* NASCAR news from the CTA…

More than a dozen CTA bus routes will detour around road closures for the upcoming NASCAR Street Race course.

The race at Grant Park is set for July 1-2, but most detours run from June 26 through July 5. […]

All buses except the No. 151 will be blocked from going their normal route through the Loop, according to the CTA.

* WCIA TV…

The Illinois State Museum announced it will host community discussions about the 1908 exhibition proposed for the Springfield Sangamon County Transportation Hub, beginning at 10:30 a.m. on Saturday, June 24 at the museum.

The second meeting is scheduled at 3 p.m. on Saturday, June 24, at the Springfield and Central Illinois African American History Museum.

The museum reported they have partnered with Sangamon County to create a community-focused exhibit highlighting artifacts and materials discovered during the archeological excavations for the rail relocation project. They said this is to preserve the history and culture of the Springfield community.

The objects found were remnants of homes built in the 1840s that were burned to the ground by a White mob action in 1908, commonly referred to as the 1908 Race Riot, officials said.

* Coming late to this because I lost the link in an email I never sent and subsequently found this afternoon…

The Chicago market led the U.S. meetings and events industry by volume for May for the second month in a row, according to new data from Knowland. Second place—again—went to Washington D.C., with Los Angeles/Long Beach in third. […]

Chicago was in the lead of the top five markets by event volume, hosting national association meetings followed by weddings and pharma/biotech. Washington D.C., Los Angeles/Long Beach, Dallas and San Diego rounded out the top five.

* Press release…

Governor JB Pritzker and the Illinois Housing Development Authority (IHDA) Board announced conditional awards totaling nearly $26 million in federal Low-Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC) that will fund 18 affordable housing developments in 12 counties throughout Illinois. Once sold to investors, the tax credits will generate an estimated $235 million in private capital to finance the creation and/or preservation of 1,159 affordable units for low- to moderate-income families, seniors, and people with disabilities. […]

According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, 73 percent of extremely low-income renter households in Illinois are severely cost burdened or spend more than half of their income on housing. This problem is aggravated due to a severe shortage of affordable units for extremely low-income families. Illinois will need to create and preserve over 293,354 housing units to close the gap and ensure these households are less burdened and have more security in making their rent payment.

* Press release…

Legislation approved by Illinois lawmakers will expand identification options for undocumented immigrants and make Illinois roads safer, according to Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias who helped craft the measure currently awaiting the governor’s signature.

Giannoulias hosted a press conference alongside the sponsors of House Bill 3882, State Representative Barbara Hernandez (50th District – Aurora) and State Senator Ram Villivalam (8th District – Chicago), as well as advocates and stakeholders, to raise awareness and highlight the importance of this legislation.

House Bill 3882 – which passed the Illinois General Assembly last month – would allow non-citizen residents who are eligible to receive a standard driver’s license with the wording “Federal Limits Apply” printed atop of the cards per the federal REAL ID Act. These types of licenses would replace the current Temporary Visitor Driver’s Licenses (TVDLs), which undocumented immigrants have been able to obtain to drive legally in Illinois. […]

Those eligible for a TVDL must have lived in Illinois for more than a year and do not have a Social Security number. Individuals must provide their U.S. immigration documentation, a passport or a consular card – requirements that remain the same under the new proposal.

Applicants for a standard driver’s license would be required to follow the same process as applying for a TVDL. Still, the license they receive would be the same as one issued to any other Illinoisan whose ID does not comply with federal REAL ID guidelines.

* IDOT…

The Illinois Department of Transportation announced today that bids on 236 contracts for highway and bridge projects were accepted at its June letting, representing a potential investment of more than $910.4 million in infrastructure in communities throughout Illinois. This month’s bid letting is the largest in the department’s history, fueled by Gov. Pritzker’s historic, bipartisan Rebuild Illinois, which is putting people to work and enhancing quality of life while improving safety and mobility in every part of the state.

“This bid letting is an historic achievement for Illinois and further illustrates the kind of transformational investments being made in the state’s infrastructure due to Rebuild Illinois,” said Illinois Transportation Secretary Omer Osman. “Up and down Illinois, communities are experiencing the benefits of an improved, modernized transportation system that gets you and your family where you need to go safely and reliably.”

* Interesting map…

pic.twitter.com/uE94v2sTCf

— Jeanne Ives (@JeanneIves) June 21, 2023

* Isabel’s roundup…

* SJ-R | $3 million grant for SPD has technology component, outreach programs: The grant has a technology component, like adding two square miles of ShotSpotter, said SPD Chief Ken Scarlette, but it also funds outreach programs officers themselves came up with.

* Axios | Becerra to travel to Missouri-Illinois clinics to mark Dobbs anniversary: HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra will first visit the Planned Parenthood clinic in Fairview Heights, Illinois, where abortions are still legal. He will later travel 20 minutes away to a Planned Parenthood clinic in St. Louis, where abortion is now illegal. It is the same clinic where Becerra was giving remarks last year when the Dobbs decision dropped.

* Block Club | As Need For Migrant Housing Intensifies, Volunteers Say Community-Run Shelters Are A Model City Should Copy: On a rainy afternoon, three young migrant children played inside the gym at St. Paul’s United Church in Lincoln Park. They tossed a ball with a parishioner while their mothers cooked lunch in a kitchen across the hall. The church’s banquet hall has been converted into four individual rooms to house four recently arrived migrant families, each outfitted with plenty of beds and a door that locks. It’s a stark contrast to the conditions these four families lived in just two weeks ago, when they were sleeping on cold, hard floors of police stations, relying on the kindness of strangers for an opportunity to shower and anxiously waiting for space to free up in a city-run shelter.

