THE ILLINOIZE: Monday Free for All...Fixing youth mental health care...Threats against Rep. Katie Stuart over bathroom bill...The brewing fight over carbon capture
February 27, 2023
Good morning, Illinois.
It’s consolidated primary week for municipal elections, though, the only one of note will be the race for Chicago mayor and a few aldermanic races. Most of the other municipal and school board races around the state are on April 4.
The Senate is out this week. The House is in on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. The Governor has nothing on his public schedule.
I’ll be filling in on WMAY in Springfield from 4-6pm today. Listen live on the radio if you’re in our fine capital city or you can listen to www.wmay.com. Do I know who I’m going to talk to yet? No idea. But we have all day to figure it out.
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Drop me a note anytime at patrick@theillinoize.com. Love to hear what’s on your mind and always open to your suggestions and thoughts.
Let’s get to it.
YOUR MONDAY FREE FOR ALL
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Illinois governor lays out a roadmap for a ‘transformed’ youth mental health care system (WBEZ)
Gov. JB Pritzker on Friday released a blueprint for transforming what the state acknowledges is a confusing patchwork system for families who need greater access to mental health care for their children at a moment of overwhelming need both in Illinois and across the country.
The current fragmented system, compounded by a workforce shortage, has fueled a lack of access for children with complex mental health needs. That’s led to “substantial wait times” in emergency rooms and hospital psychiatric units, the report found. In some cases, parents have given up custody to the state so their children could get into residential treatment facilities, where children stay to be stabilized.
The wide-ranging report lays out ways to repair the frayed connective tissue that permeates the health care system, from providers to government agencies. This, in turn, would ease the burden on families navigating a difficult and scary moment as their children seek help.
“I think that providers and system leaders are all in this for the same reason,” Dana Weiner, the main author of the report and a senior policy fellow at Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago, said in an interview with WBEZ. “They are trying to deliver services to help children and families. I think we can do that more efficiently and effectively, and this blueprint charts a course for how to get there.”
Pritzker launched the Children’s Behavioral Health Transformation Initiative a year ago amid the youth mental health crisis, and tapped Weiner to lead it. She and her team went on a listening tour of sorts around the state, meeting with hundreds of mental health providers, state agency leaders, families and children to understand barriers they face and ideas on how to improve. They analyzed state data and researched how other states and counties around the U.S. provide behavioral and mental health care. Weiner called the collaboration among six Illinois agencies that play a role in pediatric behavioral and mental health “unprecedented.”
The wide-ranging report includes a set of 12 strategies, with short to long-term goals. A central goal is to provide services earlier to try to prevent more serious problems down the road. Recommendations include creating an online portal for families to make it easier for them to find the care they need. Pritzker mentioned this in his proposed 2024 budget speech. Now, there is no single place where parents can look up community behavioral health providers, for example.
Related: Gov. J.B. Pritzker releases roadmap for Illinois agencies to better address youth mental health (Chalkbeat Chicago)
Illinois rep from metro-east threatened over gender-neutral bathroom bill, cancels event (Belleville News-Democrat)
State Rep. Katie Stuart, a Democrat from Edwardsville, said Friday she received “violent threats” that were spurred by a bill she sponsored to establish privacy and safety standards for bathrooms without a posted gender.
As a result of the threats, Stuart said in a news release that she has canceled a “constituent coffee” event scheduled Saturday in Collinsville. The event was called “Coffee with Katie.”
Stuart said she has contacted the Illinois State Police and other law enforcement about the threats, according to an email a spokesman sent to the News-Democrat.
The proposed bill, House Bill 1286, “does not require gender-neutral bathrooms,” the news release stated. It would only establish toilet and urinal safety and privacy standards should a developer decide to include gender-neutral bathrooms, it said.
Those standards would apply only to new construction projects.
“Extremist groups and some politicians have attempted to misrepresent the true purpose of the bill in an attempt to score cheap political points and divide people,” the release stated.
There is no issue that warrants threatening an elected official. If you don’t like a bill, organize and defeat it.
A battle simmers in Illinois over plans to pipe in and store millions of tons of planet-warming carbon dioxide underground (Chicago Tribune)
The fight over carbon dioxide — what to do with it and where to store it — is ramping up in Illinois.
The Prairie Research Institute at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign recently released a report showing that Illinois is well-positioned to become a leader in carbon capture, utilization and storage, in which planet-warming carbon dioxide is removed from industrial exhaust or the air and either used or injected into rock deep underground.
Carbon capture has been around for decades in the fossil fuel industry, which uses CO2 to extract hard-to-reach oil. But recently companies have begun proposing to build major carbon dioxide pipelines in Illinois in the name of decarbonization, or reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
The Navigator CO2 project would transport liquid carbon dioxide from ethanol and fertilizer plants in South Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska, Iowa and Illinois to underground storage sites in central Illinois.
Another project, proposed by Chicago-based Archer Daniels Midland Co. in partnership with a Denver company, would take carbon captured at ADM’s facilities in Clinton and Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and transport it to an existing storage site in Decatur.
The opportunity to compete for billions of dollars in federal funding is on the line as Illinois considers the future of carbon capture, according to the Prairie Research Institute report, as well as the chance to create jobs and boost local economies.
And at a time when the state and federal government and nations worldwide are trying to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions and stave off the worst effects of global warming — including catastrophic floods and droughts — carbon capture also holds out the promise of making the job easier.
Carbon capture and storage “could play an important role in achieving the state’s decarbonization goals,” according to the report, which was commissioned by the state legislature.
(Disclosure: The Navigator CO2 spokesperson is an old friend of mine from our days in working in ag lobbying. We have not spoken about this story or issue.)
Does anyone remember the FutureGen project? Sequestration has been a theory since before 2007. We’re still waiting for it to make sense.
POLITICAL POTPOURRI
DCFS blocking undocumented survivors of child abuse from applying for visas allowing them to stay in U.S. (Chicago Sun-Times)
Illinois earns 7th credit upgrade in less than two years (Capitol News Illinois)
School funding, literacy, migrant students: Education issues to watch in the Illinois legislative session (Chalkbeat Chicago)
GOP lawmakers call for hearings in wake of abuse at Choate (Capitol News Illinois)
GOP lawmakers make proposals for Choate while decrying Pritzker’s handling of troubled downstate mental health center (Chicago Tribune)
House Dems’ cannabis working group will engage industry, equity advocates (Capitol News Illinois)
Illinois Senators highlight economic growth efforts (Quad-City Times)
In Illinois, restaurant workers are taking aim at the ‘other NRA’ (WBEZ)
Why are so many people leaving Illinois? (Chicago Sun-Times)
Where did billionaire Gov. Pritzker send campaign cash before Election Day? (Daily Herald)
Chicago boosters for 2024 Democratic Convention using Georgia gun laws to try to edge out Atlanta (Chicago Tribune)
Charlie Kirk event in Crystal Lake sparks protest, shouting match (Shaw Media)
Editorial: Moeller legislation would promote fairer campaigns, better-informed voters (Daily Herald)
Opinion: Pritzker's proposed budget is financial catfishing (Champaign News-Gazette)
Opinion: Commend Pritzker for putting state on road to fiscal health (Champaign News-Gazette)
Opinion: Crime in Chicago hurts small businesses. And closures, in turn, hurt Chicago. (Chicago Tribune)
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