* Herald-Whig…

Quincy aldermen will consider an ordinance making the city a “Safehaven City of the Unborn.”

The ordinance would prevent health care providers offering abortions from setting up in Quincy by making it illegal to receive abortion-inducing pills and abortion-related medical equipment in the mail on the authority of the 1873 Comstock Act, a federal law prohibiting “obscene” or “lewd” materials from being sent in the mail, including birth control or abortion-related items.

The City Council heard from several residents in favor and opposed to the ordinance during Monday night’s meeting where Alderman Jake Reed, R-6, requested it be placed on the agenda.

Mayor Mike Troup and aldermen, such as Greg Fletcher, R-1, expressed support of the ordinance but also concerns the state of Illinois will sue Quincy and lay litigation fees at the taxpayer’s feet.

That’s a pretty safe bet, mayor.

…Adding… Sarah Garza Resnick, CEO, Personal PAC…

“The Quincy proposal is yet another attempt by anti-choice extremists to restrict abortion rights in Illinois. Like the ordinance that passed in Danville, this proposal is an insult to the Illinois Constitution and the Illinois Reproductive Health Act. Personal PAC is partnering with pro-choice organizers on the ground to make sure that if the Quincy Mayor and City Council take a vote on this ordinance, they know that we are watching, and we are working toward municipal elections in 2025.”

* Another campaign attack…

@BostForCongress has always been a rubber stamp for the establishment. His first vote in Congress, choosing Boehner as speaker, set the tone. With unwavering loyalty to McCarthy with every vote, he falls in line and neglects the people's needs. We need a true fighter who'll upend…

— Darren Bailey (@DarrenBaileyIL) October 3, 2023

I asked whom Bailey was supporting, but never heard back. Follow along here.

…Adding… Looks like Bailey and Rep. Miller (No Relation) are on opposite sides at the moment…

Congresswoman Mary Miller (R-IL) released the following statement on her vote to prevent a “coalition government” with Democrats:

“I agree with President Trump that right now, we should be focused on stopping the radical Democrats,” Miller said.

“I voted against Kevin McCarthy 15 times in January, but no one else has stepped forward to run for Speaker and I will NOT surrender the majority to a “coalition government” with the Democrats through a power-sharing agreement with extreme liberals Nancy Pelosi and Hakeem Jeffries.

* This district is represented by freshman Democrat Eric Sorensen…

Ray Estrada drops out of #IL17 race, clearing the GOP primary field (for now) for retired Circuit Court Judge Joe McGraw, who will kick off his campaign next week. McGraw is believed to be the preferred candidate by the NRCC. #twill https://t.co/Ljv4J1JWg3 pic.twitter.com/WDndZoh1aM

— Brenden Moore (@brendenmoore13) October 3, 2023

* Press release…

Today, Governor JB Pritzker visited the University of Chicago Library to announce the University’s plan to build a collection of books that have been historically banned, creating an accessible library open to the public. The event takes place during National Banned Books Week, which runs from October 1-7. The governor was joined by Lt. Governor Juliana Stratton and University of Chicago leadership.

“When we can engage with ideas that are new to us, challenge and be challenged by different perspectives, learn new things, understand all the amazing miracles and darkest hours of the world around us — we are all better off,” said Governor JB Pritzker. “Today’s announcement not only means that any member of the public can come access commonly banned books here in person at UChicago — it also means that residents throughout Illinois can access these texts digitally. Even in the face of rising censorship around the country, I have faith in the power of free speech and free thinking to overcome. Through programming and protests and advocacy like this, Illinoisans demonstrate to the nation and the world what it really looks like to stand up for liberty.”

“Illinois continues to stand on the right side of history, refusing to censor educational and social reading material that celebrates our diversity and the richness of the human experience,” said Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton. “As we celebrate Banned Books Week, our administration is committed to protecting the voices and stories of those who have historically gone unheard and unseen.”

The event was held at the University of Chicago’s Regenstein Library and highlighted the value of intellectual freedom in Illinois and nationwide. Governor Pritzker emphasized the importance of literary access and supporting library staff, who have been dealing with threats around the state.

With support from the American Library Association (ALA), the University of Chicago will be consolidating dozens of “banned books” for their new collection, which can be freely accessed by members of the public with a UChicago Library visitor pass.

The collection will be digitized and made available to those nationwide who lack local access to these titles, in partnership with the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA). The virtual “Banned Book Club” app uses geolocation services to determine book titles that have been banned in users’ areas. The UChicago Library and DPLA have already made over 900 titles accessible, and are consistently increasing the number of available titles on the app.

