THE ILLINOIZE: Monday Free for All
September 13, 2021
Good morning and welcome to another September session day in Springfield.
The Senate is back to vote on the new energy bill passed by the House Thursday. I don’t expect much drama in the Senate today. But, of course, this is Illinois and you never know what to expect.
If you missed our 9/11 stories in Friday’s subscriber-only newsletter, we went ahead and posted them for you on the website. We spoke to longtime Chicago TV anchor and reporter Carol Marin, who was in New York as a 60 Minutes correspondent that morning. She almost lost her life when the second tower came crashing down.
We also talked to a number of elected officials and journalists to get their memories of that day 20 years ago, including former Congressman John Shimkus, who was in the Pentagon the morning of the attacks.
I’m not going to use 9/11 for profit, so all I’ll say is if you’re interested, you can subscribe by clicking the button below.
Let’s get the week started.
YOUR THURSDAY FREE FOR ALL
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Illinois Senate to return Monday to take up energy package with nuclear plant bailout. Here’s what else is in it. (Chicago Tribune)
The Illinois Senate is set to return to Springfield to vote on an energy policy overhaul Monday — the day scandal-plagued Commonwealth Edison’s parent company has said it will begin shutting down its Byron nuclear power plant if lawmakers don’t approve a bailout.
The House voted 83-33 on Thursday to approve a plan that would put power customers on the hook for nearly $700 million in subsidies to Byron and two of the company’s other nuclear plants over five years.
The overall price tag for customers, which includes not just the nuclear plant bailout but also increased subsidies for renewable energy development and other costs, has been a moving target.
As the measure was moving through the House, its sponsor, Democratic state Rep. Marcus Evans of Chicago, gave estimates ranging from $3 to $4.50 per month for how much the measure would add to the average residential customers’ power bill.
The governor’s office has said the nuclear subsidies alone will cost the average customer about 80 cents per month.
Previously, AARP Illinois estimated a similar proposal under consideration in the Senate would cost residential customers as much as $15 more per month, though supporters have disputed that.
It’s a really good rundown, so go read the whole thing. Theoretically, the vote will be relatively drama-free in the Senate today, but we’ll surely keep you in the loop.
Delta’s descent? Weekly COVID-19 cases dip for first time since start of summer (Chicago Sun-Times)
As Illinois’ Delta variant resurgence of COVID-19 keeps pushing some hospitals to the limit, public health officials on Friday reported the state’s first week-to-week decline in cases this summer, suggesting the latest coronavirus wave could be cresting.
A total of 26,062 Illinoisans tested positive over the last week, dipping 14% from the 30,319 residents diagnosed the previous week. That came along with a 5% decrease in the number of tests performed during a seven-day stretch including the Labor Day holiday weekend.
The average case positivity rate, which experts use to gauge how rapidly the virus is spreading, fell from 5% to 4.5%, as low as it’s been since the first week of August.
Regional rates vary, though. While Chicago is back below 4%, the southern Illinois region — which has the state’s lowest vaccination rates — is still soaring over 10%.
Illinois hospitals are indeed still filling but at a slowing pace. The 2,346 beds occupied by coronavirus patients Thursday night were the most since Feb. 2, marking a 3% increase since last week. Only five intensive care unit beds were available for all of southern Illinois Friday, but that’s actually a slight improvement from the single ICU bed open last week.
Deaths remain on an upward trend, too. The virus claimed 197 lives last week, an 11% jump from the previous week. More than 7,800 Illinois lives have been lost to COVID-19 so far this year. About 96% of those victims were unvaccinated.
About 22% of eligible Illinois residents have yet to get a shot. Almost 61% of residents 12 or older are fully vaccinated.
Related: Surge of pregnant women with severe COVID seen in Peoria (Peoria Journal Star)
Why ivermectin is a lose-lose for hospitals (Crain’s Chicago Business)
No, Quad-Citians aren't overdosing on ivermectin (Quad City Times/Dispatch Argus)
Identical twins: One was vaccinated for COVID, the other wasn't; how'd they fare? (Peoria Journal Star)
United Airlines to put some unvaccinated staffers on forced leave (Crain’s Chicago Business)
Ethics bill clears House on second try, will head back to governor (Capitol News Illinois)
The Illinois House on Thursday voted to accept changes to an ethics bill that Gov. JB Pritzker had requested, paving the way for it to become law once the governor signs it.
Thursday’s vote came a little more than a week after an earlier attempt fell short in the House. That happened during a late-night session Tuesday, Aug. 31, after many Democrats had left the Capitol following a one-day special session that was called mainly to reconsider a legislative redistricting plan.
But Rep. Kelly Burke, D-Evergreen Park, renewed her motion Thursday at the start of another one-day session that was called mainly to consider a comprehensive energy package. This time, with nearly all House members present, the measure passed, 74-41, largely along party lines. Reps. Amy Elik, R-Alton, and Jeff Keicher, R-Sycamore, were the only Republicans to vote yes.
