* ICYMI: State commission says Illinois underfunds public universities by $1.4 billion. Capitol News Illinois…

- The Commission on Equitable Public University Funding is made up of 34 members, including legislators, representatives from public universities, and members of advocacy organizations.
-It found that dedicating an added $100 million to $135 million annually to public universities would allow the state to bridge the funding gap in 10-15 years.
- The amount of operational funding covered by the state has decreased from 72 percent covered in 2002 to 35 percent in 2021.
- Public universities are currently at 68.5 percent funding adequacy collectively the commission found.

* Related stories…

∙ WREX: Illinois commission releases recommendations on how to make higher-ed funding more equitable
∙ WBEZ: Ambitious plan unveiled to boost college spending in Illinois — and more fairly distribute money
∙ WCIA: State commission unveils report on Illinois public university funding inequities

* Isabel’s top picks…

* Borderless | 7 Things Migrants Should Know About Upcoming Shelter Evictions: Earlier this year, residents expected to vacate the shelter between Jan. 16 and Feb. 29 were given a 60-day extension due to cold weather. If you were given a move-out date between March 1 and March 28, you should have received a 30-day extension from your assigned exit date. For individuals who received a 60-day notice on Feb. 1, your eviction date will be April 1, according to the city.

* Sun-Times | Votes on Johnson’s ‘Bring Chicago Home’ referendum to help the unhoused should be counted, judges rule: In the opinion, written by Mitchell, the appeals court argued it cannot interfere with the legislative process by removing the question from the ballot. “The holding of an election for the purpose of passing a referendum to empower a municipality to adopt an ordinance is a step in the legislative process of the enactment of that ordinance. Courts do not, and cannot, interfere with the legislative process,” the opinion reads. “Courts are empowered to rule on the validity of legislative enactments only after they have been enacted.”

* ABC Chicago…

The appellate court ruling came down as Mayor Brandon Johnson was speaking to the media at a news conference on an unrelated subject.

“I’ve said all along that the people of Chicago should determine how we should address the unhoused crisis in Chicago,” the mayor said in the moment, “and I made a commitment, not just as a candidate but as mayor of the city of Chicago, that I would do everything in my power to move us closer towards housing for all, because this has been a long time coming for the people of Chicago.”

The Building Owners and Managers Association of Chicago released a statement on the decision, saying, ”We are disappointed in the outcome of this case, but felt it was important to challenge this misleading and manipulative referendum question. This massive tax increase would hurt homeowners, renters, union workers, and businesses throughout the neighborhoods. Even worse, a yes vote on this referendum is a vote to deliver huge blank checks to the City with no plan for how millions will be accountably spent. We have already ramped up our efforts to educate the public about the negative impacts of this tax increase.”

In a statement, Maxica Williams, chair of the End Homelessness Ballot Initiative Committee and board president of the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, said:
“Our longstanding coalition of policy advocates, service providers, labor unions, and homeless and formerly homeless people commend the judges of the First District Appellate Court for dismissing the real estate lobby’s effort to invalidate Ballot Question 1. We look forward to keeping up our efforts to reach hundreds of thousands of voters about their opportunity to vote yes for a fair and sustainable plan to fund housing, care for the homeless, and ask wealthy real estate corporations to pay their fair share.”

Governor Pritzker will be in Decatur at 10 am to celebrate Primient investments in Illinois. Click here to watch.

* Capitol News Illinois | With feds citing ‘extensive cooperation,’ judge gives ex-Sen. Terry Link 3 years’ probation: In June, Link was the government’s star witness in the trial of Jimmy Weiss, a politically connected businessman charged with bribing both Link and Arroyo. Weiss had been pushing for the legalization of “sweepstakes machines,” a close cousin of the heavily regulated and taxed video gaming terminals found in bars, restaurants and standalone video gambling cafes across Illinois.

* WMBD | Here is a look at the 88th district Illinois State House race: Erickson introduced a resolution in January that McLean County, which he said has not declared itself a sanctuary, should not allocate county tax dollars should it be presented with an influx of migrants. His stance not to vote for a tax rate increase while on the county board is indicative of his desire to lower taxes. He also wants to push back on gun registration and gun bans.

* WCIA | House District Republican Primary to be decided by rare write-in battle: Teacher’s unions backing a candidate against Niemerg is not surprising. He consistently attacks them, going so far as to say no one who calls themselves a Republican should accept money from them. “I think Republicans should swear off taking teachers’ unions money until the teachers’ unions actually stand for teachers instead of the woke indoctrination that I see coming out of Springfield,” Niemerg said.

