freemasons and those that could care less that Individual Liberty and Conscience Protection are no longer cherished or protected,â he told supporters last year) won the race by 2 points with almost no money.
Oops.
Also, unlike with Bailey and, to a lesser extent, DeVore, the Democrats had nothing whatsoever to do with this Supreme Court debacle. The Democratic Governors Association, the Democratic Party of Illinois and Gov. J.B. Pritzker himself all paid for advertising that boosted Baileyâs Trump bonafides. The state party paid for mailers doing the same for DeVore.
Bailey, by the way, has repaid the favor by bungling pretty much every statement heâs made since the day after winning the Republican nomination.
Last week, Bailey memorably urged people to âmove on and celebrateâ shortly after the Highland Park massacre, even though the shooter was still on the loose at the time.
Later in the week, he held a press conference to apologize and try to clean up his own mess but hit the flub trifecta in the space of just 10 minutes. Bailey âconflated state gun control laws, misidentified a neighborhood in Chicago where violence occurred over the weekend and even misquoted a Bible verse,â the Chicago Tribune reported.
And DeVore, the Republican Partyâs attorney general nominee, had this to say on Facebook just the other day: âGuess how many of those Republican establishment âleadersâ, who sat idly by and watched your kids suffer for two years, called me after winning the primary? Zero!! I just might investigate them first before Pritzker!!â
* Synopsis of Rep. Deb Conroy’s newly introduced HB5766…
Amends the Firearm Owners Identification Card Act. Provides that a minor who causes or attempts to cause physical self-harm or harm to another is subject to the denial of an application for or the revocation and seizure of a Firearm Owner’s Identification Card. Provides that until the age of 24 years, such a person is presumed to be a person whose mental condition is of such a nature that it poses a clear and present danger. Provides that a physician, clinical psychologist, qualified examiner, law enforcement official, school administrator, or other person who has knowledge of a minor causing or attempting to cause physical self-harm or harm to another shall report the incident to the Department of Human Services. Effective immediately.
This will give us that added layer of protection, and kind of close a loophole within the Red Flag Law and hopefully make some difference while we try to figure out socially what is happening in our country.
* You’ll recall earlier this year that a man was arrested for allegedly making threats against Rep. Conroy. He apparently paid his bond, but his movements are being tracked as he awaits trial. Conroy told me this today…
As I was driving to Wisconsin and working with staff to file this, I was contacted by the county and told the man arrested in my case had penetrated the perimeter of my home. A few minutes later, my son called to say the police were at my home and needed to confirm I was safe. I had protection and still do. I had warning. These innocent families and so many around the country have no warning and no protection.
She later received an all-clear from the county.
* The Question: Do you support this bill? Take the poll and then explain your answer in comments, please.
* From a reader: “The local gas station here in Springfield on Toronto Road has something a little bigger than a sticker about the gas tax. This 11×17 sign is on top of all of the pumps”…
By a margin of just 69 votes, Connie Cain is on track to be the Republican nominee for the 66th House District in Illinois after her opponent, Arin Thrower, conceded the race Wednesday evening.
Cain, a longtime accountant living in Gilberts, declared victory in a Facebook post Wednesday evening as the unofficial results across Kane and McHenry counties showed Cain with 3,439 votes, or 51% of the vote, and Thrower with 3,370 votes, or 49%.
Cain will face Rep. Suzanne Ness (D-Crystal Lake) in the fall.
* New state Senator appointed and sworn in…
Kris Tharp, a captain and jail administrator for the Madison County Sheriffâs Office with nearly 25 years of law enforcement experience and a life-long volunteer in the Metro East, was sworn in to represent Illinoisâ 56th Senate District Friday.
âIâm truly honored and humbled by this entire experience,â said Tharp (D-Bethalto). âWe have a lot of important issues to explore this year, and Iâm eager to serve the residents of the 56th District in this new role.â
Tharp has worked through the ranks of the Madison County Sheriffâs Office and dedicated his life to improving public safety for communities throughout the Metro East. In addition to his roles as a captain and jail administrator, Tharp serves as a Deputy Commander for the Major Case Squad of Greater St. Louis.
In 2018, Tharp founded Madison County Triad, a partnership between the Madison Countyâs Sheriffâs Office, area service providers and older residents to improve the safety and quality of life of seniors in the community. He serves as president for the organization.
