Afternoon roundup
Tuesday, Jul 11, 2023 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Melissa Conyears-Ervin has decided to run against Danny Davis. Lynn Sweet…
City Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin is poised to challenge Rep. Danny Davis in the March 2024 Democratic primary, changing her mind about not running if he seeks another term as Kina Collins announces a third try against Davis.
Davis, 81, a South Austin resident, has made it clear for months that he will be seeking another term in 2024. […]
She will show fundraising muscle in her first Federal Election Commission report, pulling in, according to a draft, $283,486 as of June 30.
The Davis campaign raised about $100,000 in the last quarter, a spokesperson said.
* Not a bad idea…
A Lincoln Avenue motel once known as a hot-pillow haven and targeted for demolition will be turned into “stabilization housing” for people with mental health and substance abuse issues, thanks to a plan to combat homelessness that could become a model for all 50 wards.
On Monday, the City Council’s Committee on Housing and Real Estate gave Mayor Brandon Johnson the go-ahead to acquire the Diplomat Motel, 5230 N. Lincoln Ave., for $2.9 million and turn its 40 rooms into supportive housing with a host of wrap-around service on site.
The plan is aimed at duplicating the nurturing, hotel-to-housing model that worked so well during the pandemic.
Residents would stay for three to six months.
* Subscribers have been briefed (including two updates today), but here’s Politico…
Natalie Toro, a Chicago Public Schools teacher, was appointed Monday evening to the sought-after 20th District state Senate seat vacated by Cristina Pacione-Zayas, who’s now in the Chicago mayor’s office.
Chicago Ald. Scott Waguespack (32nd) and Clerk of the Circuit Court Iris Martinez both endorsed Toro, giving her a huge block of support over the other seven candidates, some of whom she will face in next year’s election. Waguespack and Martinez held large weighted votes that pushed Toro over the finish line. Here’s how the votes are dispersed.
The appointment process was tension-filled as it saw a range of Latino candidates from Democratic to progressive to left-of-progressive. Toro sits in the middle while Graciela Guzman, Pacione-Zayas’ Senate district director, is seen as the more progressive candidate. Only Toro and Guzman received votes.
Ald. Carlos Ramirez Rosa said Guzman lost out because committee people backed by the Fraternal Order of Police picked a more conservative candidate. In a statement, he praised the Northwest Side Progressive Coalition for supporting Guzman.
Toro drew a quick congratulations Monday evening from Sylvia Puente, CEO of the Latino Policy Forum and co-chair of the Illinois Latino Agenda. “We look forward to a productive working relationship,” she said in a statement.
The district is a bit more progressive than the weighted vote suggests. Gonna be a barn-burner of a primary.
* Rep. Kelly has done a lot right since being appointed to that seat in 2021…
* Center Square…
Despite a heavy emphasis on equity at the Illinois Statehouse, a new study ranks Illinois as the worst state in the country on racial economic equality.
The personal finance website WalletHub placed Illinois near the bottom in several categories, including the difference between white and Black residents in median annual income.
“The fifth largest gap in the country,” researcher Jill Gonzalez said. “The same with the labor force participation rate. Illinois is again the fifth highest and the second highest when looking at the unemployment rate.” […]
Illinois ranked 40th in the poverty rate, 46th in the homeless rate, and 49th in the share of unsheltered homeless. […]
Other Midwestern states scored poorly in the study, including Wisconsin as the second worst state and Iowa the third worst in the country.
“Despite”? Maybe that would be the reason why this state needs to do more.
* Press release…
Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle issued a disaster proclamation today for suburban Cook County in response to storms that hit the region on July 2. Several rounds of storms dumped nearly nine inches of rain in less than 24 hours in parts of the County, leading to severe flooding and other storm damage. Berwyn, Cicero and Stickney were the hardest hit suburban Cook County municipalities.
By signing this proclamation, the County is able to pursue all available resources to assist communities and residents in their recovery efforts.
The MWRD was criticized for not opening the Chicago River lock to Lake Michigan earlier. From its response…
The elevation of the Chicago River downtown exceeded Lake Michigan’s elevation so the locks were opened at 4 p.m. on July 2 and the reversal ended at 2:30 a.m. on July 3. Reversing to the lake only happens in extreme situations. Reversals dating back to 1985 are listed at this link: https://mwrd.org/sites/default/files/documents/Lake_Michigan_Reversals_0422.pdf
In other words, when the Chicago area waterway levels are higher than Lake Michigan, only then can the MWRD open control structures to move as much water as possible out of the system. We cannot open the gates and lock before that time. There is NO MAGIC KEY OR BUTTON to use at will. Opening the gates and lock not only provide overbank flooding protection but they allow for more capacity for stormwater. As a result, the MWRD can only reverse the waterway to the lake when the river level is ABOVE Lake Michigan levels. If we were to open the lock and gates too early, Lake Michigan would have a tsunami effect, overtaking the river and flooding everything in its path in downtown Chicago and along the waterways, totally decimating the riverwalk and municipalities downstream, on the South side and on the North side. The destruction that would be caused by opening the gates and lock too early is unimaginable.
Yikes.
* Isabel’s roundup…
* Tribune | ‘Let me put you on with the boss, OK?’: Feds detail wiretaps involving former Michael Madigan chief of staff: The 65-page filing Tuesday comes as prosecutors are seeking to play many of the recordings at Mapes’ trial next month on charges he lied to a federal grand jury investigating Madigan and his relationship with longtime confidant Michael McClain.
* Crain’s | Ryan Field backlash grows amid Northwestern football hazing scandal: A group of six NU tenured professors released a letter yesterday calling on the school to “halt that planning and marketing process (of the stadium) until this crisis is satisfactorily resolved,” joining a group of Evanston residents who called on the university to “pause” its project amid the scandal.
* Sun-Times | London bridges? Pritzker to lead United Kingdom trade mission with state business and education leaders: Gov. J.B. Pritzker in January traveled to Davos, Switzerland to speak at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting and promote the state’s achievements. And more international trips are in the works, according to his office.
* Bloomberg | Black workers account for 90% of the recent rise in unemployment: The unemployment rate for African Americans jumped for a second straight month in June as workers left the workforce amid early signs of a cooling labor market. That cooling has been uneven: The number of unemployed African Americans has increased by 267,000 since April, meaning they account for close to 90% of the 300,000 increase in overall joblessness during that period.
* Sun-Times | FOP vows court fight after Johnson rejects demand for 12 weeks of paid parental leave: In a YouTube video, FOP President John Catanzara slammed Mayor Brandon Johnson for setting one standard of benefits for his former union and a lesser standard for the union representing rank-and-file police officers.
* Tribune | Landmark Illinois wants to redefine historic preservation, and now has a $1 million Driehaus Foundation grant: Chicago’s Driehaus Foundation approved Monday evening $1 million in funding for a Landmarks Illinois program that revives historic buildings on the city’s South and West sides. The move will help fulfill the vision of philanthropist Richard Driehaus, the founder of Driehaus Capital Management who died in 2021, that historic preservation can both save beautiful buildings and develop underserved communities, according to Anne Lazar, the foundation’s executive director.
* Block Club | Italian American Groups Rip Alderperson For Tweet About Honoring Italian Ice, Coffee Maker Instead Of Columbus: Ald. Rossana Rodriguez-Sanchez, who introduced an ordinance to change Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples Day, said her tweet wasn’t offensive and she “doesn’t have anything to apologize for.”
* Daily Southtown | Defeated Lockport High School candidate Mike Clausen promoted to Homer Township trustee: Clausen was sworn in as collector April 11, seven days after he lost his school board bid as part of the We the Parents Illinois slate, coming in sixth in an eight-person race for three seats. Township trustees appointed him to the board Tuesday to fill the vacancy of Matt Connelly, who resigned because he moved out of the township.
* Winnetka Talk | Proposed lakefront regulations stir up trouble in Winnetka: Justin Ishbia, who already owns five parcels along the lake, is willing to exchange one of those parcels — at 261 Sheridan Road — with the Park District in exchange for a 70-foot piece of beach property. The Park District would use its newly acquired property to connect two nearby parks and turn them into one, a project that has been dreamed of for decades.
* Axios | Golden handcuffs lock up Illinois’ housing supply: Nearly a quarter of Illinois homeowners with mortgages had a rate below 3% in the fourth quarter of 2022, per Redfin. And 38% of mortgage holders had a rate between 3% and 4%.
* Tom McNamee | Tylenol suspect James Lewis told me anyone could have poisoned those capsules — and calmly explained how: In the summer of 1987, as Chicago was coming up on the fifth anniversary of the Tylenol murders, I interviewed Lewis at the federal penitentiary in Danbury, Connecticut.
* WGN | See the largest movie theatre screen in Illinois: Emagine Entertainment has opened a Super EMX Theatre in Batavia, 550 N. Randall Road, that features what’s described as “the largest Cinemascope screen in the state of Illinois.” It’s over 96 feet wide and 53 feet tall, or just about the size of a regulation NBA court.
* CBS Chicago | Shedd Aquarium welcomes penguin rockhopper chick: A rockhopper chick joins the penguin colony. According to the Shedd, the last rockhopper chick born there was Diego. It was hatched in 2015. The chick, who currently does not have a name, is being taken care of by its cared for by its parents Edward and Annie, and the aquarium’s animal care team.
* Courier-News | Mullet growing contest and the Rhinestone Roper among the new attractions at this year’s Kane County Fair: Along with its usual array of 4-H Club projects, carnival rides and family-friendly attractions, this year’s Kane County Fair will be doing its part to bring back the mullet. A contest for the best mullet haircut is set for 7:30 p.m. Thursday in the livestock showing area on the county fairgrounds in St. Charles, the second day of the annual fair that runs through Sunday.
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Rate the new CTBA pension idea
Tuesday, Jul 11, 2023 - Posted by Rich Miller
* The Center for Tax and Budget Accountability has released a new pension payment plan…
Under CTBA’s model:
o the funded ratio target for 2045 moves from its current level of 90 percent under the Pension Ramp to a target of 80 percent funded, which is the GAO standard for a public pension system to be healthy;
o a total of $6.7 billion in pension obligations bonds are issued over the FY 2023 through FY 2030 sequence, with all the bond proceeds being used to front-load payments to the pension systems and retire existing unfunded liability debt;
o the contributions to the pension systems are moved from the last day of the fiscal year to the first day, thereby generating an additional year of investment returns on said contributions, which has a positive, compounding effect over time; and
o the repayment of outstanding unfunded liabilities is re-amortized on a level-dollar basis, eliminating the fiscal strain created by the back-loading of payments under the existing Pension Ramp.
The CTBA claims doing this would save the state $62.8 billion. From a press release…
Based on the re-amortization approach modeled out in the report, the state can save 19 percent of the total debt service remaining under the Pension Ramp, which would reduce taxpayer costs by $62.8 billion between now and 2045, the final year of the Pension Ramp payment schedule.
Another benefit of the re-amortization of the debt owed to the pension system outlined in the Report is that it would get the state’s five pension systems healthier faster than the current Pension Ramp.
According to Sarah Wasik, CTBA’s Senior Research and Policy Analyst: “Any business that could refinance debt and save billions of dollars would do so. It makes sense for the state of Illinois to do the same and take the opportunity to refinance its pension debt, so it can save billions of taxpayer dollars.”
Click here for lots more details.
Considering that the NY rating agencies have been complaining for years that Illinois has a 90 percent funding model by 2045 instead of a 100 percent model, I’m not sure how this would go over with them.
Your thoughts?
…Adding… I always pay attention to what Yvette Shields at the Bond Buyer says…
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* Washington Post…
Blistering temperatures reached unheard-of northerly latitudes in Canada over the weekend amid dangerously hot and dry conditions, lightning storms and new blazes that intensified the country’s historically severe fire season.
The temperature soared as high as 100 degrees in the Northwest Territories on Saturday, the hottest temperature ever measured north of 65 degrees latitude in the Western Hemisphere, according to Christopher Burt, an extreme-weather historian.
The scorching temperatures over western Canada exacerbated the country’s unprecedented wildfire crisis. A record 22.7 million acres (9.2 million hectares) have burned so far, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre, blowing past the previous high mark of 17.5 million acres (7.1 million hectares) in 1995. There are months of the wildfire season to go.
I got curious so I looked up some things. 9.2 million hectares works out to 35,521 square miles, making it 64 percent of all the land in Illinois (55,593 square miles). Indiana land is 35,868 square miles, meaning it’s just a tiny bit larger than the area burned so far (and there are “months of the wildfire season to go”).
* From the CBC…
Researchers say there are ways to slow these changes, starting with reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
In addition, [Jennifer Baltzer, an associate professor in the department of biology at Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario] said improved fire management, by allowing some fires to burn in some cases, and increasing the number of prescribed burns in others, would help scale back the number of out-of-control, large-scale fires.
* Isabel did a quick roundup…
* NYT | Canada’s Ability to Prevent Forest Fires Lags Behind the Need: At a time when many Canadians are asking if the country has enough wildfire fighting resources, several experts say the government should be focused on doing all it can to prevent wildfires, a focus from which it has strayed since budget cuts imposed in the 1990s that hampered the nation’s forest service.
* Sun-Times | Underground climate change poses a ‘silent hazard’ in Chicago and other cities, researchers find: Heat can cause the ground to swell and building foundations to slowly sink, particularly in the high-temperature Loop — but that hot air can be captured and turned into energy, Northwestern researchers say.
