“Since taking office, the Governor has worked to protect the health and safety of all Illinoisans, especially our young people. He supports the efforts of state lawmakers to outlaw flavored e-cigarettes and vaping products, and also supports those proposals moving forward during the fall veto session.”
Background
- So far, this administration has worked with the General Assembly to raise the smoking age to 21, including for vaping and e-cigarettes.
- He also imposed the first-ever tax on e-cigarettes and vaping products to make them more difficult for young people to get their hands on.
- The Governor also convened a working group of medical and legal experts to study the scientific evidence so they can develop long-term solutions to keep Illinoisans safe and healthy.
Not sure why it’s necessary to ban a product for adult consumption when it’s already illegal for people under 21, particularly since there is no real connection between these products and the recent reported vaping illnesses. But the public and the media are in a furor, so politicians gonna politic.
SHANE BOUVET, a Stonington man who volunteered on President DONALD TRUMP’s campaign, met Trump several times including the evening before the 2017 inauguration, and received $15,000 from Trump to help his ailing father, has taken to Facebook in what appeared to be an election challenge to U.S. Sen. DICK DURBIN, D-Illinois, of Springfield.
“Mr. Durbin Look me in the eyes,” it says in the post, titled “Bouvet vs. Durbin.” “It’s okay of you’re scared. So am I. … I know what is within me, Even if you can’t see it yet. … I have patience. I will become what I know I am. – Senator Shane Bouvet.”
So, I called Bouvet, who started work last week at a Decatur construction company, after losing a coal-mining job he said ended due to flooding in Hillsboro. He’s 27, he noted, and a person has to be 30 to serve in the Senate.
“I’m trying to let him know,” Bouvet said, “don’t get comfortable, because when I turn 30, he’s definitely in my sight.”
Assuming he wins next year, Sen. Durbin won’t be up for reelection again until 2026, when he will be 82 years old.
“Any challenger [to an incumbent] is challenged themselves,” typically through disputed signatures needed to make it on the ballot.
“There’s a reason we have many uncontested elections in Illinois. The ballot process requires money for election lawyers.”
The petition binding laws and surrounding court cases alone can easily knock candidates off the ballot.
Others, including the Tribune editorial board, say the big reason for so many uncontested races here is gerrymandering…
Often, the loaded dice mean there is no game at all. Of 39 state senators up for election, 20 had no opponent.
OK, but Wisconsin’s gerrymandering process is said to be much more political than Illinois’ and of 17 state Senate seats up for election last year, only four were uncontested.
* The Question: How responsible are Illinois’ ballot access laws for our large number of uncontested legislative races? Don’t forget to explain your answer. Thanks.
* This might possibly help the prospects of a trailer bill during veto. But lowering taxes on the Chicago operator will mean less money for the state and/or the city. The state needs that dough for vertical infrastructure projects and the city needs it for police and fire pensions. And as far as I can tell, there’s no agreement yet about how to do it or even if they will do it. Some folks in high places say Lightfoot should just put the casino license out to bid as-is to see if she gets any takers before fiddling with the tax structure. But the clock is ticking and veto session is approaching fast…
Illinois Gaming Board keeps its poker face, passing resolution asking lawmakers to modify gaming bill in response to Las Vegas feasibility report that portayed Chicago casino tax structure as a losing hand. Motion passed with no debate. @mitchtrout is there.
Mayors from various corners of Illinois agree with Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s comments: Illinois’ mandates on pensions are unsustainable.
In an August interview with the editorial board of Crain’s Chicago Business, the freshman Chicago mayor called Illinois’ state-mandated sweeteners to public worker pensions “unsustainable” and called on lawmakers to take action in the coming veto session.
She immediately faced criticism and was forced to clarify her statement, telling Crain’s that “We must secure the retirement of our working people by partnering with our allies from the state to identify progressive revenue streams. Mayor Lightfoot remains opposed to a constitutional amendment on pensions.”
In her initial interview, she said Chicago wasn’t alone in struggling to pay for pension promises mandated by state lawmakers, that cities like Rockford and Peoria are all under pressure.
“She absolutely is right and we’re not talking about a light coming through a tunnel a long ways away,” Peoria Mayor Jim Ardis said. “We’re talking about a freight train that’s just around the block. This isn’t unique to Chicago and Peoria. Literally every municipality in the state is under the same type of pressure.”
“I want to be careful about this obviously, because it raises lots of concerns amongs lots of quarters, not least of which is in organized labor. I think we have to put as many options as we possible can on the table. We know that the circumstances we find ourselves in with the COLA compounded annually is unsustainable, but I also really feel strongly that we cannot undercut the working men and women that are relying on their pensions, and that puts us in a very precarious position, limits the options, I am aware of that.”
