Capitol Fax.com - Your Illinois News Radar

Monday, Mar 28, 2022 - Posted by Rich Miller

* The Tribune spent a decade writing stories about annual population estimates, and the paper’s editorial board published dozens of “exodus” screeds in response. Let’s be clear here. There’s zero doubt that people are leaving Illinois for other states (and the same thing is happening elsewhere, too), but the woman featured in this Tribune story says at the very end that she’s planning to come back to Chicago. And there’s nothing in the story about how the intense hype of the past decade concluded with only a tiny net population decline…

Dayna Lynn Nuckolls spent most of her life in Chicago and the south suburbs but was already planning to leave when COVID-19 struck.

She was fed up with the winters and conflicts in Chicago Public Schools, and when the pandemic boosted her business — she’s an astrologer and spiritualist — she made the leap, taking her young child with her to New Orleans.

“I think the energy of migration has been very high,” said Nuckolls, 38. “It’s been a much more supportive environment to make big moves like that. The timing just worked out for me.”

When Nuckolls left the Chicago area in July 2020, she was on the cusp of a trend: More than 100,000 people in Chicagoland followed suit over the next year, migrating to other domestic destinations during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In all, accounting for other population changes due to birth, death and international migration, metro Chicago lost more than 91,000 people between July 2020 and July 2021, aligning with other large metro areas that saw people flee cities as the pandemic continued to upend life in 2021, according to new population estimates released by the U.S. Census Bureau.

…Adding… Oops. Forgot to include this. From the US Census Bureau…

Coverage estimates from the [Post-Enumeration Survey] varied by race and Hispanic origin. DA coverage estimates for these characteristics are not yet available. As further explained in the Using Demographic Benchmarks to Help Evaluate 2020 Census Results blog, DA will first need to reconcile differences in how vital records categorize race with census results not yet released.

The PES data show that:

• The Black or African American alone or in combination population had a statistically significant undercount of 3.30%. This is not statistically different from the 2.06% undercount in 2010.
• The Hispanic or Latino population had a statistically significant undercount rate of 4.99%. This is statistically different from a 1.54% undercount in 2010.
• American Indian or Alaska Native alone or in combination populations living on reservations show a statistically significant undercount rate of 5.64%. This was not statistically different from a 4.88% undercount in 2010. The American Indian or Alaska Native population alone or in combination living in American Indian areas, but not living on reservations, was not statistically different from zero in 2020 or 2010.
• The non-Hispanic White alone population had a statistically significant overcount rate of 1.64%. This is statistically different from an overcount of 0.83% in 2010.
• The Asian alone or in combination population had an overcount rate of 2.62%. This is statistically different from 0.00% in 2010.
• The Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander alone or in combination population had an estimated overcount rate of 1.28%. This rate is not different from an estimated 1.02% overcount rate in 2010. Both are not statistically different from zero.

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What’s it gonna take to clean up the mess at DCFS?

Monday, Mar 28, 2022 - Posted by Rich Miller

* Last week…

Illinois Department of Children and Family Services Director Marc Smith has now been slapped with an eighth contempt of court order for failing to place a teen in the department’s care appropriately.

The order was issued by Juvenile Court Judge and former County Public Guardian Patrick Murphy.

In this case, a 14-year-old girl was taken into temporary DCFS custody last September. Since then, she has been moved 21 times. She was stuck in a psychiatric hospital and was then moved around to different shelters, hospital emergency rooms, DCFS offices, and emergency foster placements.

In February, the judge ordered DCFS to place the teen in a residential facility. That order was not carried out, and the teen ran away.

* The Illinois Times has a must-read story about the acute problems at DCFS…

Building more emergency shelters and funding more foster homes seems on the surface to be a logical way to start improving a troubled child welfare system in Illinois.

The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) has been beset by images of children sleeping in department offices because they have nowhere else to go, reports of children spending too much time in restrictive psychiatric facilities, and a lack of sufficient foster parents to accommodate children who have been removed from their families.

The department has issued three calls for proposals asking providers to submit plans for building emergency shelter capacity, emergency foster homes and programming for youth with Autism Spectrum Disorder. The proposals address the apparent shortage of housing and services for many of the state’s most vulnerable youth.

