* Former Sen. Terry Link’s sentencing hearing is October 6th, the Sun-Times reports…

But in summer 2020, he resigned from the Senate and pleaded guilty to filing a false income tax return. In all, he admitted he filed false tax returns for the years 2012 through 2016, costing the IRS $71,133 and the Illinois Department of Revenue $11,527.

Then, earlier this month, Link wound up on the witness stand in Weiss’ trial, testifying about his cooperation with the FBI. There, he explained that he’d withdrawn money from his campaign account and said, “I used some for gambling.”

“The other part was, I was helping a friend who was in dire need,” Link said. He explained that it was someone who “I knew most of my life and he was a businessman.”

* Gov. Pritzker was asked today about his past statements that providing preventive healthcare saves money. So, he was asked today, if that’s the case, then why would he limit enrollment for part of the state’s undocumented immigrant healthcare program to save $550 million in the coming fiscal year…

One of the challenges is of course - and again, everybody should get basic health care - is that basic health care even upfront costs money. The savings come in years hence, as a result of the investments that you make in basic health care. So we need to acknowledge that there’s going to be savings as a result of the early investments that we make in preventative health care, for example. But let’s remember that the legislature actually increased the amount of money that was available for this program from $220 million to $550 million. And although the estimates had been if we hadn’t put these tools to work, then it might go to $1.1 billion, which wasn’t something that the budget could tolerate. And so we’re doing it within the confines of what we have available to us and the legislature’s given us.

* News media interview offer…

Tio “Mr. CeaseFire” Hardiman says that he is now a Republican. The nonviolence activist and former Democratic candidate for Governor says that the Republican Party’s stances on violent crime and immigration resonate within him and his life’s work.

Hardiman hasn’t been with CeaseFire in years. It’s not even called that any longer, but it’s his claim to fame. Hardiman hit his political high point in 2014, when he took 28 percent of the vote as the only alternative to the unpopular Gov. Pat Quinn in the Democratic primary. Four years later, he received just 1.6 percent in the Democratic primary, or a mere 21,075 votes.

His current group, Violence Interrupters NFP, currently has an $893K contract with the state. And he remains a Chicago news media darling.

* Press release…

Today, Governor JB Pritzker was joined by state and local officials as he signed legislation authorizing a new state-based marketplace (SBM) for Illinois, which gives state agencies additional tools to create a more consumer-focused health insurance exchange and better identify traditionally uninsured communities. The Governor also signed historic rate review legislation, which will protect health insurance consumers from unfair rate hikes.

The Illinois Department of Insurance (DOI) and the Department of Healthcare and Family Services (DHFS) will work together to implement the new legislation and coordinate with all state medical assistance programs.

“As governor, I’ve worked to build a state government that is more efficient and more responsive to what working families need,” said Governor JB Pritzker. “Operating our own healthcare marketplace gives us the dexterity to offer more enrollment windows, coordinate with nonprofit partners who help families navigate insurance choices, and protect Illinoisans from any future changes in federal policy that seek to undermine access to affordable healthcare – including access to reproductive healthcare.”

“Illinois joins more than three dozen other states with similar prior approval authority in the individual and small group health insurance market,” said Lt. Governor Juliana Stratton. “This is a win for insurance consumers and an example of our collaboration with partners in the General Assembly and beyond to improve insurance access, affordability, and transparency for Illinoisans.”

Illinois residents currently access the Affordable Care Act (ACA) Marketplace using the federal platform which the state pays a fee to use. This legislation (HB 579) will transition Illinois to a state platform, redirecting that fee to Illinois to fund the new SBM. The full state-based marketplace goes live for plan year 2026, and consumers will start enrolling via the Illinois platform during the ACA Marketplace Open Enrollment Period beginning November 1, 2025.

Currently, the federal platform does not share real-time data, and the Illinois Department of Insurance (DOI) must rely on federal CMS reports with limited information regarding enrollment in ACA Marketplace coverage. The new legislation will help address that challenge, allowing Illinois to better target and serve uninsured communities.

The rate review bill signed into law today – HB2296 – is a monumental piece of consumer protection legislation that substantially advances health care affordability. Illinois joins 41 other states in protecting Illinois consumers and small businesses from unfair premium rate hikes.

For the first time, insurance companies will have to provide specific information about how they set their rates and the DOI will have the authority to approve, modify, or disapprove health premium rates that it determines to be unreasonable or inadequate in the individual and small group market. It also increases transparency for consumers and small business by adding reporting requirements for insurance companies, and gives DOI the data it needs to explain to consumers and small businesses why people pay what they pay in a yearly report.

* Illinois Policy Institute headline…

5 years after Janus v. AFSCME, unions are smaller but more militant

National Review headline…

Five Years after Janus, Government Unions Are Weaker — and More Desperate

* SEIU press release…

Tuesday, June 27 at 3:00 PM - after several months of classes, around 70 Service Employee International Union (SEIU) Local 1 janitors working at the Merchandise Mart will be graduating from the Green Janitor Education Program – a groundbreaking environmental program that creates safer working conditions for janitors and building tenants and puts money back into building owners pockets.

The Green Janitor Education Program is member-led, meaning Local 1 janitorial leaders teach the classes. The program provides education in green building practices to meet the latest energy, water and green initiative standards covering energy efficiency, recycling, waste management, water conservation and sustainable cleaning practices.