Later in the interview (about 20:00), she is asked about her statement that the COLA is “unsustainable” and she backtracks:
“What I said is 3% compounded annually is a tough climb. It means that we have to consistently feed that beast.”
And upon being question on whether this position is fair to the taxpayers who will have to shoulder these burdens, she replies:
“Pensioners are taxpayers. The thing that gets lost in these conversations is that in the city of Chicago people who have public pensions make up the middle class of our neighborhoods. They are our teachers, our workers, and if they leave, if they are treated unfairly, it can have a potentially catastrophic effect on what happens in our neighborhoods.”
And, keep in mind, the 3 percent compounded increase doesn’t apply to police and firefighter pensions in her city, which make up over half the problem.
Either way, for a skilled lawyer, the mayor isn’t very precise in her word usage.
* As we’ve discussed before, Rep. Jaime Andrade has been trying to eliminate the horde of pigeons at the Irving Park Blue Line stop for over a year. This time the pigeons fought back. From CBS 2…
Talk about dumb luck during a Morning Insiders interview – near a very busy Chicago Transit Authority stop nicknamed the “pigeon poop station.”
While we were shooting a follow-up story about the problems at the station, the unthinkable happened. CBS 2’s Lauren Victory was talking with a lawmaker who was fighting to fix the problem, and he fell victim to it right when the cameras were rolling.
That’s right, a pigeon relieved itself on state Rep. Jaime Andrade (D-Chicago) right on cue as he spoke.
Andrade had just been badmouthing the pigeons.
“I’ll just have to go clean up,” he said. “That’s what happens to my constituents. They get s**t on all time.”
A bipartisan coalition of advocacy groups and lawmakers unveiled a bill Friday that would phase out emissions of a cancer-causing gas in densely populated areas and near schools or day care centers by 2022.
The measure, House Bill 3888, was announced at a Chicago news conference and is the latest step in a highly publicized series of legislative and advocacy efforts to regulate or ban the use of ethylene oxide in Illinois. Ethylene oxide is a gas used in sterilization and manufacturing processes that has been linked to higher cancer rates in communities surrounding the companies that use it.
Sponsored by state Rep. Rita Mayfield, D-Waukegan, the bill proposes that by 2021, no sterilization company can use ethylene oxide within 5 miles of a region with a population density of at least 10 residents per square mile, or within the same distance from a school or day care.
Needless to say, if a facility has to be more than 5 miles from a region with a population density of at least 10 people per square mile, the location options are going to be pretty darned limited in Illinois.
Dawn Rex lives a mile from Medline Industries and near Vantage Chemicals, two plants that utilize EtO, in Waukegan. She believes the ethylene oxide emissions from their plants are what caused her 3-year-old son Samuel to get sick with leukemia. […]
“I think these facilities need to be shut down immediately, shut down as they shut down Sterigenics,” she said. […]
State Rep. Rita Mayfield of Waukegan says she thinks legislators can get the bill passed next month in October’s veto session.
“I don’t see how any legislator or any senator can go up on the House or the Senate floor and say, ‘We’re OK with poisoning children; We’re OK with poisoning communities.’ I just don’t see that happening,” she said.
The EPA is no longer planning to propose toxic air pollution limits for carcinogenic ethylene oxide releases from medical sterilizer facilities this summer, as promised earlier.
Instead, the Environmental Protection Agency quietly announced Sept. 13 it would take a series of steps that will delay any action until later, including the release of an advanced notice of proposed rulemaking next month. This notice, on which the agency will take public comment, will “outline the potential approaches that EPA could take in its upcoming rule, along with the technologies available for controlling ethylene oxide emissions.”
The agency said it plans to issue the actual proposed rule “in the coming months,” according to a separate statement.
The FDA warned last week about the potential for more medical device shortages, this time due to the temporary shutdown of a Sterigenics ethylene oxide (EO) plant outside Atlanta, Ga. […]
The Illinois EPA shut down the Willowbrook plant in February, citing excess EO emissions. Last week, a DuPage County judge approved an agreement that the state attorney general and Sterigenics reached in July that would allow Sterigenics to reopen the Willowbrook plant if it complies with a stringent new state law on EO emissions.
The Willowbrook plant sterilized 594 types of devices, including sutures, clamps, knives, stents and needles. Its closure prompted the FDA to warn of possible device shortages and sent medtech companies large and small scrambling to find other sterilization facilities. Some larger companies were able to take the task in-house or farm it out to other contract sterilization plants. Others were not so lucky.