But a group that has been at odds with DCFS for decades about how the department cares for those caught up in the child welfare system has blasted the proposals as the wrong thing at the wrong time.

“This is precisely the sort of ill-considered, misdirected, counterproductive, fiscally irresponsible, and panic-driven activity that Plaintiffs have been working to prevent” during ongoing litigation, reads a recent post on the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) website.

“It is troubling that the department is actively encouraging providers to develop more shelter beds and emergency foster homes to serve the ‘one percent of youth’ DCFS acknowledges it currently struggles to place – those who are stuck in psychiatric hospitals beyond medical necessity, those stranded in emergency rooms due to lack of psychiatric hospital capacity and those who have lost their placement due to extreme behaviors.”

“Every expert has told the department that these youth do not belong in shelters, and DCFS knows from its own failed experience that these youth are not accepted by emergency foster homes because they lack the supports to address these youths’ severe, immediate needs,” the post concludes.

So if more emergency services aren’t the answer, how do you fix the Illinois child welfare system?

Go read the rest.

* Richard Irvin wants a new DCFS director…

After a judge last week issued a contempt of court order for the eighth time against Department of Children and Family Services Director Marc Smith, Aurora Mayor and gubernatorial candidate Richard Irvin is calling on JB Pritzker to remove him from his post noting children in the state’s care are continuously put in unsafe conditions.

Cook County Public Guardian Charles Golbert called the agency “a colossal waste of taxpayer money,” and noted that the current dysfunction happening at DCFS is something he has never witnessed prior to the Pritzker Administration:

“In the more than 30 years that I’ve been practicing in Juvenile Court, I cannot recall a single prior instance where a judge held the DCFS director in contempt. And now it’s happened eight times in eleven weeks. That’s how dysfunctional DCFS has become.”

This is just another chapter in the string of failures at Pritzker’s state agencies.

“It’s a disgrace that JB Pritzker has allowed this critical agency to falter to the point that multiple court interventions have been required to protect vulnerable children in the state’s care,” said Irvin. “Decisive action must be taken in order to improve DCFS and ensure that no other children are wrongfully put in dangerous situations and abandoned by the state. Pritzker needs to take ownership of this failure and find a new responsible director who will right the wrongs of this agency.”

* Response from the Pritzker campaign…

Instead of using vulnerable children as political pawns, Richard Irvin should finally own up to the fact that he explicitly advertised his legal services to abusive parents and promised to defend them against their rights being terminated for abuse or neglect.

The team running and bankrolling Irvin’s campaign are the very same people who orchestrated some of the most devastating cuts to DCFS the state has ever seen and the impact of Rauner’s budget slashes are still being felt today. Governor Pritzker remains committed to righting those wrongs by investing in help for children in our state’s care.

…Adding… From an NBC 5 story, here’s Sen. Darren Bailey’s response…

I’m sick and tired of hearing this blame on Rauner or on Trump, or whatever it is they want to blame it on. Take responsibility and make changes. Director Smith has been in charge of DCFS since day one.

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MJM roundup

Monday, Mar 28, 2022 - Posted by Rich Miller

* Crain’s Chicago Business reported on this story almost a month ago. Here’s the Tribune…

Nearly four years ago, legislation that aimed to help low-income electricity customers was making its way to the floor of an Illinois House chamber tightly controlled by its longtime speaker, Michael Madigan.

The bill’s main advocate: Madigan’s daughter, then-Attorney General Lisa Madigan. One of its primary opponents: Commonwealth Edison, the state’s largest electric utility.

By the time the Illinois General Assembly’s spring session was over, ComEd won — because, according to federal prosecutors, Michael Madigan paved the way.

In what may be one of the most intriguing chapters of the federal indictment filed earlier this month against ex-Speaker Madigan, prosecutors alleged he greenlighted efforts to kill his own daughter’s legislation as he pressed ComEd to give jobs to two political allies, including a coveted position on the utility’s board of directors.

“His own daughter’s legislation” is a bit much. They were occasionally at odds, even when she was in the Senate. It was nothing personal with him, just business. And maybe crooked business, if the feds are proved right.