These lessons benefit not just the janitor’s health and work environment, but also the environment for the tenants in the buildings these janitors clean. The building’s carbon footprint is lowered, and moreover, the building saves money enacting these lessons. This program takes place in Merchandise Mart, one of the largest buildings in Chicago by square footage, making one of the biggest single-building impacts possible. This program also took place at 321 N. Clark in Chicago, from which SEIU Local 1 janitors graduated last month.

* Gov. Pritzker was asked today if he was attending the upcoming NASCAR race…

I will not be at NASCAR. It’s just unfortunate, but I made plans long before the NASCAR ever got, you know, put into Chicago that that I wasn’t going to be there. So, yeah.

* Isabel’s roundup…

* Tribune | Pritzker signs bills giving Illinois power over health insurance prices, Affordable Care Act exchange: The bill signings Tuesday came amid criticism aimed at Pritzker for his decision to close enrollment for many people in a separate health care program for immigrants in the country without legal permission. One of the bills signed into law Tuesday will allow Illinois to run the exchange where health insurance plans are sold, by 2025. Now, consumers must go to the federally-run healthcare.gov to buy exchange plans.

* Tribune | Gov. J.B. Pritzker defends cuts to immigrant health care program as cost to Cook County remains uncertain: “We need to make sure that we’re living within our fiscal limits within the state of Illinois,” Pritzker said Monday during an unrelated event at Chicago’s Union Station. “That’s something that wasn’t done for a number of years in Illinois.”

* Crain’s | Unemployment nearing record low around metro Chicago: According to surveys released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and IDES, the Chicago-Naperville-Arlington Heights statistical area reported an unemployment rate of just 3.2% in May, not seasonally adjusted. That’s near the lowest level ever, according to IDES, with only a 3.0% figure in November 2019 coming in lower.

* Crain’s | Chicago is now second city for home price growth: S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Indices released this morning for April. Chicago-area single-family home values rose by 4.1% that month from a year earlier, according to the index, second only to Miami, where prices were up 5.2%.

* Crain’s | Another season of drought would cost Illinois farms: Jeff Kirwan, an Illinois Farm Bureau board member and farmer in Mercer County near the Quad Cities, estimates the drought damage to date could cause a 20% reduction in crop yields in comparison to a normal year — assuming the region still gets some rain, that is. If the lack of rainfall continues with high daily temperatures, crop yield could be reduced by as much as 40% to 50%, Kirwan says.

* Belleville News-Democrat | Dangerous temperatures headed for metro-east. Here’s the latest forecast & safety tips: “Everyone’s heard a lot about the heat down in Texas. There’s an impressive heat dome of high pressure that’s drifting northeast,” Deitsch said. “Wednesday will be progressively warmer than today and then we’ll get very impressive heat Thursday and Friday, pushing 100 degrees. It’s the remnants of the same system in Texas drifting to the north and east.”

* Sun-Times | Chicago’s Urban Prep can stay open as lawsuit fighting its closure continues, appeals court rules: This is a major win for Urban Prep Academies, said Craig Wimberly, president of the Coalition of African American Leaders. COAL has been fighting for Urban Prep. It’s the city’s only all-male charter school operator, once celebrated nationally for getting all its seniors, who are almost all Black, into college year after year. It currently has two CPS campuses, one in Englewood and another in Bronzeville, with about 380 students enrolled before classes ended for the year. CPS budgeted $8 million for Urban Prep this past year.

* Crain’s | Good timing! CTA announces big grant for electric buses: The agency won a discretionary $25 million grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation to upgrade a bus-charging facility adjacent to its terminal at 95th Street and the Dan Ryan Expressway, which serves 16 bus lines that carry 26,000 riders on an average workday.

* Mendota Reporter | LaSalle County among four counties in Illinois to report West Nile Virus: While no human cases of West Nile virus have been reported in Illinois so far this year, there were 34 human cases (which are significantly under-reported) and eight deaths attributed to the disease in the state in 2022, the most in any year since 2018, when there were 17 deaths. A total of 10 batches of mosquitos that tested positive for West Nile virus have been reported this year in Cook, LaSalle, Morgan and St. Clair counties.

* Sun-Times | How could potential sale of Greyhound station in downtown Chicago affect bus riders at regional hub?: Some riders had to pay for additional travel to get to the makeshift station, local TV station WDRB reported. Louisville officials had debated helping Greyhound move to a spot near the city’s airport, but the station was sold before its city council approved the move.

* Tribune | Removing brain-damaging lead from day cares is aim of new Cook County initiative: Under the new LeadCare Cook County, providers in Calumet City, Cicero, Hazel Crest, Harvey and Maywood can apply now to have lead service lines — the pipes that deliver water from the main to the building — removed and replaced.

* AP | New York City drivers to pay extra tolls as part of first-in-the-nation effort to reduce congestion: Under one of several tolling scenarios under consideration, drivers could be charged as much as $23 a day to enter Manhattan south of 60th Street, with the exact amount still to be decided by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which is overseeing the long-stalled plan.

* Reuters | US Supreme Court turns away case on charter school’s mandatory skirts for girls: The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a North Carolina public charter school’s defense of its blocked requirement that girls wear skirts - a student uniform policy that its founder explained is aimed at treating women like “fragile vessels.”

* Daily Herald | Illinois Sen. Don DeWitte opening district office in St. Charles: State Sen. Don DeWitte is opening a second local office in his 33rd Senate District at 406 Surrey Woods Drive in St. Charles.

* Sun-Times | Oscar Mayer Frankmobile to visit Chicago area over the next few weeks: The Frankmobile, the symbol for the Chicago-based hot dog maker, can be spotted at parades, celebrations and businesses around the city from Tuesday through July 4.