In April, officials from Cardinal Health (NYSE:CAH), and Guerbet (EPA:GBT) advised customers that certain devices were already in short supply or may experience shortages. Teleflex Medical OEM, which had seven million devices sterilized per year at the Willowbrook plant, warned of shortages as well.
Ric Ocasek was one of the all-time great American songwriters: the spirit of Buddy Holly in the body and mind of Mr. Spock, a new wave eccentric who always wanted to brush your rock & roll hair. That’s why the world is in mourning at the news of his death yesterday, at the age of 75. With the Cars, the Boston legend scored hit after hit, yet he also wrote vulnerable ballads about teen angst with his own distinctive blend of compassion and humor, plus his authentic geek-gulp of a voice. Who else could sing the line “alienation is the craze” and still sound cool? Nobody.
* I will never forget the night that I arrived at a bonfire party just outside the Landstuhl military base where my family lived. This song was playing on somebody’s boom box…
I had heard the song before, but I hadn’t really “heard” it. You know what I mean? The song just seemed perfect that night in that setting with those people (my high school friends). There were so many great tracks on that album…
“It’s funny, but when I wasn’t a so-called star, I still used to get recognized a lot, although for other reasons. I’ve felt rather like an outcast for most of my life, and I became comfortable with it at a young age. But it’s not easy sometimes telling yourself that there’s hope for your future, there’s a reason to go on.” Ocasek sits quietly for several seconds, staring down at his long, bony hands. “I used to think about how it would be turned around someday.”
New research shows crime rates dropped substantially in areas with marijuana dispensaries, running counter to fears that pot shops drum up crime.
The study, published this month in the journal of Regional Science and Urban Economics, analyzed crime data from Denver between January 2013 and December 2016. Colorado, which legalized medical marijuana nearly two decades ago, kicked off sales of recreational pot in 2014.
”The results imply that an additional dispensary in a neighborhood leads to a reduction of 17 crimes per month per 10,000 residents, which corresponds to roughly a 19 percent decline relative to the average crime rate over the sample period,” the study states.
While those findings are highly localized, Illinois State University criminology professor Ralph Weisheit said the results could be “magnified in Illinois.” That’s because the state’s 610-page pot law prioritizes criminal justice and social equity and encourages the hiring of people from “economically-impoverished neighborhoods,” Weisheit said.
* New state-created industries should have new rules, including these…
When Illinois’ new law legalizing recreational marijuana takes effect Jan. 1, growers will face some of the strongest energy efficiency and reporting requirements in the country.
Marijuana can be an energy intensive crop. The new electricity load to power lighting, heating and ventilation for indoor grow facilities has strained the grid and even caused blackouts in other places after it was legalized.
The Illinois law seeks to avoid those problems by mandating efficiency standards and capping the amount of power used per square foot. Clean energy advocates said they were hopeful the law would lead other states to follow suit, though more work is needed between utilities and growers to manage power demand. […]
In Denver, public health officials in 2018 reported almost 4% of the city’s total electricity use was from cannabis, up from 1.5% in 2012. In the six months after recreational marijuana became legal in Oregon in 2015, Portland-based Pacific Power reported seven blackouts in its service territory from indoor growing operations.
As U.S health officials scramble to identify the root cause of hundreds of severe lung illnesses tied to vaping, one possible culprit identified so far is a line of illicit marijuana vape products sold under the brand names “Dank Vapes” and “Chronic Carts.”
A study published last week in the New England Journal of Medicine found that more than half of patients with the lung illness – 24 of 41 – who were extensively interviewed in Wisconsin and Illinois reported having used the “Dank Vapes” brand. […]
The “Dank Vapes” brand is an illicit product that uses diluted THC oil, Downs said.
Drug dealers, looking to make as much money as possible, cut THC oil with Vitamin E acetate to dilute it but make it still appear pure to consumers, Downs said. “It can cut THC oil while keeping it thick.”
[Wisconsin state Rep. Shelia Stubbs] grew up in Beloit and said she saw the impact of state policy on the border community. People would flitter between states depending on what was available in one state and not the other. She predicted the same will happen with cannabis, with Wisconsin money, tax revenue, and business flowing into Illinois.
“You’re going to see a boon in traffic, you’re going to see communities grow even faster, the economy is going to go there. If you ever go to South Beloit and Beloit … there’s more crime than there is employment. And so I know the state of Illinois, they need the economy. Do you think the state of Wisconsin doesn’t?”
Phil Armer said he sees the benefits of decriminalization as keeping businesses flowing between the two states, and one day that it might not even be an issue.