* Accesswire | Wilmette Park District is Ready to ‘Go Solar’ After Governor Pritzker Signs Bill Legalizing Long-Term Solar Contracts: “We are very excited for this change in state law that will finally allow us to go solar,” said Mike Murdock, Wilmette Park District commissioner and former board president. “The project will cover over 90 percent of the Community Recreation Center’s roof and provide more than 50 percent of the building’s electrical usage over the next 25 years. It will help us do our part to support the climate and save taxpayer money, all while continuing to provide top-tier services for our residents.”
* Ben Jealous | To feel less heat, we need more trees in our cities: The need couldn’t be simpler to state: Plant more trees where there are too few. But meeting the need has been less of a priority for those in neighborhoods where shade isn’t a luxury. We can’t overlook the fact that urban trees help everyone — they keep close to a billion metric tons of climate-killing carbon out of the atmosphere.
* Fox Illinois | University YMCA announces 21st annual Dump & Run Recycling Program and sale: Each year, the YMCA keeps around 30 tons of unwanted goods out of Champaign-Urbana’s dumpsters and landfills. Collection of usable items will begin from 12 p.m. to 4 p.m. on Monday, July 31 at the U of I Stock Pavillion, located at 1402 W. Pennsylvania Ave. in Urbana. Collections will then occur from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. every weekday and from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturdays through August 12. The YMCA offers free pick-up days for furniture and bicycle donations from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on August 5 and August 12. Request a pick-up here.
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Pritzker leading trade mission to UK
Tuesday, Jul 11, 2023 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Press release…
Governor Pritzker along with leaders in business and education from around the state will embark on a trade mission to the United Kingdom on July 16. The Governor will kick off the international trip by attending the Goodwood Festival of Speed from July 13-16 to discuss Illinois’ commitment to electric vehicle manufacturing with automobile, energy, and supply chain industry leaders.
Following the Goodwood Festival of Speed, a delegation of business and education leaders will meet with their counterparts in London to discuss strengthening economic cooperation between the State of Illinois and the United Kingdom. Programming throughout the mission will focus on manufacturing, clean energy and technology, quantum, higher education collaboration, and other key industries.
“When I first ran for Governor, I promised to be our state’s best Chief Marketing Officer—letting the world know that Illinois is the best place to live, work, and do business,” said Governor JB Pritzker. “Over the next several days, I couldn’t be more excited to meet with UK and international leaders—sharing the many virtues of our state, from our talented workforce and world-class manufacturing industry to our booming electric vehicle ecosystem and ambitious clean energy goals.”
“The State of Illinois and the United Kingdom have a longstanding economic relationship and as Illinois’ economic development agency, we look forward to building upon this enduring partnership,” said DCEO Director Kristin Richards. “With $5 billion in bilateral trade in 2022, this trip will help us further strengthen our ties and give us the opportunity to meet with some of the most talented leaders across industries in the UK while forging connections on business opportunities that will benefit Illinoisans and people from Britain alike.”
“The UK is one of the top foreign investors in Illinois, so this trip is about building on that strength to encourage more British companies to be in Illinois,” said Intersect Illinois CEO Dan Seals. “We’re making the case for our skilled workforce, our central location, our quality of life, and our international outlook.”
Leaders joining the trade mission include:
• Governor JB Pritzker
• First Lady MK Pritzker
• Emanuel “Chris” Welch, Speaker of the IL House
• Anne Caprara, Chief of Staff to Governor Pritzker
• Andy Manar, Deputy Governor
• Christy George, First Assistant Deputy Governor
• Martin Torres, Deputy Governor
• Sean Rapelyea, Senior Advisor for External Affairs
• Jordan Abudayyeh, Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications
• Kristin Richards, Director, DCEO
• Margo Markopoulos, DCEO, Director of Trade and Investment
• Cas Peters, DCEO, Senior Policy Advisor
• Dan Seals, Intersect Illinois, CEO
• Paulina San Millan, Intersect Illinois, VP for Business Development
• Alan Gogbashian, UK Consul General to Chicago
• Tim Killeen, University of Illinois, President
• Jay Walsh, University of Illinois, VP
• Juan de Pablo, University of Chicago, EVP
• Raj Echambadi, Illinois Institute of Technology, President
• Kate Waimey Timmerman, Chicago Quantum Exchange, CEO
• David Awschalom, Chicago Quantum Exchange, Director
• Pranav Gokhale, Infleqtion, VP of Quantum Software
• Carmen Rossi, 8 Hospitality, CEO
• Meredith O’Connor, JLL, International Director
• AJ Patton, 548 Enterprise, CEO
• Jim Reynolds, Loop Capital, CEO
• Wendell Dallas, Nicor Gas, President and CEO
• Gil Quiniones, ComEd, CEO
• Torrence Hinton, People’s Gas and North Shore Gas, President
• Leonard Singh, Ameren, Chairman and President
• Kara Demirjian Huss, T/CCI Manufacturing, VP; DCC Marketing, Founder & President
• Berardino Baratta, MxD, CEO
• Mark Denzler, Illinois Manufacturing Association, CEO
• David Boulay, Illinois Manufacturing Excellence Center, President
• Michael Jacobson, Illinois Hotel and Lodging Association, CEO
• Rob Karr, Illinois Retail Merchants Association, CEO
• Jeff Baker, Illinois Realtors Association, CEO
• Michael Gobber, Illinois Realtors Association, President
• Brad Tietz, Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce, VP of Gov. Relations
• Monica Mueller, Motorola Solutions, VP of Gov. Affairs
• Dan Lynch, United Airlines, VP of State and Local Govt.
• John Atkinson, Marsh US in Chicago, Chairman and Managing Director
Illinois and the United Kingdom have a long history of shared economic cooperation.
Exports are a Vital Part of Illinois’ Economy
• Illinois exports exceeded $78 billion in 2022 with the preliminary agricultural adjusted figure reaching $82.2 billion, both all-time highs
• Illinois is the largest exporting state in the Midwest and the 5th largest in the nation
• 19 out of the top 20 export industries increased since 2021
• Since 2009, Illinois exports have increased by $36.55 billion, or 87.8%
• Export activities support over 800K jobs in Illinois
Total Trade between Illinois and United Kingdom in 2022
• Illinois exports to United Kingdom totaled $1.94 billion in 2022
• United Kingdom is Illinois’ 9th largest export market
• Illinois ranks 10th among the 50 U.S. states in exports to United Kingdom
• Illinois imports from United Kingdom totaled $3.14 billion in 2022, a 139.8% increase since 2009.
• United Kingdom is Illinois’ 13th largest import market
• Illinois ranks 6th among the 50 U.S. states in imports from United Kingdom
…Adding… According to the governor’s office, staff travel is covered by the governor’s office and DCEO is covering its staff travel. The governor is paying for his own travel and for staff travel to Goodwood and lodging at Goodwood. Everyone else is paying for their own stuff. DCEO and Intersect are sharing some of the costs associated with programming
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* Background is here and here if you need it. Jon Seidel…
Michael Madigan’s former chief of staff reached out to a defense attorney for the then-powerful Illinois House speaker after he was approached by FBI agents in early 2019, then he called a longtime Madigan confidant and said he was “reporting in,” prosecutors say.
While the feds do not argue those actions by Timothy Mapes were unlawful, they do say it demonstrates “his loyalty” to Madigan and Michael McClain, “and his intentional effort to withhold information” from a federal grand jury in March 2021.
That and other details about the case against Mapes were revealed in a 65-page document filed by prosecutors early Tuesday morning, four weeks ahead of Mapes’ trial on perjury and attempted obstruction of justice charges. […]
Mapes told a grand jury in March 2021 that he did not recall being told if McClain did any work for Madigan between 2017 and 2019. But prosecutors contend the “close relationship” between Mapes and McClain, as well as their “consistent communications,” show that “Mapes could not have forgotten the critical role McClain played in Madigan’s political operation.”
* From the federal filing…
This evidence demonstrates that Mapes lied in the grand jury when he testified that he did not know what interactions McClain had with Madigan from 2017 to 2019. The evidence reveals that Mapes knew McClain was working on a piece of legislation related to property in Chinatown for Madigan, and that Mapes contacted Madigan’s lawyer after FBI agents contacted Mapes in 2019. The evidence also shows Mapes’ frequent communications with McClain concerning a wide range of personal and professional topics and their close relationship with each other.
* The feds have a lot of audio files to back up their claim that Mapes knew about interactions between McClain and Madigan. There are a ton of examples, but here are some…
GX15 (5/30/18 at 6:26 p.m.). This call again is an example of Mapes and McClain discussing sensitive political issues that affect Madigan. It is the first of four calls between the two men on one night. McClain fills Mapes in on a woman who accused then-Representative Public Official B of sexual harassment. At the end of the call, McClain gives Mapes advice as to how Public Official B should address the allegations, and Mapes says “okay.” Contrary to Mapes’ motion, this is an adoptive admission, but in any event it is admissible to show Mapes was on notice of the sensitive role McClain played in matters affecting Madigan and the Speaker’s Office. This call is relevant for the additional reason that Mapes specifically lied about Public Official B, as alleged in Count Two of the indictment. This and other calls show that Mapes is highly attuned to the drama surrounding Public Official B and McClain’s role in mitigating the fall-out for Madigan. This call thus makes it more likely that Mapes was well aware of McClain’s role in forcing Public Official B out of office months later, in the fall of 2018. (There are also calls between Mapes and McClain about Public Official B’s ouster, but this earlier call also makes it more likely that Mapes would not have somehow forgotten those later calls.)
GX16 (5/30/18 at 9:34 p.m.). In this short follow-up call, Mapes tells McClain that “we’re in the midst of all kind of things going on,” including related to Public Official B. McClain offers to share what he knows, and Mapes says ‘let me put you on with the boss. Okay? . . . so you’re going to inform him what you know and go from there.” This call demonstrates as clear as day that Mapes knew McClain communicated with Madigan in 2018, because Mapes sets up that conversation. It also is an example of McClain working for Madigan, helping get information to him about a brewing sexual harassment scandal. Although the call was minimized, and thus the conversation with Madigan was not included in the recorded portion, the excerpted portion nevertheless clearly shows the manner in which McClain was brought in to help with sensitive issues impacting the Speaker’s Office.
Public Official B is former Rep. Lou Lang, who, the filing claims, will be testifying at Mapes’ trial.
* Public Official C is Rep. Bob Rita, who will also be testifying…
GX57 (8/21/18). In this call, McClain tells Mapes that he is in Chicago to meet with Public Official C about gaming legislation (which Public Official C will testify about at trial) and that he was having dinner with Madigan. This is yet another example of McClain relaying assignments he was working on for Madigan and describing plans to meet with Madigan. Mapes also asks McClain if “they” had started “Sunday phone calls,” a reference to Sunday review meetings held by Madigan and his close staff in the Speaker’s Office, which the jury will also hear about at trial. Again, this call shows that Mapes is well aware that McClain is doing work for Madigan. Mapes also asks about Public Official B, and if there had been any report as to the sexual harassment allegations against him. The entirety of this call shows how much detail Mapes knows about McClain’s comings and goings, in just one brief phone call. […]
GX12 (5/24/18). This is a call between McClain and Public Official C, who will testify about trial. The indictment alleges that Mapes gave testimony about McClain’s interactions with Public Official C. Dkt. 1, Count 2. The two men are generally discussing gaming legislation, a topic that is relevant because McClain tells Mapes in another call (GX57) that one of McClain’s “assignments” from Madigan was to work with Public Official C on gaming legislation. The bulk of the call will not be offered for its truth but to show McClain playing the exact role he told Mapes about; advising Public Official C on gaming. Significantly, when Public Official C asks how to move the bill, McClain tells him, “let me check with Mapes.” This last statement is admissible as a statement of intention or plan under Rule 803(3), and it is relevant because it shows McClain’s plan to talk to Mapes about gaming legislation.
* Will Cousineau will also testify at the trial…
GX13 (5/25/18). In this call, McClain tells Cousineau that he should talk to Mapes about a piece of legislation one of Cousineau’s lobbying clients want on a bill. This is not offered for its truth. Instead it’s a piece of advice, and thus admissible as a “verbal act” rather than for its truth. Cousineau will be able to testify about this call, and the role Mapes played in the Speaker’s Office both before and after his resignation.
Lang, Rita and Cousineau all testified at the ComEd Four trial. None have been accused of wrongdoing. Lang and Rita both received “non-target” letters from prosecutors. Cousineau was granted immunity.
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* Former Northwestern University cheerleader Alyssa Johnson…
* A February 2021 article from the Daily Northwestern…
Erika Carter (SESP ’18) never imagined she would sue her alma mater.
As a Black member of Northwestern’s cheer program from 2016 to 2018, she faced unequal treatment for wearing her natural hair, was forced to split up from other Black teammates on the sidelines for “optics” and was told in writing that ethnically Black hairstyles like braids were not allowed on the team. Now in her post-graduation years, she said she plans to take legal action for the racial discrimination she experienced.[…]
Carter is one of many women to detail racist behavior and abuse from former Northwestern cheer coach Pamela Bonnevier. Bonnevier was fired in Fall 2020, but interviews with current and former cheer team members indicate consistent negligence and cover-up from other University officials. The experiences Carter and her teammates voice raise questions about reporting processes and the handling of racism in the University’s athletic and marketing departments.
In an April 2017 email, Bonnevier told Carter wearing braids would impact her eligibility for post-season events and travel to away football games.
“You have to decide for yourself how (getting braids) fits into your needs/wants,” Bonnevier added in the email. “Just throwing this out there.. A wig for events could be an option for you.”
In her second season on the team, Carter said she felt she was given less prominence and fewer opportunities to travel to away games because she chose to wear her natural hair. Carter also said she and other Black cheerleaders were also told by Bonnevier they were not allowed to stand next to each other at games and events because of “optics.”
