Capitol Fax.com - Your Illinois News Radar

Tuesday, Jun 11, 2024 - Posted by Rich Miller

* From the very last graf of the Tribune story entitled “Dozens of supporters hail convicted ex-Ald. Ed Burke as devoted public servant ahead of his sentencing”…

Burke earned infamy in the 1980s for trying to thwart virtually every major move of Harold Washington, Chicago’s first Black mayor, during the volatile “Council Wars.” Gathering immense power, he paved the way for his wife to become chief justice of the Illinois Supreme Court, ran the council’s Finance Committee like his own personal fiefdom and oversaw a law firm that constantly put him into ethically questionable positions.

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This is not the way to get anything done

Tuesday, Jun 11, 2024 - Posted by Rich Miller

* Capitol News Illinois and the Saluki Local Reporting Lab…

Through passage of a law known as the Intergenerational Poverty Act [in 2020], they decreed an ambitious plan: to cut deep and persistent poverty by 50 percent by 2026, lift all children from poverty by 2031 and eliminate poverty entirely in Illinois by 2036.

This law created a 25-member commission made up of private and public sector officials to study the root causes of poverty and racial disparities that plague many of Illinois’ poorest communities, including their lack of safe, affordable housing, high unemployment rates and child care shortages.

But like most of the commissions and blue-ribbon panels that lawmakers create, it has no authority to fix the problems it finds. It can only make recommendations to lawmakers and the governor. […]

And the commission, which has seven vacancies, is a long way from meeting its goals. […]

Cairo Mayor Thomas Simpson said he’d never heard of the commission on poverty elimination, though it did hold a listening session in the town in March 2023. […]

As for the commission’s future, with an impending goal of cutting deep poverty in half in less than two years, it continues to meet and develop policy solutions that it plans to present to the governor and lawmakers.

Always fixin’ to get ready, but never actually getting ready and never actually accomplishing anything.

There’s so much more, so click here.

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Some people will complain about literally everything, including bills they vote for

Tuesday, Jun 11, 2024 - Posted by Rich Miller

* Center Square…

Gov. J.B. Pritzker could soon sign a massive tax credit bill on his desk that gives breaks to specific industries, like electric vehicle manufacturers, quantum computing companies and semiconductor manufacturers.

Illinois Republicans called House Bill 5005 a bailout for big corporations.

Um, not mentioned in the story is that HB5005 received 90 votes. By my count, 18 Republicans voted for the bill, including this legislator who is quoted in the story bashing the bill…

State Rep. Dan Ugaste, R-Geneva, called the bill counter productive.

“We need to entice businesses to come to Illinois so our people have jobs. We are still doing nothing to fix the business climate in Illinois, that is the underlying problem,” Ugaste said. “There’s over taxation, over regulation and high cost from litigation. So here we are voting on a bill to try and entice businesses by offering them tax incentives and telling them, ‘your taxes will be lower,’ and yet later we will vote to raise taxes on businesses by over $700 million, almost a billion. Let’s not waste our time.”

* To the sponsor…

The bill’s sponsor, state Rep. Dave Vella, D-Loves Park, argued corporations will not get tax breaks unless they actually provide jobs.

“So this is not a bailout … in fact, the money that’s going to come in to the state of Illinois, $20 billion, over the next 30 years is going to end up creating more small businesses and more jobs for the state than I think any of us can even imagine,” said Vella.

The bill also renews a number of tax incentives the state has already offered like the Reimagining Energy and Vehicles tax credit. Gotion, an electric vehicle battery manufacturer, took advantage of this credit. Gotion continues getting their tax break of over $530 million in exchange for providing 150 jobs by 2028.

Hilarious. The squareheads left out something from the agreement…

Gotion will establish its lithium-ion battery cell, module, pack and energy storage system integration manufacturing campus in Manteno, Illinois. Gotion will create 150 Full-Time Employees by the Benchmark Date and 1,651 Full-time Employees by December 31, 2029. The Company or its Affiliate, as applicable, anticipates creating an additional 961 new jobs for a total of 2,612 jobs created for the Project during the term of the Agreement.

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Mayor Johnson says CTA is ‘moving in the right direction’

Tuesday, Jun 11, 2024 - Posted by Rich Miller

* Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson sat down with the Sun-Times editorial board…

Also during Monday’s board meeting, Johnson said the CTA is “moving in the right direction” under embattled President Dorval Carter Jr. The mayor refused to discuss Carter’s long-term future, but argued it is “not unheard of” for Carter to be targeted by critics because he is African-American, as Carter suggested to a Council committee.

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