Armer said, “Illinois is reaping great financial benefits from the medical cannabis and soon to be recreational and I want to be part of the movement to get my city and state to start reaping those same financial benefits.”
Decriminalize Davenport said they working to have their idea considered by the beginning of the year.
* Planning for pot: Rock Falls working out where marijuana shops can be located
* ‘Budtenders’ wanting to sell adult-use cannabis in Illinois must get training by Nov. 30: “There’s going to be so many new consumers entering this industry, people that haven’t used cannabis before, people that haven’t used it in 20 years, and the first point of contact is going to be that budtender,” Cresco Labs Spokesman Jason Erkes said. “It’s important for them to know the rules and regulations and all those things but also really educate themselves on the different products and the industry as a whole to make sure that first consumer touchpoint experience is a positive one.”
In June, the U.S. Supreme Court disappointed Americans who yearn for an end to partisan gerrymandering — the drawing of legislative and congressional district lines to favor the party in power. The court admitted that these maps “are incompatible with democratic principles.” But it said it had no right to interfere.
The decision seemed to close off judicial remedies for a problem that politicians are not likely to solve — because they don’t see it as a problem. But a state court in North Carolina has given new hope that elections can be made to enhance the interests of voters rather than the self-serving priorities of the pols.
This decision has some relevance to Illinois, where Democrats in Springfield have gone to great lengths to keep themselves in power. In 2018, Democrats got 61% of the votes in U.S. House races but 72% of the seats. Often, the loaded dice mean there is no game at all. Of 39 state senators up for election, 20 had no opponent.
North Carolina had a similar map, but designed to bolster Republicans. They hold 10 of 13 congressional seats thanks to a map that a GOP lawmaker confessed was the best he could do — “because I don’t believe it’s possible to draw a map with 11 Republicans and two Democrats.”
North Carolina Republicans hold 77 percent of the congressional seats despite winning only about half the congressional votes cast statewide.
In fact, [North Carolina Democrats] didn’t stand a chance of picking up a fourth seat unless they could net 52.5 percent of the statewide vote, something they achieved only once since 2000, in the 2008 election.
And four seats would still leave the NC Dems in a 9-4 deficit.
* The Illinois Republicans lost two congressional seats last year that few thought they could possibly lose when the map was drawn in 2011. President Obama lost the 6th Congressional District by 8 points in 2012 and he lost the 14th by 10. Democratic congressional candidates lost the 6th and 14th by about 18 points in 2012 and then won them by 5 and 8 points, respectively, last year. That’s a huge turnaround and had way more to do with President Trump’s lack of suburban appeal (to say the least) and the poor campaigns the GOP incumbents ran than the way the maps were drawn.
Those two races last year were also relatively close. The equivalent to flipping about a half percentage point of the statewide congressional vote would’ve done the trick for the GOPs. And then the Democrats would’ve won 60.5 percent of the statewide vote for 61 percent of the seats.
* Look, there’s no doubt that the Illinois maps are gerrymandered. I wouldn’t argue otherwise and I am all for independent, non-partisan redistricting. But saying Illinois’ district maps are “similar” to North Carolina’s is just whataboutism.
Disgraced former Chicago Ald. Daniel Solis collects a nearly $95,000 annual city taxpayer-funded pension, despite his role as a central figure in an ongoing public corruption scandal at City Hall, records show. […]
Retired city workers can lose their pensions if they’re convicted of a felony crime connected to their municipal service. Solis’ retirement took effect on May 21, the day after he left office, records show.
Barring a criminal conviction, the former alderman could keep his taxpayer-funded pension for life. […]
The idea of Solis keeping his pension is “a painful pill for taxpayers to swallow,” said Alisa Kaplan, policy director of the Reform for Illinois watchdog group.
He hasn’t yet been charged with anything, let alone convicted, and he has been actively working with federal investigators. So, how, exactly, is the General Assembly supposed to write a viable bill that stops someone like Solis from receiving his constitutionally protected pension benefits? “No pensions for federal stool pigeons,” perhaps? Come to think of it, that might actually pass, so let’s not give them any ideas.
* WGLT has a long and very good story about the state’s new “red flag” law. You should read the whole thing, but here’s an excerpt…
Normal Police successfully asked a judge to take away a 74-year-old man’s guns in March after officers became concerned his hallucinations could pose a public safety risk, as WGLT first reported. The man “admitted that there (was) a possibility that the medication he (was) taking (for a hip injury) is causing him to hallucinate,” officers wrote in their request for the firearm restraining order. […]
“It turned out as well as you could hope for,” Normal Police Chief Rick Bleichner said. “It worked how it was intended to work.” […]
“He’s OK with it,” said [the man’s attorney Helen Ogar]. She said the episode “brought (the 74-year-old’s situation) to everyone’s attention” in his family.