He is a graduate of the FBI National Academy. To highlight his law enforcement credentials, Tharp is an active member of the FBI National Academy Associates, Police Benevolent and Protective Association 118, Illinois Sheriffâs Association, Illinois Correctional Association, International Association of Chiefs of Police and the International Homicide Investigatorâs Association.
He is a life-long resident of the 56th District. He lives in Bethalto with his wife, Jaime. The couple has two adult sons.
Tharp, who is familiar with government work in Springfield from his time working on the Illinois Elder Abuse Task Force, is excited to return to the Capitol this fall in a new capacity and advocate for the needs of working families.
The 56th Senate District includes all or parts of Alton, Bethalto, Caseyville, Collinsville, East Alton, Edwardsville, Elsah, Fairview Heights, Glen Carbon, Godfrey, Granite City, Hartford, Maryville, OâFallon, Roxana, South Roxana and Wood River.
He replaces former Sen. Rachelle Aud Crowe, who resigned after she was confirmed as the region’s new US Attorney.
This appointment has no real bearing on the upcoming election. Chicago Democrat Elites, like Senate President Don Harmon, hand-picked Senator Croweâs replacement months ago. Ultimately there will be an election to decide who will be the next state senator from the Metro East.
âVoters are going to have the final say in November and there is a very stark contrast between what I stand for and what the Chicago Elite have planned. My message resonates with families who are frustrated with the cost of everything, who are anxious about their children’s future, and who are hungry for leadership,â Erica Harriss, Candidate for State Senate, stated.
âThe Democrat Elites have chosen a candidate who will support them and their policies which keep our taxes high, send our high-paying energy jobs to other states and overseas, and release dangerous criminals onto the street.â Erica continued: âThatâs not a platform I would want to run on, and this election will be a referendum on the failed leadership of the Democratic Party.â
âVoters need to hear that there is hope for the future of our state and that with good policy we can make great strides together. I have a proven record of voting to safeguard our future by lowering taxes, funding law enforcement, and standing up for local control,â said Harriss.
A week after Ketanji Brown Jackson was sworn in as the first Black woman on the U.S. Supreme Court, a comparable trail was blazed Thursday into Illinoisâ top court.
Lisa Holder White took the oath in Springfield to become the first Black woman to serve as a justice on the Illinois Supreme Court in the institutionâs 203-year history.
Holder White was selected by retiring Justice Rita Garman as her replacement in the central Illinois district, with the six other jurists on the court approving the appointment of the Decatur Republican this spring.
The cartoonized video of an armed Crimo in a bloody standoff with police is one example that researchers point to when explaining how some violent, fringe online communities come to influence users’ behavior.
“There’s this kind of tendency to ‘gore-post,’ which is essentially to post shocking, graphic, violent imagery in an attempt to draw some kind of camaraderie between the users in these spaces,” said Melanie Smith, head of research at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue US. Crimo appears to have been active in at least one large so-called “gore forum.”
Experts agree that it’s impossible to determine Crimo’s mental health condition from his online content. Newhouse said that the darker alternate reality communities and gore forums are designed to plant the seeds of hopelessness, nihilism and lower one’s natural reluctance to commit violence. He said he noted an inflection point on Crimo’s timeline that may indicate he had fallen farther away from real-world interaction and further into these online subcultures.
“From what we can tell, he became extraordinarily alienated from both his music audience and his in-person social networks, but clearly began exhibiting the signs of being immersed in these much much deeper Internet communities,” he said.
Crimo was a rap artist who released music online. Newhouse said the style of Crimo’s latest album was also markedly different from earlier ones.
“Something was going on in that period of time,” he said.
* The framing of that NPR article has been sharply criticized…
I happened to have been in touch with the same experts this NPR article quoted, and I reached out to one of them, Sarah Hightower, an independent researcher who specializes in the far right and online extremist movements, to hear what she thought about the piece.
She was worried about how it had been framed.
âYou have this entire community, and theyâre scared,â she told me. âAnd now it looks like theyâre essentially being told, âOh no, yâall are overreacting because itâs just edgy white boy sh*t.ââ
She had explained to the writer, and in all of her interviews, that you canât separate ideology and bigotry from these online subcultures, she told me, and she shared evidence of the suspectâs racist and antisemitic posts in hate forums.