* Daily Southtown | Republicans in 19th Senate primary say property taxes, immigration as top issues: Samantha Jean Gasca, of New Lenox, Hillary Mattsey Kurzawa, of Frankfort, and Max Solomon, of Hazel Crest, are seeking their party’s nomination to challenge 19th District incumbent state Sen. Michael Hastings, D-Frankfort, in November. It will be the second time in the past two elections where Hastings has faced a general election challenger after Lockport Republican Patrick Sheehan conceded a very close race in 2022.

* Sun-Times | Protests & peace — Chicago ready for demonstrators at Dem convention, but police won’t ‘tolerate violence’: Snelling made a distinction between the types of demonstrations that are expected during the Democratic convention and “pop-up” protests that were sparked by George Floyd’s murder at the hands of a Minneapolis cop that gave way to widespread looting and gun violence. He specifically pushed back on a scathing report by the city’s inspector general’s office that found officers were “outflanked, under-equipped and unprepared,” and that the department “critically disserved both its own front-line members and members of the public.”

* Crain’s | House OKs extra $75 million for security at DNC: Tucked into a huge, $467.5 billion bill to pay for federal spending on scores of items this year is $75 million for Chicago, with an identical $75 million for Milwaukee, where Republicans will hold their convention. That’s $25 million more than the $50 million convention cities have received in recent years, but advocates say costs and security needs have risen.

* Crain’s | As Durbin frets over O’Hare expansion’s future, airlines re-up their support: But in a March 4 opinion piece in the Chicago Tribune, Durbin wrote “if United and American airlines had it their way, they would delay the satellite terminals and build only the part of the project that benefits them and doesn’t increase competition. This means putting off the construction of both satellite terminals to focus on the Global Terminal.” [….] American and United, meanwhile, insist they’re still committed to the project and haven’t proposed to build only the global terminal because satellite capacity would be needed to handle the activity from Terminal 2 while it’s being demolished and rebuilt.

* Tribune | After loss of tax credit money, anonymous donors help Catholic school in Cicero stay open: In late January, the archdiocese announced that St. Frances of Rome in Cicero would close its doors in June. The sunset of the state’s Invest in Kids tax credit scholarship program created a financial cliff for the school, which has a majority Hispanic student population from working-class families. For weeks, parents, parishioners and community members rallied to garner attention and pressure leaders to save the school outside the parish’s Sunday Mass and in front of Holy Name Cathedral in River North, where the Archbishop of Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich works.

* Sun-Times | Chicago’s search for new revenue targets video gaming, wealth taxes, heliport, downtown digital ads: Freshman Ald. William Hall (6th), Mayor Brandon Johnson’s hand-picked chair, also warmed to possibly leveling the tax playing field between the haves and have-nots by seeking legislative approval for a city income tax on salaries over $100,000 earned in Chicago or taxing stock holdings and personal liquid assets of wealthy residents.

* Crain’s | Bears’ stadium plans involve significant public amenities — and public subsidies, too: To make the stadium more attractive, the team is also proposing infrastructure improvements that would better connect the entire museum campus to the city’s grid and Northerly Island. While the city has long sought improvements to the campus, the infrastructure would likely add hundreds of millions to the total taxpayer tab to support a new stadium.

* Axios | Illinois’ recreational weed market is most expensive in the Midwest: According to the Marijuana Policy Institute, Illinois’ legal cannabis tax is among the highest rates in the U.S., with up to 40% over the sale price. We’re behind several states, including Washington, New York, Nevada and California.

* ABC Chicago | Aurora at Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont on track to be world’s fastest supercomputer: Argonne’s new supercomputer doesn’t just have one node, 10 or 100, instead it has 10,000 of them. Each single rack of nodes weighs eight tons and are cooled by thousands of gallons of water. Its computing power equals 2 exaflops, or 2 billion-billion calculations per second.

* AP | Alabama governor signs legislation protecting IVF providers from legal liability into law: Republican Gov. Kay Ivey signed the bill after it was approved in a late-night session by lawmakers scrambling to address a wave of criticism after services were halted at some of the state’s largest fertility clinics. Doctors from at least one clinic said they would resume IVF services on Thursday.

* AP | State of the Union: What to watch as Biden addresses the nation: The White House hasn’t disclosed specific proposals that will be in this year’s speech. But he could reference unfinished business from his first term, and he’ll likely press for military assistance for Ukraine to reinforce American leadership overseas.

* Sun-Times | Here are the guests of Illinois members of Congress for President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address: With access to in vitro fertilization now an issue, Sen. Tammy Duckworth, whose two daughters were born using IVF, invited Illinois reproductive endocrinologist and infertility specialist Dr. Amanda Adeleye to be her guest “as part of the senator’s continuing efforts to protect access to in-vitro fertilization.”