“He’s lovely,” Ogar said. “He was just having some health issues. He went on some medications that maybe made him not as sound as he could be. We’re dealing with those as an underlying issue. And we treated it more like a social work issue than a quasi-criminal case.”
Mark Jones with [the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence] praised examples like that.
“It’s a public health tool. It’s not a criminal tool,” Jones said.
* Mark Brown interviewed House Majority Leader Greg Harris about his struggles with addiction and overcoming AIDS. It’s definitely a must-read column…
“And what started out as something fun and social got worse and darker as the years went by to the point that I wasn’t even able to stay permanently housed, went through a bunch of different treatment programs, psych hospitalizations, suicide attempts, in and out of recovery for years and years and years.”
Even now after 19 years being clean and sober, Harris, 63, seems as much aware of his fragility as his strength.
“I consider it something that every day is like a new start,” he said. “I’m still very involved every single week in a program of recovery.”
The governor’s top budget people sent a memo last week to agency directors giving them a heads up about what will be required in their annual budget request submissions. They are not easy-peasy asks.
This fiscal year’s budget was originally supposed to be austere, but then a $1.5 billion flood of unexpected revenue poured in during April and eliminated the need for drastic cuts. Even so, as the recent memo from Deputy Gov. Dan Hynes and Budget Director Alexis Sturm pointed out, billions of dollars in unpaid bills left over from Bruce Rauner’s administration still need to be addressed. Left unsaid was any mention of a possible national recession in the coming year - which some economists have been warning about for months and which could cause serious problems for a state budget that is so precariously “balanced.”
Anyway, the memo includes three directives. The first is that the agencies give the budget office an “actionable scenario” which includes a 6.5 percent cut in their operations during the upcoming fiscal year “across all appropriated funds.”
Gov. J.B. Pritzker ordered much the same thing earlier this year before the April revenue surprise. A bipartisan group of legislators was also working on cuts in the House, but the April cash bump made those cuts unpalatable to enough Democrats that the effort was abandoned.
Not all agencies will be able to come up with the full amount of cuts. The cash-strapped Department of Children and Family Services springs immediately to mind. Cutting that budget could endanger vulnerable kids at a time when Gov. Pritzker has been trying to hire new staff to prevent more tragedies.
But even if some or most of the cuts are never implemented, the exercise at least gets agency directors thinking about ways to save money. Despite that April revenue surprise, costs for next fiscal year will definitely go up and, barring another surprise gift from the revenue gods, will very likely outstrip the available cash to pay for them. It’s simply better management to have cost-cutting plans at the ready rather than leave it up to the General Assembly to find ways to reduce spending during a potential crisis.
Next fiscal year starts on July 1st. Pritzker is hoping voters will approve a constitutional amendment four months later in November that would allow for a graduated tax system. If that happens, tax hikes on upper-income earners would automatically take effect and generate over $3 billion a year in revenues. He cannot legally build that money into his proposed budget, but if voters reject the change, you can bet there will be serious budgetary stress.
The second directive in the memo is to reduce statutorily created boards and commissions under their purviews to allow the governor to reduce them overall by 10% in the upcoming budget. Some commissions haven’t met in years. But this is more about show business than actual savings. If a commission hasn’t met, it’s unlikely that shutting it down would save much money. Former Gov. Rauner, by the way, closed several boards and commissions.
And the third directive is to identify “at least two significant efficiency and savings ideas for consideration in the fiscal year 2021 budget.” Those could include things like eliminating or consolidating duplicative programs, reducing funding for underutilized or inefficient services and improvements in service delivery to streamline costs.
Pritzker was criticized last February for not proposing any significant cuts during his budget address. So, he’s apparently looking for some splashy savings that he can highlight next year. And lots of folks will want to see evidence that the governor is at least trying to save money before agreeing to give the government even more to spend.
And, as noted above, the state absolutely needs to finish paying down its bill backlog, particularly if the economy turns sour and revenues dry up. As of last Friday, the backlog stood at $6.61 billion. This needs to be fixed even if the economy continues to hum along. The state’s social service provider and private vendor systems were horribly damaged during the previous administration, and they are nowhere near back to normal.
Forcing providers and vendors to wait endless months to be paid hurts their operations and undermines the state’s ability to retain them and recruit new groups and companies. Paying down the backlog to get the state back to a 4-week payment cycle would also help the state’s much-maligned credit rating. But cutting their funding going forward won’t help providers and vendors, either. This process has to be a careful balancing act to work.