* That wasn’t the only cheerleader lawsuit against the university that year. Tribune…
But early in her first season, the “dark side” of the program emerged, according to a federal lawsuit Richardson filed Friday against Northwestern. In the 58-page complaint, Richardson details repeated instances where she said she was groped by drunken fans and alumni during university-sanctioned events, alleging the cheer team’s head coach required female members to “mingle” with powerful donors for the school’s financial gain.
“It became clear to (Richardson) that the cheerleaders were being presented as sex objects to titillate the men that funded the majority of Northwestern’s athletics programs,” the lawsuit says. “After all, the happier these men were, the more money the university would receive from them.”
During these encounters in 2018 and 2019, Richardson alleges that older men touched her breasts and buttocks over her uniform, picked her up without her consent and made “sexually charged comments” about her appearance, according to the lawsuit, which was filed in the Northern District of Illinois. Richardson recalled instances when the men offered her alcohol, though she was underage, or asked to meet up later, the lawsuit says.
Still, according to the lawsuit, head coach Pam Bonnevier continued telling the cheerleaders to socialize on their own, despite their requests to pair up during football tailgates and donor events. The female students were instructed to take photos with fans even if they behaved inappropriately, the lawsuit says.
* WBEZ in May of 2021…
Northwestern University’s athletic director admitted in a secretly-taped meeting just before his Wednesday resignation that he had not been sufficiently sympathetic about allegations of sexual harassment that were brought to him.
A day before his resignation, Mike Polisky admitted during a private meeting with Northwestern student-athletes and staff that he had regrets about how he reacted when cheerleaders came to him with allegations of sexual harassment two years ago.
“I wish that I would have been more empathetic in the moment. … I think that that might have alleviated some of the angst and frustration from some of the members of the cheer team,” Polisky said on a secretly recorded tape of the meeting, obtained exclusively by WBEZ.[…]
In the university meeting, Polisky also said he felt sickened by what he heard from the members of the cheer squad when they came to see him in his office.
“There was also alleged inappropriate touching and different things at some of the tailgates, and what I felt in my head, what I felt in my stomach … again, as a father of two daughters, this cannot happen to anybody. And by the way, our mascot, we came to learn, also had been inappropriately touched at tailgates out on the road. It’s not acceptable.”
* NYT coverage…
The lawsuit, filed in a U.S. District Court in the school’s state of Illinois, also contends that the Title IX office violated federal policy by delaying a formal investigation into these actions over a year after Richardson reported them.
In her university thesis, which details the experiences of her and other cheerleaders, Richardson wrote that in January 2019 members of her team met with Polisky to voice their concerns around tailgating. He responded, “What did you expect as cheerleaders?” She added that Polisky had accused two teammates of fabricating evidence when they sent 16 anonymously written accounts of harassment to him and Heather Obering, the associate athletic director for marketing, at the same meeting. […]
Polisky denied these allegations in an email through his attorneys to The New York Times on Friday, as did a representative for Obering. Both have moved to dismiss the case, along with the university. An attorney for Bonnevier did not respond to requests for comment.
Polisky and Obering forwarded complaints from the January 2019 meeting to the university’s Office of Equity, which investigated. Later in 2019, policies restricting hairstyles were removed and cheerleaders were no longer required to participate in tailgates, a spokeswoman for the university, Jeri B. Ward, wrote in an email to The Times on Thursday. Bonnevier’s contract was not renewed in 2020 after she was found to have violated the university’s discrimination and harassment policy, Ward said.
* Tribune in May of 2021…
That fateful meeting in January 2019 set the stage for a controversy that rocked Northwestern this month, leading to a large campus protest and Polisky’s resignation just nine days after he was promoted to the department’s top post. Students, faculty and even some powerful university trustees opposed Polisky’s appointment because he is named as a defendant in an ongoing lawsuit brought by Richardson alleging the university mishandled her repeated complaints. Polisky didn’t respond to requests for comment. […]
Even though Polisky stepped down, the difficult questions provoked by his selection are anything but settled. Many in the university community are demanding answers as to why Polisky, a white man involved in active litigation, was chosen over the other finalists, two of whom were Black and one a white woman. Some say it feels as if an old boys’ club drives hiring decisions.
“It’s always important for us to understand when things go wrong, how do we hold people accountable and who do we hold accountable…?” said Tyris Jones, a former Northwestern running back who graduated in 2012.
Jones said he reached out to the athletic department with concerns and ideas and encourages former teammates and alumni to do the same. As a “predominantly white institution,” Northwestern has an opportunity to rebuild trust in the Black and brown communities based on whom it picks for leadership roles, Jones said.
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Time for some leadership
Tuesday, Jul 11, 2023 - Posted by Rich Miller
* I usually try to avoid writing much about local Springfield matters, but this really jumped out at me. SJ-R…
City Water, Light and Power’s Chief Utility Engineer [Doug Brown] said the cost of the June 29 storm is somewhere in the neighborhood of $20 million to the utility itself. […]
The utility, he said, is focused for now on returning the grid to the state it was in. “Any discussion,” Brown said, of further improvements, like burying power lines or installing Advanced Metering Infrastructure, or AMI, would be done “at enormous cost and with competing priorities, it would be up to the mayor and city council if we want to proceed in that direction in the future.”
The AMI technology would not have sped up the physical repairs but would have improved communication by automatically letting the utility know about outages, Brown acknowledged.
* WCIA…
Right now, the city learns that an area of the grid is down by hearing directly from customers. Other infrastructure upgrades might be too far fetched going forward, though.
“Where do you draw the line, you know, people say, we’ll bury the power lines that’s an enormous cost,” Brown said. “I don’t think that they want to pay for that kind of a rate increase for.”
These storms aren’t going to be any weaker or less frequent as time goes by. So, either pay now or pay later. Some actual leadership would be nice, for a change. Turn the discussion to the possibilities of a bright future with a new direction.
* Flashback to 2009…
Downtown Springfield’s skyline is becoming de-cluttered, block by block.
City Water, Light and Power crews have been burying unattractive power lines that run through downtown’s alleys for about eight years.
The 10-year, $7 million undertaking is about two-thirds of the way complete, according to the city-owned utility. Estimated completion date: 2012.
If they can do it downtown, they can do it elsewhere.
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* A bit of background…
Pursuant to 730 ILCS 5/3-15-2(b), the Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice (IDJJ) is responsible for establishing minimum standards for juvenile detention centers across the state. For the first time since 1998, the County Detention Standards were updated in 2021 to reflect current practice. Updates included the addition of portions for the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), and enhanced guidelines for areas such as youth grievances, mental health service requirements, visitation guidelines, educational guidelines, and restrictions to the use of confinement. IDJJ conducts annual inspections of all county detention centers to monitor compliance and offer technical assistance.
Illinois county juvenile detention centers do NOT fall under the jurisdiction of the State of Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice.
And…
The Franklin County Juvenile Detention Center serves law enforcement and the juvenile justice system within 26 rural southern Illinois counties.
* From last October…
A southern Illinois juvenile detention center is a “a facility in crisis.”
That’s the words used by the Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice following an inspection in Franklin County.
The full, 15-page report can be found here.
During an August 2 inspection at the Franklin County Detention Center, the Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice found what it calls “extremely low” staffing levels at the facility.
The report shows just eight full-time works and four part-time employees were working at the detention center at the time of the inspection.
Inspectors say they also found the facility to be non-compliant in several areas, including personal hygiene, food services and education.
* ACLU of Illinois…
A young person who has been housed at the Franklin County Juvenile Detention Center filed a federal lawsuit challenging the conditions at the facility. The lawsuit’s description of horrific conditions at the facility mirror the findings of a recent report by the Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice. The youth, along with several others currently or recently detained at the facility, describe being locked into cells the size of parking spaces for 20 to 24 hours a day, unable to flush their own toilets, and struggling to sleep under fluorescent lights that never turn off. The youth held at the facility also are not provided any meaningful mental health care or allowed to attend school.
These conditions are present in a facility that detains youth as young as 11 years old. Each year, Franklin County JDC detains hundreds from multiple counties across Southern Illinois.
“The bottom line is that the officials responsible for this facility are failing to treat youth in their care as children,” said Kevin Fee, Senior Special Litigation Counsel at the ACLU of Illinois, one of the lawyers representing the unnamed youth in the lawsuit. “These youth are isolated for long periods of time with no chance to exercise their minds or bodies. There is widespread consensus that no one should be subjected to solitary confinement, let alone an 11 year old who is at such a crucial early stage in their social and emotional development. It is inhumane.”
Among conditions detailed in the complaint filed in federal court:
• Young people are regularly confined alone their small rooms for 20-23 hours per day, and sometimes receive enhanced solitary confinement for days on end;
• Fluorescent lights in the rooms remain at full brightness for 24 hours each day;
• The rooms are not sanitary, including many that leak when it rains and others that have significant mold;
• Youth are not provided pillows or adequate bed linen for the mattresses where they sleep;
• Water is regularly shut off as a part of an opaque discipline system;
• Youth must “buzz” detention staff if they need additional toilet paper or to have their toilet flushed (toilets in the rooms are flushed from outside);
• Young people have no meaningful access to mental health care to deal with their inhumane surroundings;
• Youth have no regular educational classes, instead being given worksheets to complete on their own.
Nearly a year ago, in August 2022, the Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice conducted an audit of the Franklin County facility and concluded that it was a “facility in crisis.” The IDJJ cited a range of problems from extended confinement to the lack of clothing and personal hygiene to a behavioral program that was standardless and vague.
“Our clients all make one thing clear – Franklin County and the leadership of the JDC have put policies in place that led to youth being detained in constitutionally inadequate conditions, and they have failed to organize and pay for the resources necessary to appropriately care for children in its facility,” added Fee. “This situation must be rectified now, so that no 11 year old is locked up in these awful conditions. We look forward to sharing all this information with a federal court.”
The federal lawsuit was filed in the Southern District of Illinois on behalf of a young person (known by his initials, L.S.) and a putative class of other youth detained at the facility. The complaint asks the federal court to ensure that immediate steps are taken to address the harms caused by the conditions and lack of services.
A full copy of the complaint can be found here.
…Adding… A bill was passed this spring to extend the jurisdiction of the Department of Juvenile Justice’s independent ombudsman to cover county detention facilities like the one in Franklin County. The governor has yet to take action on the bill.
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Fun with numbers
Tuesday, Jul 11, 2023 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Crain’s…
llinois hotels pulled in a record amount of tax revenue for the state during the past 12 months, another benchmark in the hospitality sector’s recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic that devastated it.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker today announced that the state collected nearly $308 million in hotel tax revenue during its 2023 fiscal year, which ended on June 30. The figure was up 36% from the 2022 fiscal year and topped the previous record high of $296 million the state pulled in from hotels during its 2019 fiscal year.
The hotel tax revenue number is still below pre-pandemic levels when factoring in inflation, but remains an important financial boost for a state that has leaned more heavily in recent years on taxes tied to tourism and the convention industry.
Statewide hotel tax proceeds fell as low as $93 million during the fiscal year that ended in mid-2021, a drop-off that forced multiple public agencies that rely on hotel taxes to dip deep into their reserves to maintain operations or make debt service payments. […]
Visitation statewide totaled 111.3 million in 2022, the state reported. That was up 14% year over year, though still below the 122.8 million visitors that came to Illinois in 2019.
As noted in the article, the new revenue numbers did not outpace inflation. The $296 million collected through June of 2019 would equal $351.45 million in the most recent available calculation (May) from the BLS inflation calculator. That’s $43.45 million below revenues collected in FY2023.
Even so, the trend appears friendly.
* Sun-Times…
Three consecutive Taylor Swift concerts last month helped to break an all-time hotel weekend occupancy record in Chicago.
Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity Director Kristin Richards credited the Enjoy Illinois 300 NASCAR race, held last month in Madison near the Missouri border, with boosting tourism downstate. Rend Lake and Walkers Bluff in southern Illinois also saw an increase in tourism.
The Illinois Hotel and Lodging Association said record attendance at the 2022 Illinois State Fair, Lollapalooza and Suenos music festivals in Chicago and the John Deere Classic in the Quad Cities also helped boost hotel numbers. Having the Illinois Legislature back in full session for the first time since 2020 helped downtown Springfield — and corporate relocations, such as Rivian in Bloomington, also helped increase hotel traffic.
State and local tax revenue from visitor spending totaled in $4.2 billion in 2022, according to a Tourism Economics Report. The report also noted there were 270,600 workers in the state’s tourism and hospitality industry, an increase of 38,300 jobs from 2021.
* Tribune…
The record hotel revenue likely reflects higher room rates, however, as occupancy remains below pre-pandemic levels in Chicago, the state’s largest hotel market, according to data from Choose Chicago, the city’s tourism arm. Illinois did not provide statewide hotel occupancy rates. […]
The state’s tourism industry was essentially cut in half during the depths of the pandemic, bottoming at 67 million visitors and $23 billion in spending in calendar year 2020, according to the data. In April 2022, the state launched the $30 million “Middle of Everything” TV campaign featuring Illinois-born actress and comedian Jane Lynch.
* Capitol News Illinois…
Michael Jacobson, president of the Illinois Hotel and Lodging Association, said that while revenues have returned, staffing levels and occupancy rates overall have not yet reached pre-pandemic levels, although they were trending toward recovery.
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* Choate is the tip of the iceberg, according to this story from Lee Enterprises Midwest, Capitol News Illinois and ProPublica…
People with developmental disabilities living in Illinois’ publicly run institutions have been punched, slapped, hosed down, thrown about and dragged across rooms; in other cases, staff failures contributed to patient harm and death, state police and internal investigative records show.