The suspect was part of a âgore forum,â a place for people to post things like beheadings. He was part of the Nazi Catboy movement, which is⌠hard to explain. He was part of the far-right anime fandom movement. Hightower confirmed that he had posted on an online forum conveying Holocaust denial, overt antisemitism, the desire for a new Holocaust as well as a desire to wipe out Black people and Asian people. His last and only remaining post on Facebook before it was shut down said simply, âYou are all sinners.â
Not only was the suspect visible at multiple Trump rallies, but a Highland Park resident who knew of his activity and called him a âknown agitatorâ said he was known for violently attacking counter-protestors and referring to Black Lives Matter supporters as âmonkeys.â According to a Facebook post by this resident, she had previously informed the police, who she says did nothing.
While all hateful communities are complex in their own ways, there is a common bigotry that unites and drives them, and too often spills out into real-world attacks.
Each group is propelled by bigotry against the vulnerable, an ideology of destruction, and ideologies built on white and Christian supremacy. The explicit goal is to cause terror and confusion. Like all terrorists, they want vulnerable populations to suffer not just the physical toll of a mass shooting, but the emotional toll that then follows their attacks.
While we may never fully understand the full motive behind this specific attack, and it would be wrong to label it simply as âantisemitic,â a simple fact remains: The suspect was active in many online breeding grounds for bigoted extremism, he was a known threat to a synagogue in Highland Park, and he had previously expressed hopes to annihilate minority groups.
The FOID card system is simply to pilfer money from peopleâs pockets. Thatâs all it does. We have the federal firearm background check. We have age limits. We have waiting periods. We have the Firearms Restraining Act, which was passed to take care of this very issue. Itâs not working, the FOID cardâs not working and it needs to go.
There were over 1 million opportunities for someone to buy a gun from a licensed dealer without a completed background check in 2020 and 2021, according to an FBI report released last month.
In all, 1,002,274 background checks â or 4.2 percent â took longer than three business days in 2020 and 2021, a higher share than any other period since at least 2014, according to data compiled by NBC News. After the third business day, federal law allows dealers to sell weapons while the background check is still pending, which potentially puts weapons in the hands of people who canât legally own a gun because of mental illness or their criminal history.
The FBI ultimately completed about one-fourth of those delayed background checks and discovered that 11,564 people were able to buy guns in 2020 and 2021 before the check showed that they should not have been allowed to do so, according to the FBI report. Agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives then had to retrieve the weapons.
But that number only accounts for a fraction of the delayed background checks. The FBI never completed 734,604 checks from January 2020 through November 2021, the most recent data available, because they took longer than 88 days â after which the bureau must stop its research and purge the unfinished checks from its system. […]
Last month, after a mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, Congress extended the deadline to complete a background check to 10 business days for gun buyers under 21. That gives the FBI more time to block a sale to someone who shouldnât have a weapon. But the new law also requires a more extensive background check for gun buyers under 21, meaning that officials will have more time but also more to do. […]
The new law doesnât change the tight three-day deadline for gun buyers 21 and over.
General Funds base receipts finished the fiscal year off extremely well growing $730 million in June. This monthâs growth came from a combination of all of the major revenue sources â a fitting culmination of above-average receipts that the economically-tied revenue sources have experienced throughout the fiscal year. The increase was despite June having one less receipting day than the prior fiscal year.
As has been the case many times throughout the fiscal year, corporate income tax receipts led the way by adding $373 million, or $287 million on a net basis. After seeing revenues take a temporary tumble last month due to timing issues related to the previous yearâs final tax payments, personal income tax revenues responded with an increase of $189 million, or $156 million net. Sales tax receipt growth has slowed in recent months, but still managed to add another $41 million or $23 million net. […]
After dipping last month, base federal sources finished the year off strong with growth of $127 million in June. This figure does not include the $298 million in revenues from the ARPA reimbursement for Essential Government Services that the State received this month.
Year to Date
The strong month of receipts for June caps off a sensational fiscal year of revenues with base receipts totaling $50.334 billion, or $51.070 billion overall. This record-breaking fiscal year of revenues was led by the Stateâs âbig threeâ revenue sources. As has been mentioned throughout the fiscal year, despite FY 2022 receipts being compared to FY 2021 which contained two periods of income tax final payments, personal income tax receipts finished the year a whopping $2.787 billion above last yearâs levels, or $2.314 billion on a net basis. Perhaps more impressive was the $1.844 billion rise in corporate income tax net receipts. Sales tax receipts were just as impressive, with year-over-year growth in net receipts of $866 million.