In June 2023, Governor Pritzker signed a bill making Illinois the first state to outlaw book bans, encouraging schools and libraries to embrace education, literary justice, and equity. HB2789, which takes effect January 1, 2024, protects libraries from external restrictions to book collections.

Governor Pritzker also included $1.6 million in the FY24 state budget to launch Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library statewide. This initiative includes a book gifting program that mails free, high-quality books to children from birth to age five, no matter a family’s income.

The Banned Book Collection at the Regenstein Library is currently available for access. The digital collection can be found on DPLA’s recently launched “Banned Books Club” on the Palace e-reader app.

* Sun-Times…

With the downtown property market ranging from torpid to downright depressed, a bit of news about the sector in September had a “man bites dog” importance.

Menashe Properties bought a 29-story office building at 230 W. Monroe St. The family-owned firm, based in Portland, Oregon, and making its first investment in Chicago, took the plunge as other property moguls talk about tax rates, high crime and the still-uncertain comeback from COVID-19 as reasons to shun deals here. […]

Menashe said he checked out Chicago in his first visit to the city and found it to be “the polar opposite of what you hear about in the news.”

“It’s vibrant. It’s architecturally beautiful. You could feel the vibe,” he said. He was a follower of the late tycoon Sam Zell, remembered for an ability to profit from others’ failures.

* The horror…

“It was certainly a first in front of the Ritz: a good-sized, sort of fancy tent astride two large industrial carts, all topped with a large Chicago Fire [soccer] tarp,” said a nearby resident who is elderly and asked not to be identified.

“It was illegally blocking the use of a public way and up against the fence of Schulman Park on Pearson Street, ostensibly across from [Streeterville’s Ritz-Carlton hotel] in order to use the bathroom facilities.

“I was walking my shelter dog when I called to the inside of the tent, and a woman I didn’t see said she was nine months pregnant. Then, a well-groomed man appearing to be in his 30s showed up, accused my dog of pooping on his tent, swore at me in a salacious manner and told me to get lost when I told him the tent placement was illegal. So I called the police, who were there in minutes.”

No police report was filed, but the tent was gone the next day.

* And yet…

Chicago has been named the “Best Big City in the U.S.” for the seventh straight year by readers of Condé Nast Traveler Magazine, officials announced Tuesday.

According to a press release from City of Chicago tourism agency Choose Chicago, the award “speaks to Chicago’s enduring allure to all types of travelers from around the world.”

* Rep. Steve Reick…

The adverse opinion issued last week by the Illinois Auditor General’s office of its compliance audit of the Department of Children and Family Services deals not only with certain financial irregularities within the agency, but it also shines a harsh light on the failure of this agency to protect the children within its care. DCFS exists for one purpose and one purpose only, and that is to protect vulnerable children from abuse and neglect. The fact that the agency failed on so many levels, and then saw fit to hide its failures by providing material misstatements boggles the mind.

Since the audit’s release, we’ve heard nothing from the Governor, even though he had two press availabilities last week where he could have addressed the issue. I just spoke with a member of the Springfield press who told me that the Governor’s office was going to leave it to the Agency to respond.

Since the audit was released on September 26th, there’s only been one comment made by DCFS regarding the findings. Heather Tarczan, DCFS communications director, pointed out the audit took place amid COVID-19 when many state agencies were dealing with staffing issues. I would find that to be somewhat persuasive if it wasn’t for the fact that the issues raised in this audit go back long before COVID.

The Auditor General’s report discloses 33 separate findings, of which 17 were “Category One” findings which describe “material weakness in internal control” or “material non-compliance with state laws and regulations”. Of the 17 Category One violations shown in the audit, twelve of them were raised as far back as 1998. These failures aren’t due to COVID.

And what about Director Smith? Was he hired to fix this agency, or was he merely hired as a caretaker of a dysfunctional agency that has failed so many kids? If he’s any kind of a leader, he should be marching into the Governor’s office and demanding that he be given complete authority to overhaul this agency. Neither he nor the Governor can be considered as profiles in political courage.

The governor is quick to point out that Republicans could be more supportive of his efforts if we would but vote in favor of his budgets. That’s a topic for another day, but let’s just say that if the administration were to propose its budget in piecemeal fashion (by appropriation committee) instead of as a single 3,000-page document, we might find things in there that we’d be willing to vote for, even though we had no say in what goes into it. But he’d rather have political talking points rather than a cooperative effort toward doing the work that the people of this state deserve.