The Illinois State Police division that looks into alleged criminal wrongdoing by state employees investigates more allegations against workers at these seven residential centers than it does at any other department’s workplaces, including state prisons, which house far more people, according to an analysis of state police data.
It has opened 200 investigations into employee misconduct at these developmental centers since 2012 — most of them outside of Choate.
The state’s seven developmental centers, home to about 1,600 people, are situated from the bottom of the state at the edge of the Shawnee National Forest all the way north to the Wisconsin border. The oldest operating facility opened in 1873 and the newest one in 1987. They house dozens, and in some cases hundreds, of people with developmental disabilities in a hospital-like setting. These residents have a range of conditions: genetic, acquired from a problematic birth, or resulting from exposure to dangerous chemicals or from injury in childhood or adolescence.
As in other states, many of these facilities were built in small towns and rural areas. Today, they are short-staffed and at times chaotic and dangerous, according to a slew of reports and interviews with workers and advocates. This May, the safety concerns inside the developmental centers prompted a court-appointed monitor to urge IDHS to stop placing anyone covered by an expansive consent decree into any of the agency’s developmental centers.
“Too many residents suffer physical injury, sexual assault and death to regard placement in such facilities as safe,” wrote Ronnie Cohn, the monitor and a New-York based expert on disability services, in a report that was prepared at the behest of a federal judge in ongoing proceedings.
Illinois is a stubborn outlier among states, continuing to funnel huge sums of money into institutional care. Many others have entirely shuttered or significantly downsized their state-run institutions. Illinois has about the same number of people living in them as do California, Florida, New York and Ohio combined. In Illinois, the lawsuit that led to the 2011 consent decree argued that the state had violated the civil rights of people with developmental disabilities by failing to offer enough options for community-based care. The next year, the state closed one of its centers and tried to shut another; that effort, to shutter the Murray Developmental Center in southern Illinois, failed in the face of union and community pushback. Now, the state is making space for 60 more residents at Murray, some of which will likely transfer from Choate.
“This is one of the most backwards states in the nation on everything we know how to measure when it comes to the care of people with developmental disabilities,” said Allan Bergman, a consultant from suburban Chicago who advises clients and governments across the U.S. on disability policies and programs.
We asked IDHS about the new reporting on issues within the state’s developmental centers. Agency spokesperson Marisa Kollias pointed out that the state had announced a broader review of every facility that IDHS operates as part of its response to the reporting on Choate. She said in a statement that the state has worked to “identify the root causes of misconduct” and correct them. Among recent improvements, IDHS has appointed a new chief safety officer, held numerous trainings on how to report abuse and neglect and ordered more than 400 security cameras for installation across all of its facilities by the end of the year, she said.
Additionally, IDHS acknowledged shortcomings in the community care settings that operate under the agency’s oversight. Kollias said that the community system had been financially neglected by the prior administration and noted that Pritzker’s administration has successfully advocated for millions of dollars in new spending for these programs. Funding for home- and community-based care has roughly doubled what it was when Pritzker took office to more than $1.7 billion, though advocates contend it’s still not enough after years of steep cuts.
State police investigations of claims against staff at Illinois’ developmental centers are on the rise: Nearly 70% of them over the past decade were initiated since 2019, the year Pritzker took office.
Of the 200 state police investigations into employee misconduct over the past decade, 161 pertained to allegations of physical abuse and criminal battery; 25 to allegations of sexual assault and custodial sexual misconduct; and 10 to alleged criminal neglect of residents. Four were death investigations.
Of those cases, 22 led to convictions, almost all of them for abuse.
A spokesperson for the state police said the agency could not speak to the reasons for the increase or for the disparity in the volume of cases from IDHS facilities that it handled in recent years as compared with Illinois Department of Corrections prisons or other agency workplaces.
But Kollias, the IDHS spokesperson, said the department views the increase in state police investigations “as an improvement in accountability at the facilities.” She also noted that most cases did not lead to convictions.
Both the numbers and interviews show how difficult it is to pursue charges, even when investigations get underway. In the facilities outside of Choate, between 50% and 99% of residents have disabilities that are diagnosed as “severe and profound”; some of those individuals are nonverbal and unable to communicate in traditional ways. Investigative records show instances of employees failing to report abuse or working together to hide it, or a general reluctance on the part of state employees to share information with investigators. Even when there’s a conviction, state police investigators are not always able to fully determine what happened.
For instance, among the more recent physical abuse cases where a conviction was secured is one from Shapiro Developmental Center in Kankakee, a small industrial city on the outskirts of suburban Chicago. In 2020, a patient was found with U-shaped markings and dark bruising on his chest, back, arms, legs and genitals.
A nurse examined his injuries but dismissed them as a rash from medication. A physician who examined him the next day had a different take: She believed the markings were consistent with someone striking the patient with an object, such as a belt or cord. The U-shaped markings looked like they could have been from a belt buckle, she told investigators.
Police interviewed multiple employees who worked the night shift, but they offered little information. The patient was unable to provide police specific details of the incident. He was only able to tell them a female worker “beat the hell” out of him on the night shift by striking his genitals with an unknown object.
The patient’s treatment plan notes that he needs help managing behaviors that include irritability, agitation and outbursts. One employee admitted to police that she had slapped the patient across the face that evening after she had directed the patient to stop a problematic behavior and he told her to “shut up, bitch.” But the worker denied she was responsible for any of his more serious injuries. No one else came forward with any information.
The worker pleaded guilty last year to misdemeanor battery and received 12 months of court supervision. She was fired from Shapiro, but neither state police nor IDHS’ inspector general were able to determine the cause of the patient’s more extensive injuries.
Peter Neumer, the IDHS inspector general, said his department regularly encounters cover-ups at facilities across the state, which prompted him to push for a new legal measure enhancing the penalty options against those who attempt to stonewall or obfuscate investigators. Pritzker recently signed it into law.
Go read the rest.
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Open thread
Tuesday, Jul 11, 2023 - Posted by Isabel Miller
* What’s going on? Keep it Illinois-centric please…
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Isabel’s morning briefing
Tuesday, Jul 11, 2023 - Posted by Isabel Miller
* Here you go…
* ProPublica | Problems with abuse, neglect and cover-ups at Choate extend to other developmental centers in Illinois: But a new investigation by Lee Enterprises Midwest, Capitol News Illinois and ProPublica has found that the problems at Choate extend to the other centers as well. People with developmental disabilities living in Illinois’ publicly run institutions have been punched, slapped, hosed down, thrown about and dragged across rooms; in other cases, staff failures contributed to patient harm and death, state police and internal investigative records show.
* WGN | Illinois lawmaker looks to create student-athlete bill of rights: Illinois State Representative and former University of Illinois football player Kam Bucker has turned focus on gender equity, guaranteed education benefits and more to protect student-athletes moving forward.
* Tribune | ‘Infuriating.’ Northwestern students, former players and Illinois leaders react to football program hazing reports: Northwestern President Michael Schill said in a statement Monday that 11 current or former players had acknowledged that hazing “has been ongoing within the football program,” based on an independent investigation that was spurred by a former player’s allegations in late 2022; the full report, however, has not been released publicly.
* SJR | CWLP’s Brown: Storm’s cost to utility already near $20 million: Doug Brown said 75 CWLP workers and some 175 outside workers from utility companies around the country working through mutual aid replaced over 1,000 pieces of equipment, including poles, crossarms, fuses, switches and transformers after the derecho, packing 100-plus mph winds, raced through Springfield. Brown cautioned that is a rough estimate and “we won’t know exact costs for some time.”
* Center for Illinois Politics | The confusing saga and upcoming next steps for an elected Chicago School Board: During the November 2024 election, ten members of the Chicago Board of Education will be elected by voters, and ten members and the board president will be appointed by the mayor. Elected members will serve four-year terms, while appointed members, including the appointed board president, will serve two-year terms. Following the November 2026 general election, the board will be fully elected, beginning their terms in January 2027.
* Block Club Chicago | Calls To Move Migrants Out Of Police Stations Grow Louder After Cops Accused Of Sexual Misconduct: Ald. Andre Vasquez (40th), who oversees the City Council’s Committee on Immigrant and Refugee Rights, said the allegations are “reprehensible.” “If the allegations ring true, the officers must be removed from the force swiftly and brought to justice,” Vasquez said in a statement. “A police station is no place for anyone to live, and the inherent power dynamics, the potential language issues, the vulnerability of a teenage woman coming from another country with no other option for shelter — all of those factors make these allegations particularly heinous if true.”
* Illinois Newsroom | A “Pattern of Problematic Conduct”: Urbana Officer Tests Police Accountability: In December 2018, while responding to a complaint of a fight during a house party a block east of the university campus, Franquemont kneed a resident of the house in the stomach and pushed him to the ground after the resident became upset that he was receiving a noise citation and tried to walk away from officers. Inin June 2019, he repeatedly closed the door of his squad car on the knees of an arrestee who claimed his legs were bruised and couldn’t place them in the car, and could be heard mocking him on his bodycam. In January 2020, he shoved a detainee who was inquiring why he was being arrested into his squad car. The man later told investigators his head was “slammed” into the bars in the backseat of the car.
* Fox 2 Now | Illinois Treasurer provides new loan options for students: Frerichs’ office will be partnering with ISL Education Lending, a non-profit company, to offer affordable private student loans to Illinois students and families who qualify.
* KHQA | Quincy city council narrowly passes no confidence vote in Mayor Troup: The Quincy City Council on Monday voted 7-6 in favor of a resolution declaring they had no confidence in Mayor Mike Troup. One council member abstained from voting.
* Tribune | Kina Collins announces third straight run for Congress against veteran US Rep. Danny Davis: Collins this week announced her third straight bid for the Democratic nomination in the overwhelmingly Democratic 7th Congressional District, arguing the progressive political organization she’s built and the connections she has with voters will finally carry her to victory.
* Tribune | Ex-Ald. Patrick Daley Thompson accused of failing to pay restitution in tax case: Thompson, 54, the former 11th Ward alderman and scion of the Daley political dynasty, was sentenced to four months in prison in July 2022 for tax evasion and lying to banking regulators. He served his time at the minimum security facility in Oxford, Wisconsin, and was released five days before Christmas, records show.
* Sun-Times | Bitwise bankruptcy ends plan for tech-training venture on South Side: The California-based firm closed abruptly, laying off 900 people, and filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy amid several lawsuits and a report of an FBI probe.
* NYT | Heat Down Below Is Making the Ground Shift Under Chicago: Since the mid-20th century, the ground between the city surface and the bedrock has warmed by 5.6 degrees Fahrenheit on average, according to a new study out of Northwestern University. All that heat, which comes mostly from basements and other underground structures, has caused the layers of sand, clay and rock beneath some buildings to subside or swell by several millimeters over the decades, enough to worsen cracks and defects in walls and foundations.
* Brownfield Ag News | Former Illinois AG Director Larry Werries dies : Werries also served as Director of Intergovernmental Affairs for the USDA before moving to Chicago where he was a member of Chicago Farmers and served on an advisory committee for the Chicago School of Ag Sciences. He eventually returned to the Jacksonville area as a realtor and upon retirement there served as a consultant to the American Farmland Trust.
* Crain’s | Tribune parent buys San Diego paper: The billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Times, Patrick Soon-Shiong, sold the San Diego Union-Tribune to MediaNews Group, a chain controlled by hedge fund Alden Global Capital.
* Sun-Times | Swifties, post-pandemic travelers help Illinois break hotel revenue record: ‘Our tourism industry is back and it’s booming’: The state’s hotel revenue for the fiscal year ending June 30 reached $309 million — beating a pre-pandemic 2019 record of $296 million. In total, 111 million visitors spent $40 billion on all tourism in 2022. That’s 14 million additional travelers who spent $12 billion more than the previous year.
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Live coverage
Tuesday, Jul 11, 2023 - Posted by Isabel Miller
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Afternoon roundup
Monday, Jul 10, 2023 - Posted by Rich Miller
* WBEZ…
Health care behind bars in Illinois comes with heavy financial and human costs. Since 2011 Illinois has paid Wexford Health Sources, a private company, well over a billion dollars to provide medical care to people in the state’s prisons. During that time, a federal judge determined the care was so poor it violated the US constitution, and an independent monitor has released reports documenting deaths from substandard medical care.
Wexford’s shortcomings could be measured in numbers:
Fifty percent of the health care provider’s jobs in Illinois are unfilled. Three Wexford doctors lack the proper credentials. Patients in need of dental fillings at one prison are on a 104-week waitlist. And in a review of 17 deaths, an outside monitor found that medical staff gave two prisoners medications that contributed to their deaths.
Or you could measure the failings in the horror stories:
Go read the rest.
* Good news for cannabis sales…
Illinois pot shops sold $136.4 million worth of cannabis to recreational buyers, according to the Illinois Department of Financial & Professional Regulation. That’s the largest total since a record-setting haul of $143.9 million in December, which is typically the best month of the year for marijuana sales. […]
Total revenue was up, despite falling prices, fueled by a 15% increase in the number of products sold to a record 3.46 million items. Sales are benefiting from an increase in the number of retail outlets, as winners of new licenses awarded last year begin opening stores.
“There are close to 30 more stores open this June versus a year ago, which is making cannabis much more accessible across the state,” said Jason Erkes, spokesman for Cresco Labs. “That, combined with lower prices, contributed to last month’s bump in sales.”
Competition works. Keep at it.
* Good news on tourism…
Today, Governor JB Pritzker joined the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity (DCEO), elected officials, and industry leaders to announce that Illinois reached its highest-ever hotel revenue figures in FY23 ($308 million) – surpassing the pre-pandemic record in FY19. Additionally, Illinois welcomed 111 million visitors who spent $44 billion in 2022 – representing 14 million additional travelers spending $12 billion more than calendar year 2021. […]
State hotel revenue collections are provided by the Illinois Department of Revenue. The figure represents all of Illinois’ hotels, motels, and lodging establishment’s taxable revenue. Additionally, the annual economic impact of visitors is compiled by Tourism Economics and measures the number of visitors as well as their impact on Illinois’ economy during the calendar year.