While there were a few State sources that did see declines in FY 2022, the remaining State sources combined to finish up $82 million. These gains were led by a $153 million increase in inheritance tax revenues, which benefitted from the strong market conditions over the past several years, and a $104 million annual increase in miscellaneous State source revenues. These sources helped offset a notable loss in revenues from the corporate franchise tax [down $106 million]; cigarette taxes [down $27 million]; interest earnings [down $27 million]; and insurance taxes [down $25 million]. […]
FY 2022 ended up well exceeding all âofficialâ projections. In total, including the revenue received from the ARPA reimbursement for Essential Government Services, actual receipts for FY 2022 finished $6.703 billion above the FY 2022 Final Budget Assumption; $2.582 billion or 5.3% above CGFAâs last official March 2022 projection and $1.884 billion or 3.8% above the GOMB revision released in April 2022. […]
A recent report from the National Association of State Budget Officers indicates that 49 states reported FY 2022 general fund revenue collections exceeding original budget forecasts.
In summary, the better-than-expected revenue gains in FY 2022 came from several atypical revenue- enhancing factors that strongly influenced the overachieving nature of the economically tied revenue sources. Those factors include: the one- time influx of federal stimulus dollars to the nationâs economy; the continuation of a pandemic-related shift from non-taxed service-based sales to taxable goods; and strong market conditions as a result of this enhanced activity, thus, creating elevated taxable income and tax revenues from corporate profits and capital gains. The influence of these particular factors is expected to wane as the State enters into FY 2023 resulting in reduced revenue expectations for the upcoming fiscal year.
Thatâs something Gov. JB Pritzker told Capitol News Illinois last week that lawmakers planned for in April when they projected Fiscal Year 2023 revenues at $46.5 billion â an 8 percent decrease from the final FY 2022 numbers.
âWe wrote that into the budget, that is a decrease in revenue just in this coming year,â Pritzker said in an interview. âSo, we understand that there were some temporary nature of revenues that were coming in.â […]
A GOMB spokesperson said in an email Wednesday that the surplus has not led to any discussion of amending the FY 2023 budget in the first week of the new fiscal year. But itâs likely to allow for some flexibility.
âFY 2022 revenues continued to outperform expectations through the last quarter of the fiscal year,â GOMB spokesperson Carol Knowles said in an email. âThis will allow the state to be better positioned in the coming year as we continue to monitor the national economic outlook.â
On the same day of the mass shooting in Highland Park, five people in Chicago were injured by gunfire and another died. Over the long weekend, Chicago saw 68 people shot and eight killed.
The Chicago violence, down by 14 percent from a year ago. according to the city’s police chief, drew passing attention while the governor of Illinois and vice president converged on Highland Park to offer condolences and raise their voices about how âenough is enough.â Even the pope offered prayers.
Highland Park isn’t experienced with such violence. Not a single murder was logged between 2000 and 2020, according to FBI crime stats, and other violent crime was a fraction of what it is in the rest of the state, The New York Times reported.
But the attention paid to the mostly white suburban town hasnât been lost on some residents on Chicagoâs South and West sides, where the brunt of the cityâs violence occurs.
State Sen. Elgie Sims Jr., who carried much of the criminal justice reform measures that lawmakers passed last year, said interns in his office and seniors he visited yesterday have spoken out about the disproportionate attention.
âA woman pulled me aside to say, âI appreciate the work you do on gun violence, but when violence happens in our community, whereâs the outpouring of support? Where are the national leaders when it happens in my community?ââ Sims told Playbook.
âItâs a reasonable question,â said Sims, who has worked with fellow Democratic lawmakers to call out systemic racism in the justice system.
âItâs not to diminish the pain in Highland Park. What happened is horrible and horrific,â he said, âBut itâs also horrible when it happens on the South and West sides.â
The goal in the aftermath of the July Fourth Highland Park massacre is to limit military style weapons and keep those and other firearms out of the hands of people considered dangerous to themselves or others. […]
Pritzkerâs office is looking at everything from training and education about the Firearm Restraining Order, or the âRed Flagâ law designed to keep guns away from those deemed a danger to themselves or others â to putting into state statute the amount of time a âclear and present dangerâ file should be kept, even if itâs unfounded.
State law requires police and teachers to file such reports when someone exhibits dangerous behavior that should bar them from having a gun.
The state currently keeps such records for just six months but lawmakers are seeking âclarity in the law.â
Pritzkerâs office has also had discussions about potentially lowering the levels of proof required for a report to trigger action, according to a source with direct knowledge.