Senate Bill 539 originally cleared both chambers during the spring session by overwhelming margins, 56-0 in the Senate and 113-5 in the House, even though Republicans at the time complained on the floor that it had been watered down. But it contained enough reforms, such as increased financial disclosure requirements and limits on the ability of elected officials to lobby other units of government, so that many lawmakers said they believed it was the best they could get at the time.
But a few weeks after it passed, on July 14, the General Assembly’s top ethics watchdog, Legislative Inspector General Carol Pope, submitted her intent to resign by Dec. 15, saying the bill would actually weaken her office by limiting the types of investigations she could conduct.
Among other things, the bill gives the LIG independent authority to launch investigations, but only upon the filing of a formal complaint. Currently, investigations must first be authorized by a bipartisan group of lawmakers known as the Legislative Ethics Commission.
But it also limits the office’s authority to only investigate matters related to a person’s government service or employment, not outside activity. As a result, Pope said in her letter, the LIG would not be allowed to investigate “conduct unbecoming a legislator that results from such things as posting revenge porn on social media, failure to pay income taxes on non-legislative income, and other conduct that I and the public think the LIG should be able to investigate.”
Related: Opinion: What can rebuild Illinoisans’ faith in Springfield? Ethics reform. What won’t? Faux reform. (Chicago Tribune)
Flummoxed by our property tax system? You're not alone. (Crain’s Chicago Business)
A few weeks ago, [Cook] County Treasurer Maria Pappas released the latest in a series of very solid reports on who pays what under our tax system. In other words, who really gets dinged. The news, as reported by outlets including Crain’s and the Chicago Tribune, was that the usual list of relatively impoverished towns in the south and west suburbs were once again getting whacked, with the total tax bill—or extension—up 10%, 20%, even 30% in towns where people can’t afford to pay more even in non-COVID times.
Why are officials asking for more taxes in such areas? I decided to try to find out, looking at six towns in particular: Bellwood, Cicero, Dixmoor, Ford Heights, Robbins and University Park. So I asked the Pappas folks if they could break down the tax bill by taxing authority. In other words, of the additional $6.756 million billed collectively to property owners in Bellwood, how much went to the schools, the village and so on? If I knew that, I could go ask those government units why.
Pappas’ office replied that it doesn’t have all that data, and referred me to the official who actually prepares the extensions, County Clerk Karen Yarbrough. Yarbrough’s office doesn’t collect the data that way, either, but provided me a rough workaround. The problem was that Yarbrough’s annual tax-hike figures for the six towns came in a lot less than Pappas’ did.
Why the difference? After a good two weeks going back and forth, most of the answer turns out to be tax-increment financing, or TIF, that oughta-be-four-letter word that many Chicagoans have come to despise.
Related: Donald Trump gets a $300,000 tax break on Trump Tower after Fritz Kaegi slashes assessment (Chicago Sun-Times)
Southern Illinois clinics ‘brace for impact’ as more states attempt to ban early abortions (The Southern Illinoisan)
Clinics in the Southern Illinois region are preparing to take on more clients as restrictive abortion legislation sweeps the nation in an attempt to challenge the precedent set nearly 50 years ago in Roe v. Wade.
Already pregnant individuals from Southern Illinois and more restrictive states like Missouri, Indiana, Kentucky and Arkansas, have to travel hours from their homes to make it to the nearest care provider to receive an abortion.
Now with more states implementing stricter laws, officials at Hope Clinic in Southern Illinois and Planned Parenthood for the St. Louis Region say they fear their client list will expand as more struggle to access care closer to them.
"We are ready to help patients from Texas access the care they need and deserve. When politicians in other states have failed people in need of abortion, we have answered the call. RHS will do it again because abortion is health care and health care is a human right,” said Yamelsie Rodríguez, president and CEO of reproductive health services of Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region. “However, despite our best efforts, the injustice here is that for far too many patients, traveling out of state will push access out of reach altogether. This is the reality we’ve long been warning about.”
Related: Providers preparing for influx of patients in southwest IL as Texas abortion ban begins (Belleville News-Democrat)
I’m never going to be able to understand the argument that abortion isn’t ending a life, especially after there’s a heartbeat by 5 or 6 weeks. That said, it’s a lot more complicated than people who try to boil it down to their preferred talking points. As long as the courts have allowed it to remain legal, we should be working on reducing the number of needless abortions, not demonizing those who disagree with us.
9/11 STORY ROUNDUP
Legendary Reporter Carol Marin Survived 9/11 Thanks to a Firefighter She'll Never Know (The Illinoize)
Illinoisans Remember September 11, 2001 (The Illinoize)
Sycamore veteran remembers remembers disaster cleanup after 9/11 (Shaw Local)
Around Chicago, Muslims, Arab Americans say they still face post-9/11 discrimination (Chicago Sun-Times)
Jeffrey Mladenik of Hinsdale: CEO, minister, husband, father was on plane hijacked on 9/11 (Daily Herald)
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