* ICCB…
The Illinois Community College Board (ICCB) is picking up the cost for state residents to earn a State of Illinois High School Diploma (formerly high school equivalency certificate).
Over 1.2 million Illinoisans don’t have a high school diploma. The state grant funding can be used in the form of discount codes to take the tests free of charge.
“People that earn a high school diploma make $600 more a month on average so taking these tests and earning that diploma is a big deal. It can lead to better lives for thousands of Illinoisans and we want to remove as many barriers as possible,” said ICCB Executive Director Brian Durham.
To educate the public, the ICCB has launched a digital campaign to spread the word about the critical grant funding available to take the test for free using the discount code ILSAVE.
Interested residents can go to FREEGEDIL.ORG to access the testing site, use the code and take the test.
* This was in the morning roundup…
A state representative has launched a petition drive to demonstrate the level of support for Illinois’ Invest in Kids scholarship program, which is in danger of being phased out.
State Rep. Randy Frese, R-Paloma started the petition drive to show Democrat leadership in the General Assembly there is grassroots support for the state-backed scholarship program for children who attend non-public schools and technical academies.
So far, just 13 people have signed.
Oops.
* ABATE of Illinois…
TESLA has announced the expansion of testing their experimental full-service autonomous driving technology on public roadways into 14 additional cities including Elgin, Illinois. They announced new positions for drivers to collect data from the use of their autopilot and full-service driving systems. This technology was the subject of a blockbuster Washington Post Report that revealed TESLA’s full-service driving & autopilot driving systems have killed more drivers than previously disclosed. This included four motorcyclists, three of whom were run over at highway speeds by TESLA vehicles using these driving modes.
The specific threat posed to bikers by Tesla vehicles was recently recognized by former NHTSA Senior Safety Advisor Missy Cummings who stated, “It’s very dangerous for motorcycles to be around Teslas”. Missy continues to be active in the autonomous vehicle field as a professor at George Mason University’s College of Engineering & Computing.
“Despite the documented dangers to motorcyclists and the driving public, Tesla continues to push forward with the irresponsible and hazardous testing of their vehicles on public roadways.” Said Bob Ellinger, State Coordinator of ABATE of Illinois. “ABATE of Illinois has been a leader in talking about the dangers of Tesla vehicles in Illinois and nationwide. We will continue to fight against technology on the road that has shown to be fatal to riders.”
In addition to being dangerous to bikers and motorists, Tesla autonomous systems are under investigation for 16 different crashes into first responder vehicles including one fatality. The initial investigation was for 10 collisions, and 6 additional collisions were found during that investigation.
“While Congress removed any reference to Autonomous Vehicles in recently passed Highway Bills, there were several bills filed this year to deal with the responsible regulation of these vehicles here in Illinois.” According to Josh Witkowski, State Legislative Coordinator & Lobbyist for ABATE of Illinois. “Our lives are not a field test for autonomous vehicles like Tesla, and Illinois must step up to lead in responsible regulation and development of autonomous technology. There was talk of a serious autonomous vehicles working group during session. Now is the time to make that happen.”
A recent AAA study found that only 9% of Americans “trust” self driving vehicles and 68% are “afraid” of it. This is an increase in the level of distrust of autonomous vehicles since the AAA started tracking surveys on the issue. ABATE believes that this increased level of distrust is directly due to increased fatalities caused by Tesla’s haphazard deployment of testing their dangerous technologies. This increased distrust is harmful to those companies who want to responsibly develop autonomous technology in Illinois.
Therefore, in an effort to protect the motorcyclists of Illinois and encourage responsible development of autonomous technology in Illinois, ABATE of Illinois is calling on the Governor and legislative leaders to convene an Autonomous Vehicle Working Group to develop legislation that will both protect the public and help keep Illinois a leader in developing the next generation of transportation technologies. This group should have representatives from the manufacturing and industry sectors, transportation safety advocates and professionals, and transportation advocacy groups representing all modes of transportation and road users.
* Isabel’s roundup…
* Crain’s | Rivian shares soar on signs the EV maker has turned a corner: The maker of plug-in pickups, SUVs and delivery vans is coming off its best week since its November 2021 debut — the shares soared 48% after the company reported better quarterly production than expected and started shipping hundreds of vehicles to Europe for Amazon.com Inc., its biggest shareholder.
* Pioneer Press | Winnetka business owner convicted for price gouging N95 masks during early days of the pandemic: Prosecutors said that from March to April 2020, Topouzian purchased 79,160 respirator masks, including N95 masks, for about $5.08 per mask. The masks were later sold for as much as $19.95 per mask, an approximate markup of 185% to 367% per mask.
* Tribune | West Siders want a seat at the table when Democratic National Convention comes to Chicago: ‘It’s important that they invest in our people’: U.S. Rep. Danny Davis, who has represented the West Side since 1997, is pledging he and other members of Illinois’ Washington delegation will press the Democratic National Committee to secure Black businesses don’t get left behind when contracts and jobs are awarded ahead of the event.
* Crain’s | Illinois reports record hotel revenue: Gov. J.B. Pritzker today announced that the state collected nearly $308 million in hotel tax revenue during its 2023 fiscal year, which ended on June 30. The figure was up 36% from the 2022 fiscal year and topped the previous record high of $296 million the state pulled in from hotels during its 2019 fiscal year.
* WBEZ | Here’s why there is still so much lead pipe in Chicago: Consider Chicago, with more water pipes made out of lead than any U.S. city, some 400,000. About 7% of homes that requested sampling last year exceeded federal limits, and in at least 73 homes, it was at least twice that much, according to an AP analysis of more than 3,500 samples collected using a method that’s more sensitive than the federal government’s.
* WJBC | More funding coming to Illinois for microbiology research: According to a press release, U.S. Rep. Eric Sorensen, R-Rockford, joined the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services to announce on Monday that Illinois State University will receive $74,000 in funding for microbiology research.
* Center Square | Danville, IL Ranks Among the Poorest U.S. Cities: The Danville metropolitan area in Illinois, for example, is one of 23 U.S. metro areas where more than one in every five people live below the poverty line. The 20.9% poverty rate in Danville is the 17th highest of the 386 U.S. metro areas with available data.
* Rock River Current | ‘It’s Going To Be Really Dynamic’: Belvidere Primed For New Downtown Train Station After Metra Pick: The city’s future passenger platform is planned to be built just east of South State Street, roughly between City Hall and the Boone County Museum of History. It’s a location that connects the city’s future rail service to parts of its past, and it’s located about one block west of the historic depot that was razed more than five decades ago.
* SJ-R | ‘A voice of authority.’ Longtime public radio news director, morning host Bradley dies at 83: After graduating from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale and stints at radio stations in Herrin, Carbondale and Danville, Bradley came to Springfield to work at WCVS-AM in 1965. He joined WSSR-FM at then-Sangamon State University, now the University of Illinois Springfield, several months before the station went on the air on Jan. 3, 1975, staying as news director and host of “State Week in Review” until his retirement in 2009.
* Daily Southtown | ‘Amazing and kind of shocking’: Bluegrass draws estimated 12K to Frankfort for free festival: After running nine Bluegrass Fests from 2011-2019, organizer Steve Haberichter had to shut it down in 2020 and 2021 because of the pandemic. He finally got to resume the 10th edition of the downtown Frankfort event in 2022, but had plenty of scheduling headaches when a handful of bands canceled at the last minute because their members had COVID-19.
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* Crain’s in April…
Questioned by Assistant U.S. Attorney Sarah Streicker, [former ComEd CEO Anne Pramaggiore] was asked about when she met with the FBI and government lawyers in September 2019. In that meeting — a “proffer” session in which she promised to tell the truth in return for not having any evidence she presented used against her — Pramaggiore told the feds she didn’t remember anything about the Doherty arrangements. She then was played the intercepted call from February 2019 between her and Fidel Marquez, ComEd’s senior internal lobbyist, in which he told her about Doherty’s no-work subcontracts.
The meeting with the feds, attended also by Pramaggiore attorney Scott Lassar, himself a former U.S. attorney for Illinois’ Northern District, then ended, apparently abruptly. After a sidebar in which lawyers for each side jostled about whether and how that meeting with the feds would be discussed, Pramaggiore testified, “It was the end of the day, yes. The interview was over.”
“You and your counsel ended the interview, correct?” Streicker asked.
Lassar immediately objected and said she’d violated the judge’s instructions. U.S. District Judge Harry Leinenweber directed the jury to disregard that question.
But the seed had been planted — Lassar apparently thought the call when it was played was damaging enough that he ended Pramaggiore’s session with the feds before they were done with her.
From Pramaggiore’s newly filed appeal…
Introducing this irrelevant and untrue evidence gave a powerful impression of guilt before the jury. There can be little question that “there is a reasonable possibility” that the Government’s improper question “had a prejudicial effect upon the jury’s verdict.”
Wait. It was untrue? Back to the appeal…
During the course of the interview, counsel for Ms. Pramaggiore took typed, transcript-style notes, including both questions and answers, totaling approximately 60 pages. The FBI agent taking notes on behalf of the Government was writing notes in longhand. The transcript-style notes taken by counsel for Ms. Pramaggiore reflect that, after Mr. Lassar asked to speak to Ms. Pramaggiore about a particular recorded conversation, Mr. Bhachu said substantially in words and effect that “it doesn’t do us much good for us to play recordings that you will keep saying you don’t remember.” After a break during which Ms. Pramaggiore spoke with counsel, Mr. Lassar told [Assistant U.S. Attorney Amarjeet Bhachu] that he needed time to discuss the recording with his client, Mr. Bhachu said substantially in words and effect that “I think that’s best. . . . I would encourage you to take this time to think through that. We’re done here today.” This statement demonstrates that Ms. Pramaggiore did not unilaterally end the interview.
* Crain’s today…
Former Commonwealth Edison CEO Anne Pramaggiore, one of the four appealing the jury convictions from early May, laid out a wide array of arguments in a 77-page appeal, filed Friday with U.S. District Judge Harry Leinenweber. They include assertions that Leinenweber’s jury instructions weren’t in line with precedents on such public-corruption cases, as well as claims that some of the actions on which Pramaggiore was convicted of bribery weren’t any different than other executives at ComEd or parent Exelon, including Exelon CEO Chris Crane, who weren’t charged in the scheme. […]
[The appeal] also says the judge improperly excluded evidence Pramaggiore wanted to present in her defense. That included a series of emails in June 2012, more than a year after the scheme allegedly began, Pramaggiore sent to others within the company requesting an investigation of ComEd’s lobbyists and their activities. In one such email, included in the brief, Pramaggiore wrote, “I want to make sure we have done everything we can (including a broader investigation if need be) to insure we have protected the company against exposure to public embarrassment or worse.”
“If Ms. Pramaggiore had the corrupt intent to bribe Mr. Madigan by paying (associates) Mr. Olivo and Mr. Nice, who were in fact being paid at that time, or if she were in a conspiracy to bribe Mr. Madigan, she would never have suggested that non-conspirators such as Mr. O’Neill and (Exelon General Counsel Darryl) Bradford be involved in an investigation into the activities of ComEd lobbyists,” the brief states.
* Back to the appeal…
Anne Pramaggiore was convicted of nine felonies for conduct that violates no law and is commonplace in American society—accepting job recommendations from public officials without any expectation that the public official will do anything in return. If what
Ms. Pramaggiore did was bribery, any executive who has accepted a job recommendation from a public official has paid a bribe. Any public official who has made a job recommendation has committed bribery. And any judge who has recommended a clerk to a law firm with cases before the court has solicited a bribe.
How is it possible that such unremarkable conduct is punishable as criminal bribery? Were the bribery statutes amended to become strict-liability crimes stating that no one with business before a public official is ever permitted to give any thing of value to him? Did the Supreme Court overturn decades-old precedent holding that convicting someone of bribery requires proof of a quid pro quo and that providing things of value to public officials to foster goodwill is legal? […]
[Prosecutors] asked the jury to convict Ms. Pramaggiore for conduct that is unquestionably legal by saying repeatedly that she should be convicted of a crime if she was motivated by a desire to keep Mr. Madigan happy, despite knowing that the Supreme Court has held that it is not illegal to give things of value to a public official to build a reservoir of goodwill. The Government knew that it could not convict her of conduct that is illegal, so it repeatedly asked the jury to convict her of conduct that violates no law.
* Steve Daniels also pointed to this passage in his excellent write-up of the appeal…
Ms. Pramaggiore’s conviction on Count Five illustrates well the dangerous breadth of allowing the prosecution to obtain a conviction of bribery without proving a quid pro quo. She was convicted of bribery for acting on Michael Madigan’s recommendation that Juan Ochoa be appointed to ComEd’s board. All the evidence showed that she expected that Mr. Ochoa would add value and do the work expected of board members, and the proof at trial confirmed that she was correct. Mr. Ochoa was highly qualified and did the work required. She acted with full transparency, sharing the fact that Mr. Ochoa was recommended by Mr. Madigan with Exelon’s General Counsel Tom O’Neill (an experienced white collar defense attorney), Exelon’s Chief Legal Officer Bill Von Hoene (another experienced white collar defense attorney), her successor Joe Dominguez (a former prosecutor), and the ultimate decision-maker, Exelon CEO Chris Crane, none of whom raised a concern that ComEd would be bribing Mr. Madigan by appointing Mr. Ochoa. She never expected that Mr. Madigan would do anything for ComEd in return for Mr. Ochoa’s appointment, never asked him for anything in connection with Mr. Ochoa’s appointment, and never learned that anyone else asked him for anything in connection with Mr. Ochoa’s appointment. And there is no evidence that Mr. Madigan took any unusual action following Mr. Ochoa’s appointment to benefit ComEd from which a tacit agreement could be implied—instead, the evidence showed that Mr. Madigan refused ComEd’s request to allow a vote on a bill it wanted at around the same time that Mr. Ochoa was appointed to the ComEd board.