* WCIA | $45 million from Illinois State Board of Education to help with teacher shortage: $45 million is in the newest state budget to address shortages. Jennifer Kirmes, the Executive Director of Teaching and Learning for ISBE, said that’s the biggest investment to date focusing on it. The money will go to 170 school districts with the highest count of unfilled teaching positions. 60% are in rural areas, 40% in urban. Once the districts have the money, Kirmes said it’s up to each district to decide how they’ll use it.

* Crain’s | State regulators clamp down on Nicor Gas: State regulators have ruled Nicor Gas improperly charged customers for $31 million in infrastructure spending from 2019, triggering a process that will lead to a refund and rate adjustments. The Illinois Commerce Commission last week ordered the disallowance of about 7% of the $415 million Nicor spent updating its natural gas system in that year.

* Tribune | ‘An opportunity to seize on fear’: Trial underway for Chicago pharmacist accused of selling COVID vaccine cards on eBay: Zhao, 36, is on trial on charges he sold nearly 700 authentic CDC-issued COVID-19 vaccination cards on eBay at the height of the pandemic crisis in 2021, cards that he’d pilfered from a patient immunization room at the South Side Walgreens where he worked.

* Sun-Times | Effort revs up to phase out ‘sub-minimum wage’ for tipped workers: Four years ago, then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot threw a bone to progressives disappointed by her proposed 2020 budget by promising to raise Chicago’s minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2021 — four years faster than the state. But she maintained the “sub-minimum wage” for tipped workers, arguing that paying them the $15-an-hour would have a devastating impact on the restaurant industry — and that even some of the waiters and servers themselves didn’t want it.

* Daily-Journal | County’s bond rating upgrades to prime in 2023: The “positive outlook” analysis documents the sustained financial improvement in Kankakee County government, reduction of debt, financial policy and execution and elimination of outside borrowing to support operations. Moody’s again increased the county’s rating, this time from Baa1 to A3, which is classified as prime-1, and puts the county in the A status.

* Crain’s | Biden biodiesel quotas deal a blow to plant-based fuel makers like ADM: Under a regulation set to be finalized today, the Environmental Protection Agency in 2023 will require the use of 2.82 billion gallons of biomass-based diesel, generally made from soybean and canola oil — just a 2.2% increase over the 2.76 billion gallons mandated last year. For 2024 and 2025, the quotas are being set at 3.04 billion and 3.35 billion gallons, respectively.

* Sun-Time | 19 City Council members push candidate for top cop; head of search calls it ‘completely inappropriate’: Nineteen City Council members have signed a letter expressing “disappointment and dismay” that a new independent commission charged with searching for Chicago’s next top cop hasn’t granted a follow-up interview to the city’s well-respected patrol chief who applied for the job.

* Tribune | Prosecutors drop charges in Clifton Lewis cop-killing case plagued with allegations of police, prosecutorial misconduct: In a surprise move after months of contentious hearings and a labor-intensive process by the city to try to comply with discovery obligations amid allegations that officials buried evidence, Assistant State’s Attorneys Craig Engebretson and Kevin DeBoni told the court during a hearing Wednesday at the Leighton Criminal Court Building that they were dropping charges against Clay and Colon.

* Crain’s | Blackhawks seek rights to add residential, hotel units near United Center: Included in a zoning application for the NHL team’s planned $65 million, two-rink expansion of its Fifth Third Arena practice facility is a request to allow the mix of residential, hotel and retail uses in “future phases” of the development. The application, filed by a venture controlled by the Blackhawks-owning Wirtz family, does not include detailed drawings of the mixed-use plan and notes that such future projects would require site plan approval from the city.

* Daily Herald | If you see yellow planes above, they’re spraying to keep the spongy moth off trees: Historically known as the “gypsy moth,” spongy moth caterpillars have a feeding period that lasts between seven and 10 weeks through spring and summer. A single spongy moth caterpillar can eat 11 square feet of vegetation during its lifetime.

* Vice | I-95 Collapse in Philadelphia Didn’t Cause a Traffic Disaster, Data Shows: Rather than being some shocking twist, this was an entirely predictable outcome. It is what happens every time a section of a major highway is closed, even unexpectedly due to an emergency. In 2017, a section of I-85 in Atlanta collapsed. The ensuing commute was “not so horrible.” In 2007, a bridge along I-35W in Minneapolis collapsed, but subsequent analyses showed its impact on travel times was minimal. There are many more examples of anticipated “carmageddons” not materializing for planned closures of major highways due to construction, such as the OG “carmageddon” in Los Angeles and the 90,000 cars that “just disappeared” off of the roads daily when the Seattle viaduct was closed.

* Daily Herald | Schaumburg abandoning plans for performing arts center, shifting $27.5 million already saved: Schaumburg is officially moving on from its long-standing plans for a 2,400-seat performing arts center west of the Renaissance Hotel by reallocating the $27.5 million gradually saved for it over the years to the village’s building replacement fund.

* Tribune | Lurie, Advocate Children’s, Comer named best children’s hospitals in Illinois: The report ranked Lurie as the seventh best children’s hospital in the Midwest. No Illinois children’s hospital has ranked in the top 10 nationally since Lurie last scored a spot there in 2018. U.S. News does not rank children’s hospitals nationally beyond the top 10.