* And ComEd still stands by its 2018 position…

Even today, ComEd said it opposed the plan “because it would have hurt customers.” The utility estimated it would have cost customers $20 million upfront to cover expenses, such as customer system modifications and training, as well as an additional $146 million annually, ComEd’s Shannon Breymaier said.

“It would have put significant restrictions on ComEd’s ability to collect utility service charges from customers who could afford to pay their bills and required costly changes to ComEd’s billing and collection systems,” Breymaier said in an email. “Those costs ultimately would have been paid by our customers, not ComEd.”

* The BGA is finally getting around to reporting on this story that happened two weeks ago…

Following a review by state bureaucracies, Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s office has lifted a freeze on funding for projects earmarked by Illinois’ now-indicted former House Speaker Michael Madigan.

The temporary freeze came after a group of nine Democratic state representatives requested it in the wake of Madigan’s 22-count indictment on corruption charges on March 2. […]

But two days after their initial letter to Pritzker the same group of lawmakers, led by State Rep. Ann Williams, D-Chicago, backtracked and asked Pritzker to unfreeze the funding after getting pushback from other lawmakers in the state’s Latino caucus. […]

In an email to the BGA on Wednesday, the governor’s top spokeswoman said the review has been completed and the governor ordered the funds released in a March 11 letter. The governor’s office also provided the memos from state agencies detailing the results of the review.

There is no indication in the documents provided to suggest the Pritzker-ordered reviews touched on the lawmakers’ initial requests to examine whether the projects were “appropriate” or whether any conflicts of interest existed.

* Neil Steinberg reviews Ray Long’s new book for the Washington Monthly…

A few chapters are set pieces, capturing the vicissitudes of Illinois politics. There is the drama of June 30, 1988, as Republican Governor Jim Thompson joins Madigan to try to fund a new ballpark for the White Sox when the team is all but on a plane to Florida. The deed had to be done before midnight, when a change in the legislature’s makeup would doom the effort. But Madigan “made time stand still”—literally. He stopped the clock at midnight so that he and Thompson could twist arms while opponents sang that “Na na na na / Na na na na / Hey, hey-ey, goodbye” song that Sox fans use to jeer opposing pitchers off the field.

The episode is so much fun, with that near-biblical stopping of the sun, that it’s possible to overlook—puff away the obfuscating fog of fandom—that government officials were bending the law to put public money into the pockets of a private business.

* Brenden Moore interviews Ray Long…

There’s a chapter on “Operation Cobra,” Madigan’s stealth plan to temporarily raise the state’s income tax in 1989. It passed the House in less than a day with only Democratic votes.

Long said that the legislative attack “caught Thompson totally surprised,” writing that it was “the biggest raw power play I ever saw Speaker Madigan pull off.”

By contrast, when lawmakers voted in 2017 to approve a Madigan-backed plan to end the state’s two-year budget impasse, Long said that Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner “knew it was coming and he couldn’t do anything about it because Madigan outmaneuvered him politically.”

The old-timers’ Operation Cobra stories often kept me awake at night wondering if I’d talked to enough people that day to ensure I didn’t get surprised like Thompson was.

…Adding… Politico…

hTe specter of former House Speaker Michael Madigan is entering the campaign on how the City Council’s ward maps will be redrawn.

In a new poll commissioned by the Latino Caucus and its supporters, respondents were informed that the Chicago United map supported by the City Council’s Rules Committee and the Black Caucus “was drafted by Michael Madigan’s lawyer.”

According to a polling memo obtained by Playbook, more than two-thirds, 69 percent, of respondents indicated “that is a convincing reason to vote against the Chicago United map.”

The memo states: “Perceptions of Madigan aren’t just negative, they are intensely negative — nearly two-thirds (64 percent) give him a strongly unfavorable rating. Negative perceptions of Madigan extend across all regions of the city and important voter subgroups like Democrats (84 percent unfavorable), Independents (85 percent unfavorable), and white voters (91 percent unfavorable).”

And just in case we didn’t get it, the memo continues, “Madigan is nearly universally disliked in Chicago.”

OK, except the Latino Caucus has a Madigan person of their own working on the remap. So, if they go there, the other side may as well and any advantage goes up in smoke.