* Tribune…

She arrived at X House resigned to delivering her baby while incarcerated.

Amy Hicks was 7 ½ months pregnant and convicted of an illegal drug offense that would keep her behind bars for months to come. Still, as Hicks waited inside that transitional cellblock of the Logan Correctional Center women’s prison, she thought she’d give birth to her daughter when she was ready to be born.

She quickly learned it wouldn’t go as she planned.

Other inmates warned Hicks that the prison would force her delivery through an induction of labor, a procedure typically reserved for medical necessities, none of which applied to her, she said. She heard the same from a correctional officer, who claimed the process was part of prison policy, and from a prison psychiatrist.

Depressed and worried, she filed grievances objecting to what she believed would be a forced medical intervention. But two weeks before her due date, in early 2024, Hicks underwent the induction.

Now two years later, she describes the experience as painful, physically violating and traumatic.

Ugh.

* Another IDOC failure story from the Sun-Times…

• The department only employs the equivalent of 16 full-time physicians across its 29 correctional facilities, which house more than 30,000 people.
• The department receives a budget for roughly 33 full-time physicians. Even though the monitor says staffing is “dangerously low” and advises IDOC to “increase budgeted physician staffing,” the department claims it’s in compliance with the consent decree’s staffing requirements without giving evidence as to how.
• High turnover also plagues IDOC. Over the last six years, 49 physicians have resigned, the monitor reported.
• About 60% of nursing staff positions are vacant, and about a quarter of the facilities don’t have a medical director to oversee care.
• The department has not implemented a policy for analyzing staff workload and tracking filled and vacant positions. IDOC has also not supplied the monitor with clinical performance reviews for physicians, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, dentists, dental hygienists and dental assistants. Nor have prison officials shared disciplinary records for those professionals.
• The vast majority of patient records are on paper and have not been digitized, which the monitor described as “inefficient, unreliable, and inadequate.” A lack of electronic medical records makes it difficult to ensure continuity of care or to track patient’s medical conditions, the monitor says.

And in a review of 15 deaths in custody since the last report in 2024, the monitor learned three people died from asthma, deaths the monitor said were preventable.

Go read the whole thing.

* Moving along to IDFPR…

State lawmakers say physician assistants are leaving for Iowa because it takes so long to get licensed in Illinois.

Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation leaders discussed audit findings with members of the Legislative Audit Commission at the Illinois Capitol last week.

State Sen. Chapin Rose, R-Mahomet, said physician assistants recently told him they were going to Iowa to get licensed, because the process took six months in Illinois.

“That’s six months of lost wages to those individuals. It’s also six months of lost productivity to the state of Illinois. It’s six months of lost tax revenues to the state of Illinois. If they go to Iowa, we’ll never get them back. At the end of the day, it’s six months of less health care to the constituents that we all represent,” Rose said.

State Rep. Natalie Manley, D-Joliet, said she also met with the PAs.

“Is there anything we can do to think outside the box, like a temporary license or something that can be issued so we don’t lose this talent?” Manley asked. […]

IFPR Secretary Mario Treto Jr. said his agency is working to implement a new licensing system. […]

Treto said he hopes to have the agency’s new system for licensed professionals fully implemented by the end of the year.

The amount of damage done to workforce development in this state by a bottleneck at a tiny agency is incalculable. That bottleneck hurts the economy, it undermines state efforts to provide services, it needlessly frustrates good people who want to work. It causes us to lose valuable professionals to other states.

These endless implementation delays are inexcusable and the problem should be a much higher budget priority. A few mess-ups can be blamed on the agency. A years-long problem shifts the blame to the governor. That’s just the way it is.

* Speaking of IDFPR, click here for lots more background. From a press release…

Illinois Social Equity Dispensary Says State Agency Attempting to Rewrite Cannabis Equity Law Amid Active Litigation

Chicago, Illinois - Market 96, a state-licensed social equity cannabis dispensary, is challenging a proposed rule issued by the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation (IDFPR), stating that the agency is attempting to override clear statutory protections in the Illinois Cannabis Regulation and Tax Act (CRTA) - protections that are currently the subject of active litigation.

The CRTA prohibits dispensaries from operating within 1,500 feet of one another to prevent market saturation and to provide social equity licensees with a meaningful opportunity to compete. While the statute includes a narrow exception permitting such proximity to certain pre-existing operators (dispensaries licensed in the original non-social-equity rounds, predominantly MSOs), it does not permit two social equity dispensaries to operate within 1,500 feet of each other.

In September 2025, Market 96, located at 529 S. Wells Street in downtown Chicago filed suit after IDFPR declined to clarify whether it would license another dispensary less than 500 feet from its location - a scenario Market 96 contends would violate the CRTA. Market 96 has been operational at this location since July 2024.

The dispensary seeking to open within 500 feet is licensed as a social equity dispensary but is affiliated with multi-state operator Justice Cannabis Co. and is expected to operate under its BLOC dispensary brand. Justice Cannabis Co. operates dispensaries in multiple states under the BLOC brand.

In December 2025, three months after the suit was filed, and with the litigation still pending, IDFPR issued a proposed rule that would allow social equity dispensaries to locate within 1,500 feet of one another.

“This is not a technical clarification,’ said Sherri Blount, Principal of Blounts&Moore LLC, which operates Market 96. ‘”The proposed rule would fundamentally alter the competitive protections the legislature enacted; protections social equity operators relied on when we entered this market. Our litigation was filed to enforce the statute as written.”‘

Market 96 is not alone in its concerns. A growing coalition of dispensary operators across the state have already joined in a formal letter to legislators opposing the proposed rule, and additional licensees are expected to sign on. The coalition contends that reversing course through rulemaking - after busiesses have opened, hired staff, and committed capital - threatens the stability and credibility of the Illinois social equity cannabis program.

Coalition members also point to a prior attempt by IDFPR to adopt a similar interpretation. In 2022, the agency published guidance suggesting that social equity dispensaries could operate within 1,500 feet of one another. In September 2023, members of the Illinois General Assembly formally notified IDFPR that such an interpretation was inconsistent with legislative intent. The agency subsequently withdrew that guidance.

“The legislature already addressed this issue,” Blount said. “Lawmakers made clear that allowing social equity dispensaries to locate within 1,500 feet of each other contradicts the intent of the CRTA. The agency abandoned that interpretation once before.”

Governor JB Pritzker has repeatedly described Illinois’ cannabis framework as a national model for equity-focused legalization. Coalition members contend that weakening statutory protections designed to give social equity operators room to compete undermines that model.

‘’Independent social equity operators invested millions of dollars relying on the law as enacted by the General Assembly,” Blount said. ‘’If statutory protections can be rewritten after the fact, the reliability of the entire program is called into question.”

The coalition is urging lawmakers to reaffirm the 1,500-foot separation requirement as written in the CRTA and to ensure that administrative rulemaking does not override clear statutory language.

If the administration wants to change the distance requirement then a bill should be filed. Otherwise, it’s inexcusable to force these companies to file lawsuits to protect what the state promised them in the first place.

Governors own.

Also, please excuse any typos. I converted this from a pdf to a Word document and there could be minor errors I missed. The original is here.