* Isabel’s afternoon roundup…

* Capitol News Illinois | Pritzker urges Biden to intervene amid ‘untenable’ pace of migrant arrivals: Without naming GOP figures like Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, Pritzker blamed political leaders who “have shipped people to our state like cargo in a dehumanizing attempt to score political points.” But he also faulted the Biden administration for its lack of support for Illinois, which has already dedicated $330 million to addressing the influx of 15,000 migrants and counting.

* Sun-Times | Migrant shelter plan at Amundsen Park field house draws City Council member’s ire: Ald. Chris Taliaferro (29th) on Monday unleashed his anger at Mayor Brandon Johnson’s plan to turn the Amundsen Park Fieldhouse into a shelter for 200 migrants for at least six months. Three days after Taliaferro warned that the burgeoning migrant crisis was bringing historic tensions between Blacks and Latinos to a boil, the situation hit even closer to home.

* South Side Weekly | Tent Camp Debate Highlights Uneven Burdens in Migrant Response: Antonio Gutierrez, a strategic coordinator at Organized Communities Against Deportations (OCAD), told the Weekly that because the plan is a temporary solution, they’re concerned about the long-term plan. “The crisis is not the recently arrived migrants, but the overall lack of affordable housing in the city of Chicago,” Gutierrez said. “We also don’t think that will be the best usage of these millions of dollars…that could otherwise be used in other ways to actually create permanent affordable housing.”

* Block Club | Amazon Warehouse Workers Near Chicago Are Injured At Above-Average Rates. Will New West Side Center Be Safer?: Serious injury rates at most Chicago-area Amazon warehouses are double the statewide average, an analysis of Occupational Safety and Health Administration data by Block Club Chicago shows. At the warehouse facility in suburban Romeoville, where nearly 800 people work, the serious injury rate is 12.3 percent, over three times the state average of 3.4 percent.

* Shaw Local | Yorkville school board investigated by Illinois attorney general over closed meeting complaint: The Illinois Attorney General’s Office is investigating a complaint alleging that the Yorkville School District 115 board violated the Illinois Open Meetings Act when discussing the book “Just Mercy” in closed session. The board voted 4-2 at its Aug. 7 meeting to prohibit use of Bryan Stevenson’s memoir in the Yorkville High School English II Rhetorical Analysis course.

* Patch | $750,000 Settlement In Black Officer’s Lawsuit Against Joliet Chief: According to his federal lawsuit, the city of Joliet had at least 10 job openings on its police force in 2019, and Anthony Sinnott later discovered he ranked No. 5 out of the 227 eligible candidates. On Aug. 26, 2019, Sinnott learned that Joliet’s Police and Fire Board rejected his job application, his lawsuit states. […] Anthony Sinnott’s lawsuit also stated that, “Roechner made false statements about Sinnott to the Board and verbally accused him of being a ‘habitual woman beater’ in front of the Board.

* PJ Star | Peoria congressman Darin LaHood voted ‘no’ to avoid shutdown. Here’s what he said: In a Facebook post, LaHood said he voted no on the bill because it did not address “out of control spending addiction” and did not “address the crisis at our southern border.”"Families in #IL16 must meet a budget and it’s past time that DC do the same. With $33 Trillion in debt, Congress needs to change the way it spends or we will threaten the economic future of our kids and grandkids,” LaHood’s statement said.

* Lake County News-Sun | Officials scrambling to maintain federal funding levels for North Chicago schools in the face of potential cutbacks: Potentially facing a revenue loss of nearly $5 million over the next two years from a cut in federal impact aid received for educating military dependents, North Chicago School District Superintendent John Price is trying to maintain the current funding levels. With Naval Station Great Lakes occupying 30% of North Chicago’s real estate, the land is exempt from paying local property taxes. Instead, it pays impact aid of $12,700 annually for each military dependent student in the district. That may drop to $2,000.

* Rockford Register Star | Rockford rejects expansion of group homes for recovering addicts: Neighbors signed petitions and wrote letters opposing the expansion. Oxford House lawyers say the residents in their group homes are considered “disabled persons” under the law and therefore protected by it and the Fair Housing Act. They asked to increase the number of residents allowed at the homes beyond the six permitted in areas zoned R-1.

* WICS | Illinois police officer indicted, accused of assaulting handcuffed man: Justin Gaither, 33, was indicted on September 27 on one count of deprivation of rights under color of law, namely the right to be free from the use of unreasonable force. The indictment accuses Gaither of assaulting someone on Nov. 20, 2022. The victim was handcuffed and was not posing a threat to anyone, the indictment says.