* More from the appeal…
This case illustrates well the wisdom of the Supreme Court’s repeated admonition that federal prosecutors must not be permitted to stretch federal laws to enforce their own views of integrity in state and local affairs. … Here, it is absurd to think that the politicians serving in Congress, many of whom previously served in state and local government, intended by enacting 18 U.S.C. § 666 to make it per se criminal for state or local officials to make job recommendations or for individuals with business before the officials to accept those recommendations. Had that been Congress’s intent, it could have enacted a much clearer and simpler statute.
* And…
Even if the Court somehow finds that no quid pro quo need be proved to convict someone of bribery, it should acquit Ms. Pramaggiore because the Government failed to offer evidence that Ms. Pramaggiore acted with a corrupt intent, that is, with knowledge that giving the thing of value was forbidden. Instead of showing that Ms. Pramaggiore knew that her conduct was forbidden by law, the evidence clearly demonstrated that many others who were not allegedly members of the conspiracy agreed to accept job recommendations from Mr. Madigan, including attorneys experienced in criminal law such as Messrs. O’Neill, Von Hoene, and Dominguez, none of whom ever raised a concern that they were bribing Mr. Madigan. If they did not think that what they were doing was illegal, there is no reason to think that Ms. Pramaggiore had the requisite knowledge. Indeed, the fact that they all personally participated in these actions without raising a concern demonstrates that the theory the Government pursued at trial does not provide “sufficient definiteness that ordinary people can understand what conduct is prohibited” and is susceptible to “arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement,” demonstrating its infirmity under binding Supreme Court precedent.
* Regarding the ghost payrollers, the appeal claims the government never proved that she knew about their connection to Madigan…
[Star prosecution witness Fidel Marquez’s] inability to testify that Ms. Pramaggiore knew that Messrs. Nice, Olivo, Moody, or Acevedo were recommended by Mr. Madigan is particularly glaring in light of the fact that the Government met with him over 50 times, including no fewer than 14 times in 2023 prior to trial, interviewing him over and over and over again to ensure that his testimony would be as favorable to the Government’s case as possible. Yet he did not say under oath that Ms. Pramaggiore knew this basic fact because he could not without perjuring himself. Mr. Marquez is the only witness who purported to connect Ms. Pramaggiore to these subcontractors, and his inability to testify that she knew they were connected to Mr. Madigan shows the failure of proof on this essential point.
Discuss.
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…Adding… The Daily Northwestern…
Northwestern has parted ways with football head coach Pat Fitzgerald, sources familiar with the situation told The Daily.
Fitzgerald had previously been suspended for two weeks without pay after the University announced Friday that an independent investigation into the team indicated hazing reports were “largely supported by evidence.”
The Daily published reports on Saturday and Monday with details of the hazing allegations and additional racism allegations from former players.
University President Michael Schill told community members in an email Saturday that he believed he may have “erred” in his decision to suspend NU football coach Pat Fitzgerald for two weeks hours after two former Northwestern football players detailed allegations of hazing to The Daily, including coerced sexual acts.
A source familiar with the situation told The Daily that board members had kept up with coverage of the situation today and grew increasingly frustrated.
* ESPN….
Northwestern will reconsider penalties for coach Pat Fitzgerald after new details emerged Saturday surrounding allegations of hazing in the football program.
University President Michael Schill, in a letter sent late Saturday to the Northwestern community, wrote that he “may have erred in weighing the appropriate sanction” for Fitzgerald, who began serving a two-week unpaid suspension Friday. Fitzgerald’s suspension was among the measures Northwestern announced after concluding the six-month investigation it commissioned into hazing allegations made by an anonymous whistleblower. […]
The former player, who asked to remain anonymous, told The Daily Northwestern that sexualized hazing activities took place in the team’s locker room. One common practice, called “running,” involved a younger player being restrained while eight to 10 older players engaged in a sexualized act in the locker room. Versions of “running” took place during certain portions of the year, including Thanksgiving and Christmas.
“It’s a shocking experience as a freshman to see your fellow freshman teammates get ran, but then you see everybody bystanding in the locker room,” the former player told The Daily Northwestern. “It’s just a really abrasive and barbaric culture that has permeated throughout that program for years on end now.”
According to the newspaper, the former player reported his claims to the school in late 2022, and he spoke to investigators during the six-month university-commissioned probe.
…Adding… Daily Northwestern…
Three former Northwestern football players told The Daily about what they called a toxic environment in the program, recalling multiple racist actions and remarks from both coaching staff and players.
All three players, who played for the team in late 2000s, also corroborated some of the hazing allegations reported by The Daily on Saturday.
Ramon Diaz Jr., a Latino offensive lineman for Northwestern from 2005 to 2008, said his experience on the football team was hostile as a non-white player. […]
Another player, who asked to remain anonymous and played through the 2009 season, said racism on the team was often blatant. He alleged head coach Pat Fitzgerald would ask Black players and coaches to cut off longer hairstyles — including dreadlocks — so that they were more in line with what Fitzgerald called the “Wildcat Way.”
* Daily Northwestern…
If a player was selected for “running,” the player who spoke to The Daily said, they would be restrained by a group of 8-10 upperclassmen dressed in various “Purge-like” masks, who would then begin “dry-humping” the victim in a dark locker room.
“It’s a shocking experience as a freshman to see your fellow freshman teammates get ran, but then you see everybody bystanding in the locker room,” the player said. “It’s just a really abrasive and barbaric culture that has permeated throughout that program for years on end now.” […]
According to the former player, team members allegedly identified players for “running” by clapping their hands above their heads around that player. The practice, the player said, was known within the team as “the Shrek clap.” […]
According to the player who spoke with The Daily, Fitzgerald repeatedly made the signal during practices when players, specifically freshmen, made a mistake. […]
Diaz, the former offensive lineman, is now a clinical therapist. He said the program’s culture had a profound mental impact on him. He was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder after graduating from Northwestern, and said that his time on the football team was a major factor in that diagnosis.
* The Daily Northwestern today…
Illinois State Representative Kam Buckner, who played defensive tackle for the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has been working on what he calls a “college athlete’s bill of rights” in Illinois. He said this weekend’s hazing reports have encouraged him to include additional language protecting student athletes in the bill.
“Today, hazing and sexual assault allegations showcase another grotesque way Student Athletes have been preyed upon,” Bucker said Saturday. “As a former college athlete this culture of turning a blind eye to harms, deliberate endangerment, neglect & dereliction of duty all in the name of “Wins” & revenue is disgusting.”
The bill is modeled after similar protections for student athletes in California.
* Rep. Buckner…
* Politico…
Maggie Hickey, former inspector general of Illinois who previously reviewed Chicago Public Schools’ policies in wake of a separate sexual abuse scandal, led the investigation of the whistleblower’s allegations against the Northwestern football team. According to the Daily Northwestern’s report, Hickey’s investigation “revealed that while current and former players ‘varied on their perspective regarding the conduct, the whistleblower’s claims were ‘largely supported by evidence.’”
*** UPDATE *** Another one…
As Northwestern University deals with the fallout from allegations of hazing on its football team, the university’s athletic department has been mired in a different controversy centered on first-year head baseball coach Jim Foster, sources said.
Former players, alumni and people close to the baseball program told the Chicago Tribune that they alerted university administration — including President Michael Schill and athletic director Derrick Gragg — of problematic behavior from Foster starting last fall before the team kicked off its 2023 season. At least some of those complaints spurred a human resources investigation.
The university’s investigation found “sufficient evidence” that Foster “engaged in bullying and abusive behavior,” according to an internal HR document obtained by the Tribune. The probe went on to conclude that Foster “made an inappropriate comment regarding a female staff member, and spoke negatively about his staff to other staff members.” […]
While these allegations were not made public, signs of trouble were visible. In February, hitting coach and recruiting coordinator Dusty Napoleon, who had been with the team since 2015, left before the first game of the season. By the time the team returned from that opening road trip, pitching coach Jon Strauss and operations director Chris Beacom had also left the team. After the team’s 10-40 season concluded, 16 players entered the transfer portal, sources told the Tribune, and at least a half-dozen players individually met with Gragg or other athletic department leaders to voice their concerns over Foster.
…Adding… Listen…
* More…
* Poynter | Northwestern’s student newspaper broke a blockbuster national story: In his column for the Chicago Sun-Times, sports columnist Rick Morrissey wrote, “If everything indeed starts with the coach, then NU needs to fire Fitzgerald. If the school really does put the well-being of its students first, then it needs to find someone else to run the football program. And if the university’s trustees are paying attention to this very public mess, they might want to take a hard look at the man handing out two-week vacations that are masquerading as suspensions.” Morrissey also pointed out, “It took the university’s student newspaper, The Daily Northwestern, to bring to light what the school chose not to after a six-month investigation that it had authorized.”
* NBC Chicago | What we know after Northwestern head coach Pat Fitzgerald suspended following hazing allegations: Many current and former players rushed to Fitzgerald’s defense after suspension was announced. Wildcats quarterback Ryan Hilinski tweeted: “When it comes to being a man I admire and respect, Coach Fitz has always been that man for me in my time at Northwestern! He always offers an ear when I need to talk and a hand whenever I need help up! I’ve got his back like he always has had ours.” Former quarterback Trevor Semien, now with the Cincinnati Bengals, tweeted: “Fitz emphasized integrity, sacrificing for others, respect, and accountability. These are values that I strive to uphold now as a husband and father. While I won’t speak for anyone else, I can say that my experience at NU did not reflect what I read in the Daily Northwestern.”
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* Capitol News Illinois…
The Illinois Department of Transportation unveiled a plan on Friday for spending nearly $41 billion in federal, state and local funds over the next six years to repair and upgrade roads, bridges, airports, rail lines and other infrastructure throughout the state.
The latest version of the plan, which IDOT updates annually, is the largest multiyear plan in state history. It’s driven by the state’s 2019 Rebuild Illinois capital infrastructure program. The initial six-year Rebuild Illinois plan included $33.2 billion for transportation, funded largely by annualized increases to the state’s motor fuel tax and increases to driving-related licensing fees that took effect in 2020.
“Over the next six years, we’re investing over $40 billion to improve all modes of transportation across our great state,” Gov. JB Pritzker said at a news conference in Springfield. “And that means better roads and bridges, modernized transit and aviation, and expanded and faster passenger rail service. It even extends to improved river ports, new sewers and water infrastructure and a huge upgrade to bicycle and pedestrian accommodations.”
More than half of the plan, $27 billion, will go toward road and bridge projects, including $4.6 billion in the current fiscal year. That will fund repair and reconstruction of 2,866 miles of roadway and 9.8 million square feet of bridge deck on the state highway system, along with another 738 miles of roadway and 1.1 million square feet of bridge deck in systems maintained by local governments.
Click here for the full list of projects.
* A breakdown from IDOT…
* The Metro East will be allotted $3 billion. St. Louis Public Radio…
In the Metro East, Illinois Route 3 in St. Clair County will get the most funding at $305.5 million, according to IDOT plans. The project includes grading and paving the 4-mile stretch from Monsanto Ave. in Sauget to River Park Drive in East St. Louis.
A 2.7-mile stretch of I-55 and I-64 in East St. Louis will receive $288.3 million for the Poplar Street Bridge and road repairs from the Mississippi River to the I-64 interchange. […]
The third priciest project will be $245 million to replace the Joe Page Bridge in Hardin, Illinois, which stretches across the Illinois River about 60 miles north of St. Louis.
In both Monroe and St. Clair counties, a nearly 21-mile portion of I-255 will undergo $188.3 million in bridge repairs and replacement. The project starts near Columbia, Illinois, city limits and extends all the way north to Cahokia Heights.
I-64 in Washington County will get $112 million for resurfacing and bridge repairs over a 20-mile section about 5 miles east of Okawville, Illinois, to the Jefferson County line.
* WGEM…
Projects are already underway and everything will be done by June 2029. […]
Quincy is receiving $156 million to replace the Memorial Bridge.
Adams County will receive $15.2 million to resurface 4.2 miles, replace traffic signals, ADA improvements and other improvements from 12th Street to I-172.
Hancock County is set to receive $19.3 million to for vertical realignment on 0.8 mile, bridge replacement, railroad crossing improvements and other improvements from the Mississippi River to Main Street in Hamilton.
$29.3 million will be distributed to McDonough, Fulton and Knox Counties to resurface 11.7 miles and utility adjustments from Illinois 116 to Illinois 9.
* SJ-R…
Sangamon County, along with Adams, Hancock and Logan counties, will be beneficiaries to the $1.7 billion in improvements coming to the district between fiscal year 2024 and fiscal year 2029. Coffey estimated more than $280 million of that will benefit Sangamon County.
Most of the projects are receiving similar amounts of funding as seen in the latest multi-year plan announced last August, another six-year, $34.6 billion plan. That includes the continued work a 7.8-mile stretch from Sangamon Avenue to 2.7 miles south of Illinois 123, now valued at $125.9 million instead of the earlier $124.2 million.
Bridge repairs and resurfacing on Interstate 55 to the sum of $21.6 million will also proceed between 6.2 miles of Illinois 104 to Horse Farm Road.
Outside of I-55, there are two projects at the Illinois 97/125 junction and MacArthur Boulevard. The 1.5-mile area on MacArthur between Wabash Avenue and South Grand Avenue will replace traffic signals and make Americans with Disabilities Act improvements for $20 million, down from $28 million in last year’s plan. […]
Perhaps the most noted change in funding comes to the I-55 business area south of Stanford Avenue on Sixth Street. A total of $68.6 million, up from $40 million, will feed into 3.9 miles of reconstruction including additional lanes, intersection improvement, turning lanes, sidewalks, traffic signal replacement, bikeway and utility adjustments.
* Transit Mag…
The $40.99 billion Fiscal Year (FY) 2024-29 Proposed Highway and Multimodal Improvement Program will target investments that include:
• $27.03 billion in roads and bridges
• $9.85 billion for transit
• $2.67 billion for freight and passenger rail
• $1.25 billion for aviation
• $190 million for ports and waterways
[…] The Rebuild Illinois capital program created three new transit funding programs: The Multimodal Transportation Bond Fund, the Regional Transportation Authority Capital Improvement Fund and the Downstate Mass Transportation Capital Improvement Fund. This past January, IDOT awarded $113.8 million in capital grants to downstate transit providers (those outside the Chicago region) as part of the third and final round of Rebuild Illinois Multimodal Transportation Bond and Pay-Go Funds.
The proposed program also notes the importance of passenger rail as part of a balanced transportation system. The proposal points to the recent growth passenger rail travel in Illinois has experienced as an indicator of why more investment is needed. The six-year capital program includes $1.58 billion for maintenance, safety repairs and other capital improvements of the state’s passenger rail systems. This amount includes $242 million for the Illinois High-Speed Rail Project between Chicago and St. Louis, which started operating 110 mph trains last month. Additional passenger rail corridors earmarked for funding include Chicago to Quad Cities, Chicago to Rockford and Chicago to Carbondale.
* Related…
* Stacker | Counties with the most bridges in dire need of repair in Illinois: Stacker investigated which counties in Illinois have the most bridges in dire need of repair using data from the Federal Highway Administration. The data is accurate as of June 15, 2022. Counties are ranked by percent of bridges in “poor” condition and ties are broken by percent square meters of bridges in poor condition. Counties that have no bridges or have no bridges in poor condition are excluded from the list.
* Streets Blog | I want you to want commuter rail: Pritzker announces $275M award to Metra to restore Rockford-Chicago train service: One sobering aspect of today’s announcement is that a mere two roundtrips a day are currently planned. Hopefully that skimpy schedule will be expanded, because it would discourage ridership.
* Streets Blog | Take a look at the “Transportation” chapter of Mayor Johnson’s “2023 Mayoral Transition Report”: According to the initial intro to the document, “Nearly 400 Chicagoans, representing a wealth of diverse perspectives, served on 11 transition committees that offered robust ideas and recommendations for Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration.” Transportation was one of these groups. “They represent an unprecedented diversity of voices and perspectives—including diversity based on race, gender, generation, income level and neighborhood, and with representatives from business, civic, social justice and community-based organizations.” Sounds like a good approach.
* WAND | New Illinois law requires IDOT mobile app for road conditions: “I don’t believe it will cost millions of dollars,” Ammons said. “It will cost them a little effort for them to recruit a student who is in engineering, who is in computer science, in order to create this app and to maintain it if they want to do that.”
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The system is still failing (Updated)
Monday, Jul 10, 2023 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Sophie Sherry at the Sun-Times…
Jose Alvarez was angry and sweating, a gun within reach, as he talked to Chicago police officers who had been called to the Little Village neighborhood for a disturbance late last month.
The officers took defensive positions as they spoke to Alvarez through an open window, according to a police report. They finally left when he refused to come to the door and turned off the lights.
Ten days later, authorities say Alvarez used the gun to kill his wife and 15-year-old daughter and wound his 18-year-old son, who ran to a neighbor’s home for help.
It is not clear why the officers chose not to seize the gun when they were concerned enough to later file a “clear and present danger” report about Alvarez, according to records. The police department had no immediate comment. […]
The day before the officers visited the home, a judge had issued a protection order requiring him to stay away from his family and away from the home. There’s no indication in the police report that the officers knew about the order when they found Alvarez still in the home.
A day after their visit, June 23, Cook County sheriff’s deputies tried to serve the protection order at the home but found no one there.
On the same day, the Illinois State Police officially revoked Alvarez’s FOID card, as required by law when an order of protection is issued. The state police said it notified both Chicago police and the sheriff’s office about the revocation the next day, June 24, eight days before the shooting.
There’s more, so go read the whole thing. Ugh.
* You may recall that the “clear and present danger” topic was much-discussed last year…
The Illinois State Police announced Monday they will start using a broader definition of what constitutes a “clear and present danger” when reviewing a person’s Firearm Owners Identification card.
That’s a factor ISP considers when deciding whether to grant someone a FOID card or to revoke or suspend a card that has already been issued.
The change is meant to address gaps in the process that were identified in the wake of the July 4 mass shooting in Highland Park. The alleged shooter in that case had been the subject of a clear and present danger investigation, but under standards used at that time, ISP determined there was insufficient evidence to support such a determination.
So, they fixed one major reporting issue, but the real-world problem remains unresolved: Getting guns away from people who have revoked FOID cards after domestic violence and/or are deemed to present a “clear and present danger.”
…Adding… The Illinois State Police provides funding after local law enforcement agencies conduct weapons seizures. Click here for the latest list of grantees.
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A small win, but more like this, please
Monday, Jul 10, 2023 - Posted by Rich Miller
* The Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning informed members that it is moving its annual conference out of Florida and to Chicago…
At its virtual meeting on June 27th, 2023, the ACSP Governing Board decided to move the Fall 2023 annual conference away from Miami and to host the 2023 conference in another city. The Governing Board made this very difficult decision to stay in alignment with the ACSP Values statement, specifically our commitment to welcome all members, scholars, and educators and to develop events, meetings, and publications that are welcoming, inclusive, and safe venues for discourse and inquiry.
The ACSP board has carefully considered our fiduciary responsibilities. Paying a steep penalty to the hotel will surely have a major impact on a small volunteer-driven organization like ACSP. Although we can weather this specific financial cost, we will deplete our investment accounts significantly, making us vulnerable to any unanticipated future surprises. That said, I am happy that the Board has made a decision consistent with our values statement, conference location policy, and organizational mission.
For ACSP conference attendees, the attraction of an in-person conference is about enjoying a sense of community and camaraderie, and having an opportunity to have unique place-based experiences that can energize and engage us. For students and early career scholars, the annual conference is often about connecting with senior scholars and their peers from across the world in formal and informal settings, attending job fairs and other recruitment events, and being introduced to the complexities of planning in a very real way by attending an action-packed three day event.
Despite myriad assurances from the Florida hospitality industry, members of all ACSP interest groups expressed significant concerns regarding travel to Florida. While no place can be 100% safe, Florida this fall did not feel like the best place to gather for our annual conference. As with the State of Florida, other states curtail what can and cannot be taught in high school and college classrooms. Planning educators have a lot of issues we should be concerned about including how we prepare future planners to work in environments hostile to the ideals and principles of planning.
We urge all of you to come to the Fall 2023 conference to show support for ACSP and to engage with these issues that caused us to move away from Florida while also thinking critically about how to make and sustain transformative social change. The Fall 2023 conference is also a great opportunity to begin conversations about crafting a new strategic vision for the Association and its conferences in future years.
We are very happy to announce to you today that we have been welcomed by the Palmer House Hilton, an art-deco historic venue in the city of Chicago, to serve as our conference hotel.
* From Konstantine “Gus” Drosos, General Manager of the Palmer House…
On behalf of the Palmer House and all of our staff we would like to thank you for placing your program with us. Our staff are ecstatic about winning your confidence and trust to place your program with us so close to your program date. Chicago is known as one of the most hospitable and inclusive cities in the country if not the world. Our team members exemplify that hospitality, diversity, and inclusion, and are grateful for your business. Rest assured you are in great hands at the Palmer House. We will make sure your program is successful and we hope to see you come back for many years to come. Thank you!
* Florida Phoenix…
Organizations representing Black, Hispanic, and LGBTQ+ communities in Florida have issued travel advisories in recent months, citing “open hostility” to those groups manifested in laws passed during the recent legislative session, as noted by [ACSP President Laxmi Ramasubramanian] in a message sent out to members last month.
In another letter dated May 26, Ramasubramanian wrote that, “Like you, I have been following the escalating waves of hostile actions and legislation coming out of Florida but also other states that are following a political playbook. It is disheartening, painful and it makes me angry. As president of ACSP, I write today to acknowledge the anxieties, hurt, and anger that you may be feeling and experiencing.”
The Orlando Sentinel reported last week that a number of conferences slated to be held later this year or in future years in Orange County have been moved or cancelled due to the political environment in Florida, including a convention for Game of Thrones fans, with “Con of Thrones” organizers citing the “increasingly anti-humanitarian legislation in the state.” […]
A spokesperson for ACSP anticipated about 1,200 conference attendees who will now make the trip to the Palmer House Hotel in Chicago in October.
* Pritzker react…
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* I posted this excerpt from the legislature’s Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability on Friday…
Incorporating June’s figures, FY 2023 finished the year with a base General Funds revenue total of $50.707 billion. This is $373 million higher than the FY 2022 base General Funds revenue total of $50.334 billion. When including the one-time reimbursement and transfers received in FY 2023 associated with pandemic-related federal dollars, the overall FY 2023 total rises to $53.134 billion, which is $2.064 billion higher than the $51.070 billion receipted in FY 2022. The FY 2023 General Funds revenue totals, in terms of both base receipts and total receipts, become the highest on record for the State of Illinois.
* Capitol News Illinois…
State revenues once again reached a record high in the fiscal year that ended June 30, creating what Gov. JB Pritzker called a “one-time” budget surplus of over $700 million.
The $50.7 billion in base general revenues that the state collected in fiscal year 2023 – which exclude one-time pandemic-related federal funds – topped last year’s previous record by $373 million.
That’s $726 million beyond what was projected by the Governor’s Office of Management and Budget in its most recent estimate adopted in May during negotiations for the fiscal year 2024 budget. […]
“The overperformance in FY 2023 revenues essentially translated into a lower than projected June 30 bills on hold at the (comptroller’s office) and higher than expected cash balances going into the new fiscal year,” Carol Knowles, a spokesperson for GOMB, said in a statement prior to the governor’s comments. “We will continue to monitor the revenue performance in FY 2024 as the national economy continues to have mixed economic projections.”
* The governor was asked about the surplus on Friday…
Well, it’s always good to have a surplus. And that’s something that we’ve done consistently now for four years.
I would add that much of the surplus that we saw that came in at the end of the year is one-time dollars that were added to our revenues. So that’s not something that you can program in year after year to spend money on. You have to spend one-time dollars on one-time things at least if you want to continue to balance the budget of our state, which again, I’m very committed to and we’ve been doing every year since I took office. So obviously better to have a surplus. In fact it’s the it’s the first real significant surplus that we have had because we’ve taken all the surpluses in the previous years and assigned them to those one-time expenditures. This is a kind of an unexpected additional amount of money.
We’re going to try to apply it to things like paying down debt, the things that we’ve been doing, paying down debt, making sure that we’re lowering the number of unpaid bills. It’s almost impossible now, I should tell you, for us to provide more money to pay off bills. We’re down to paying bills in about three, four or five days. You would almost argue that that’s too fast. We could be earning interest on the money, and wouldn’t be paying interest on that if you just extended it for a few more days.
But meanwhile, I think we should all celebrate the fact that Illinois is in such good fiscal shape in terms of our annual operating budget, that we’re able to pay bills on time and faster than ever before. [Emphasis added.]
It’s an interesting point and a pretty good problem to have. Your thoughts?
…Adding… I posted this in comments, but I’m gonna bump it up because I think there’s another point to be made here…
My own argument would be to start gradually moving back to a normal business cycle of a 30-day payment window before the economy forces the state to do so all at once, and maybe even beyond that.
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Chicago crime by the numbers
Monday, Jul 10, 2023 - Posted by Rich Miller
* David Olson and Don Stemen from the the Center for Criminal Justice at Loyola University Chicago writing in the Tribune…
A few specific facts about crime in Chicago need to be laid out to place discussions of gun violence into the larger context. The context might surprise many, but more importantly, the lack of this context can steer people to the wrong conclusions about solutions. First, most of the crimes committed in Chicago are not violent crimes. Last year, just 24% of serious crimes reported in Chicago were violent offenses. Rather, most — 76% — were property crimes. And the total number of property crimes reported to the Chicago police decreased almost every single year from 2001 to 2019 (pre-pandemic), falling almost 50% during that period, before seeing a slight (3%) increase from 2019 to 2022.
And while there is a perception that overall violent crime is increasing, the total number of serious violent crimes reported to Chicago police decreased almost every year from 2001 to 2022, dropping 46% from 2001 to 2019 (pre-pandemic), before increasing slightly (2%) from 2019 to 2022. Further, the vast majority (90%) of all serious crime in Chicago does not involve a firearm, and homicides committed with a firearm account for less than 0.5% of all serious crime.
This is not to diminish the severity of homicides and nonfatal gun crimes — e.g., robberies, assaults, batteries, and sexual assaults — but to emphasize that they are rare relative to other crime. Further, and critical to understanding the nature of violent crime in Chicago, the number of violent crimes that do not involve a firearm decreased almost every single year from 2001 to 2022, falling 50% during that period.