* Sun-Times | Bally’s casino at Medinah Temple will ‘secure Chicago’s fiscally strong and vibrant future,’ Johnson says: About three weeks after Illinois Gaming Board regulators let Bally’s open the doors to gamblers, Johnson helped cut the ceremonial ribbon at Medinah, which is expected to take bets for the next three years while a bigger, permanent casino is built in the River West neighborhood.

* Bloomberg | Video slot machines spur gambling revenue windfall for Illinois: Illinois’s tax collections from gaming climbed to a record of almost $2 billion in the year that ended June 30, according to data going back almost five decades. Video gaming currently represents about 41% of wagering revenue, while lottery makes up nearly 44%.

* The Messenger | Colorado Law to Ban ‘Abortion Reversal’ Procedures Could Spark National Trend: Passed by the state Legislature in April, the law has survived months of legal challenges. While anti-abortion activists maintain the “abortion reversal” procedure is a legitimate treatment for those seeking to “reverse” a medication abortion, it has been branded “unproved and unethical” by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. The passage and soon-to-come enactment of Senate Bill 23-190 represents a major win for abortion advocates, who say that “abortion reversal” is merely a tool used by “crisis pregnancy centers”—or anti-abortion centers that have been frequently criticized for spreading misinformation and using deceptive measures to prevent women from accessing abortions—to increase stigma and fear around abortions.

* Bloomberg | Ethanol price manipulation lawsuit is back to haunt ADM: U.S. District Judge Colin S. Bruce on Sept. 26 denied ADM’s request to dismiss the case where competitors accuse the company of violating antitrust laws. The decision came after an analysis of an amended complaint by Midwest in which it names several ethanol producers allegedly affected by what the complaint characterizes as ADM’s anticompetitive practices. For a period between 2017 and 2019, ADM allegedly sold ethanol below cost at Kinder Morgan’s terminal in Argo, a subdivision of suburban Summit, while using derivatives traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange to place an “outsized” bet on lower prices.

* WaPo | An epidemic of chronic illness is killing us too soon: After decades of progress, life expectancy — long regarded as a singular benchmark of a nation’s success — peaked in 2014 at 78.9 years, then drifted downward even before the coronavirus pandemic. Among wealthy nations, the United States in recent decades went from the middle of the pack to being an outlier. And it continues to fall further and further behind. A year-long Washington Post examination reveals that this erosion in life spans is deeper and broader than widely recognized, afflicting a far-reaching swath of the United States.

* KHQA | Illinois seeking State Historian: The search committee will be chaired by Millikin University history professor Dan Monroe. “Illinois is doing something important by reinventing the position of state historian. It’s a chance to explore overlooked parts of the Illinois story, amplify new voices, and reach folks who might not realize how exciting history can be,” said Dr. Monroe. “We want to cast a wide net in our search for candidates.”

* Daily Herald | Goodman’s ‘Tommy’ wins nine Jeff Awards: If Goodman Theatre’s production of “The Who’s Tommy” opens on Broadway next year (a transfer expected but not officially confirmed), it received a memorable send-off Monday at the 55th annual Joseph Jefferson Awards ceremony recognizing excellence in Chicago-area theater during the 2022-2023 equity season. Goodman’s record-breaking production — the highest grossing in the theater’s 98-year history — received nine Jeff Awards, more than any other production, and won every category in which it was nominated.

* KLAS | Never-before-seen photos, videos released in Tupac Shakur murder case: Last week, a Clark County grand jury indicted 60-year-old Duane “Keffe D” Davis in Shakur’s murder. Las Vegas Metro police arrested Davis near his Nevada home early Friday morning. The grand jury, which met at least five times over the course of three months, voted Thursday to indict Davis on a charge of murder with a deadly weapon with a gang enhancement. Prosecutors announced the indictment Friday.

* Daily Herald | Trailblazing Advocate president ready to face health industry challenges: Being the only person of color in a corporate board room isn’t unusual for Dia Nichols. For the last two years, the Inverness resident has served as president of the Central Chicagoland Patient Service Area and Advocate Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge — joining a small field of hospital executives who are people of color. The 49-year-old recently took the helm as Advocate Health Care’s first Black president.

* WCIA | Teutopolis stepping up to honor Bryan Family after ammonia leak: “It’s not your typical one funeral. It’s three,” Willenborg said. The ride is starting right in town at a place that’s helping out in a big way already: Ping’s Tavern. “Within two hours, they raised $8,000 for the Kenny Bryan family,” said Julia Henderson, a bartender at the bar.