Thus, most forms of serious crime have decreased substantially over the past 20 years. The one exception, particularly in recent years, is gun violence. Although gun violence decreased steadily through the early 2000s, Chicago has experienced several annual increases since. Most substantially, between 2019 and 2022, there was a 46% increase in gun violence in Chicago. Despite that increase, gun violence in 2022 was 23% lower than in 2001.
In addition to more gun violence in recent years, the lethality of these offenses has also increased. In the early 2000s, Chicago experienced roughly 30 nonfatal violent crimes committed with a firearm for every firearm homicide; in the past four years, this ratio changed to 15 to 1. This pattern is being seen nationally, not just in Chicago. This increase in lethality could be due to the intent of the perpetrator, larger-capacity magazines increasing the likelihood that at least one bullet will fatally strike a victim, larger-caliber ammunition increasing the likelihood that a wound will prove fatal or a combination of all these.
In any case, this dramatic increase in gun violence over the past few years coincides not only with the pandemic but also with an unprecedented increase in the number of handguns produced and purchased in the United States. And it is likely that some of these legally produced (and mostly legally purchased) handguns are illegally ending up in the hands of young people. While their motivation for possessing a firearm may be fear of victimization, increased status among their peers or to commit a crime, they are also impulsive and don’t fully appreciate the impact of their behaviors.
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The bitter and puzzling BIPA fight
Monday, Jul 10, 2023 - Posted by Rich Miller
* My weekly syndicated newspaper column…
Illinois Senate President Don Harmon told public radio talk show host Brian Mackey in late June that some of the most prominent business association leaders had “punched us in the nose” after Senate Democrats devised what he called a “good faith solution” to solve problems created by the state’s super-controversial Biometric Information Privacy Act.
Harmon also claimed the Senate Democratic proposal that the business groups attacked was “very friendly to the business community that has been asking for these changes.”
Companies routinely collect biometric data like facial recognition and fingerprint scans. But in Illinois that’s illegal, unless the companies first obtain informed consent. Lots of lawsuits have been filed as a result, and businesses want relief.
The Illinois Supreme Court all but begged the General Assembly earlier this spring to take another look at the law in its ruling against the White Castle company. That ruling could ultimately cost the burger chain as much as $17 billion for collecting employee fingerprint scans.
The Illinois Retail Merchants Association, the Illinois Manufacturers’ Association and the Illinois Chamber of Commerce held a press conference with other business leaders near the originally scheduled end of the spring legislative session to denounce the Senate Democrats’ proposal in no uncertain terms.
IMA President and CEO Mark Denzler, who has not exactly been known for vitriol, claimed the proposal would make the problem even worse. The legislation, Denzler claimed, “will only increase abuse of this law by trial attorneys” who have filed thousands of claims under the statute.
The three business groups either refused to respond to Harmon’s comments, or, in one case, didn’t respond at all.
Senate President Pro Tempore Bill Cunningham, who helped lead the negotiations and is also not generally known for his temper, said he was even more upset than Harmon after the business groups’ press conference.
He said he reached out to them, and said the Democrats were “trying to draft a pro-business piece of legislation,” and since they claimed the bill would make matters worse, he and the Senate Democrats decided to not run any bill during the spring session and maintain the status quo.
The Supreme Court ruled that the legislative intent of BIPA was to penalize each and every collection of employee biometric information. With large numbers of White Castle employees being scanned several times a day for five years, “that’s how we ended up with a $17 billion” penalty, Cunningham said.
The Democratic proposal would’ve specifically changed the law to base the penalty on the number of employees, not the number of scans. But they also increased the penalty from $1,000 to $1,500, which the business groups denounced as well.
Opponents of the BIPA law claim the original state statute has little to nothing to do with the real world. The idea behind the law is to protect people against having their biometric data stored and even traded without their knowledge or permission. After all, an online password can be changed after a data hack, but people can’t just change their fingerprints to protect their identities.
All true, the critics say, but the fingerprints that are used to verify timecards, etc., aren’t kept or stored after they are scanned. Instead, the fingerprints are immediately converted into a set of numbers using a proprietary algorithm.
“The only biometric information utilized by employers to identify employees is an encrypted string of numbers, systemically created as a result of the mathematical algorithm,” according to a white paper released last week by Littler, a pro-employer law firm. “There is no biometric identifier being stored or disseminated,” and, therefore, “it is virtually impossible to reverse engineer an employee’s original fingerprint.”
Cunningham said he heard a theory from a Republican lawmaker that the business groups have been told by the corporate defense bar that they’re confident they can get the state law overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, so there was no reason to settle for a compromise at the state level.
“I have no idea if that’s true or not,” Cunningham said, “But it’s a better explanation than I can come up with.”
Another person close to the issue said the Senate Dems ordered the handful of people involved with the talks to not communicate with anyone outside the room. The business groups, this person claimed, weren’t experts on the topic, so it wasn’t until the actual legislation surfaced when experienced business lawyers could see what was going on, and that’s when everything fell apart.
Cunningham said while they took input from others, the “big lobbying groups” were what they were most concerned with.
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Open thread
Monday, Jul 10, 2023 - Posted by Isabel Miller
* And we’re back! How was y’all’s break and what’s goin on in your part of Illinois today?…
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Isabel’s morning briefing
Monday, Jul 10, 2023 - Posted by Isabel Miller
* Here you go!…
* Tribune | State struggles to implement 2019 law that allows ‘X’ gender on IDs for nonbinary residents: The delay was not unexpected — the Illinois secretary of state’s office said at the time the measure took effect that it would need until 2024 to accommodate the additional gender marker on IDs. But while the office now says it’s “ready to launch,” other entities affected by the change have expressed the need for more time, putting in question when it will actually occur.
* Capitol News Illinois | IDOT unveils 6-year, $41 billion plan for infrastructure projects: The latest version of the plan, which IDOT updates annually, is the largest multiyear plan in state history. It’s driven by the state’s 2019 Rebuild Illinois capital infrastructure program. The initial six-year Rebuild Illinois plan included $33.2 billion for transportation, funded largely by annualized increases to the state’s motor fuel tax and increases to driving-related licensing fees that took effect in 2020.
* Rockford Register Star | More than $430 million coming to Rockford area to fix roads: IDOT’s District 2 includes Winnebago, Boone, Stephenson, Ogle, Lee, Carroll, Jo Daviess, Whiteside, Henry and Rock Island counties. A total of $1.7 billion will spent in District 2 over the next six years, according to state officials.
* Tribune | Illinois may lift historic ban on building nuclear power plants as state continues transition from coal and gas: The sensitive political dynamic is playing out as Gov. J.B. Pritzker is expected to sign the bill into law. But even if he does, players on all sides agree Pritzker’s backing alone won’t lead to an immediate atomic energy boom in the state.
* State Week | A year after the shooting that spurred Illinois’ assault weapons ban: We look back at Illinois’ response, an assault weapons ban, which is still still winding its way through the courts. We also examine what Illinois done to ensure abortion access in the state and what lawmakers are considering going forward.
* Center Square | ‘Have to be some teeth,’ audit chair says of repeated findings at Illinois state agencies: State Rep. Fred Crespo, D-Hoffman Estates, co-chairs the Legislative Audit Commission. He said the audits help legislators hold state agencies accountable. “Are these things that require statutory changes to make sure that these findings are not repeated. Often times they’ll attribute the findings to lack of oversight,” Crespo told The Center Square. “Well, then we need to ask them, if it’s lack of oversight, what are you doing about that?”
* Journal Courier | Petition demonstrates support for private school scholarships in Illinois: State Rep. Randy Frese, R-Paloma started the petition drive to show Democrat leadership in the General Assembly there is grassroots support for the state-backed scholarship program for children who attend non-public schools and technical academies.
* WCBU | Proposed regulations to Delta 8 sales could negatively impact Illinois hemp growers: State Rep. La Shawn Ford, D-Chicago, the chief sponsor of the legislation, said the regulations are necessary to prevent children from using Delta 8 products, adding the state also is losing millions in potential tax revenue.
* Jim Dey | Former lawmaker won’t toss hat into 2024 ring: Former Bloomington area state Rep. Dan Brady has had all he can stands, and he can’t stands no more — at least for now. The veteran pol didn’t put it exactly that way when he announced Friday that he won’t run for either the U.S. House of Representatives (17th District) or the Illinois House of Representatives (88th District). But in making his announcement “after much consideration,” Brady said today’s take-no-prisoners politics is not for him.
* Tribune | As Cook County courts fail to address delays that erode justice, a neighboring system shows reform is possible: In just two short years, Kane County has reduced by half the backlog of people languishing in jail for more than a year. Only one defendant has been detained for more than three years without trial. Meanwhile, in Cook, delays have only worsened, as the Tribune recently reported in the investigation “Stalled Justice.” Some cases are now taking a decade or more to resolve.
* AP | Cities have long planned for extreme heat, but is it enough in a warming world?: Initially slow to react, Chicago has since developed emergency heat response plans that include a massive push to alert the public and then connect the most vulnerable to the help they may need. Other cities like Los Angeles, Miami and Phoenix now have “chief heat officers” to coordinate planning and response for dangerous heat. Around the world, cities and countries have adopted similar measures.
* Daily Northwestern | Former NU football player details hazing allegations after coach suspension: A former Northwestern University football player told The Daily some of the hazing conduct investigated by the university involved coerced sexual acts. A second player confirmed these details. The player also told The Daily that head coach Pat Fitzgerald may have known that hazing took place.
* Sun-Times | If Northwestern really does put its students first, then Pat Fitzgerald has to go: Northwestern should have used that as a guide when punishing Pat Fitzgerald for a hazing scandal that occurred on his watch as head football coach. Instead, the school suspended him for two weeks in July, which is like suspending a bear during hibernation. That slap on the wrist Friday led to waves of criticism crashing upon Northwestern. A day later, drenched university president Michael Schill announced that he would reconsider Fitzgerald’s discipline.
* Block Club | Chicago Police Officer Accused Of Impregnating Migrant Teen Living In West Side Station: Reports: Other officers are accused of “improper sexual relations” with immigrants who had been sleeping in police stations, sources told the Sun-Times. By Friday afternoon, most of the migrants had been moved out of the station.
* WGEM | No confidence vote against Mayor Troup on Monday’s council agenda: A no confidence vote. That’s what the mayor of Quincy is up against Monday night at the city council meeting. […] He said during the July 3 city council meeting, police union president Robert Megee brought up problems with health insurance and changes to residency requirements. He told aldermen, “unions represented here tonight, have separately taken votes of confidence in Mayor Mike Troup, we agree that we all have no confidence in the mayor or his abilities.”
* ABC Chicago | Campton Hills police chief on leave amid financial investigation: The police chief for the village of Campton Hills in Kane County has been placed on paid administrative leave, village officials said in a statement Friday. Chief Steve Millar is on leave due to an ongoing Illinois State Police investigation. The village said it’s “financial in nature,” and is related to Millar’s role as police chief. Village officials learned of the investigation in May.
* Tribune | These tour guides are fighting segregation in Chicago: The Mahogany Bus Tour is an initiative created by TikTok star, community historian and cultural worker Thomas to encourage natives, transplants and tourists to move beyond their screens, off their blocks and into Chicago’s diverse communities. Thomas, a South Side native, shines a light on the rich history of Chicago’s neighborhoods that is often skipped over by the tourism industry.
* Sun-Times | Honoring the last of ‘The Greatest Generation’: Henry W. Clark, a World War II veteran from Harvey, plans to be on board a July 12 Honor Flight Chicago bound for Washington, D.C. So does the Rev. George Kane, a retired Catholic priest, who was a chaplain during the Vietnam War.
* Sun-Times | Better breathing now, but more bad air days likely for Chicago due to climate change: Canadian wildfires ”are going to burn all summer and into the fall. We might be under the gun again,” one expert says. But an Argonne National Laboratory scientist sounds a hopeful note on climate change: “We can do something about it. It is a result of our actions.”
* SJ-R | Red Cross will close emergency shelter operation at BOS Center: The announcement comes with just a handful of people remaining without power, according to a City Water, Light and Power outage map. […] “I want to thank the American Red Cross and all of their volunteers for coming to our community’s aid with such compassion and high level of service,” said Mayor Misty Buscher, in a news release. “Their team has been an invaluable partner in this phase of our city’s recovery and has helped us demonstrate how challenges can be overcome and how strong and united Springfield can be when faced with adversity.”
* Sun-Times | Activists push for landmark status at Burr Oak Cemetery, where there are ‘improvements to be made’: More than a decade after scandal hit the historic cemetery, local advocates say there’s still much left to be desired, with wooden markers broken and rain causing Emmett Till’s grave to constantly be submerged.
* SJ-R | Public will get to weigh in on proposed ‘road diet’ for MLK Jr. Drive: Under the plan, one lane of traffic in each direction would be eliminated. A bi-directional turn lane would be inserted in the middle and bike lanes would be added to the outside.
* NBC Chicago | Northern Lights could be visible in Illinois, Indiana this week: The peak of that spectacle could arrive on Wednesday night and into Thursday morning. Forecasters say that “aurora activity will be high,” and that displays could be visible overhead from Minneapolis to Milwaukee in the Midwest, and low on the horizon between Lincoln and Indianapolis.
* Sun-Times | Winnetka taking a closer look at billionaire’s planned land swap near beach popular with dog owners: “Who knew, when we raised hell about the loss of the dog beach, it would morph into questions about the entire beach improvement project,” Whitchurch said. “One issue after another snowballing.”
* Sun-Times | In search of fireflies, the star of summer: Firefly populations “got off to an absolutely terrible start this year,” says Doug Taron, longtime curator of biology at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum in Lincoln Park.
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Live coverage
Monday, Jul 10, 2023 - Posted by Isabel Miller
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