THE ILLINOIZE: Monday Free for All...The cost of sports gambling in Illinois...Ongoing horrific failures at Choate...Pritzker signs controversial name change legislation
February 13, 2023
Good morning, Illinois.
Happy 214th birthday yesterday to Mr. Lincoln.
I hope my eagle-eyed Bears fans noticed the first thing Chiefs star quarterback Patrick Mahomes did after winning the Super Bowl last night? He hugged Matt Nagy, the former Bears head coach who fell flat on his face as coach here. Great.
We enjoyed watching the game with family last night. Our sister-in-law is from Philadelphia, so she’s probably not in a great mood this morning.
By the way, there’s a bill in Congress to make the day after the Super Bowl a holiday. Lucky for Illinois state employees, they already get today off. The state observes both Lincoln’s Birthday and President’s Day.
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SOME TOP LINKS FROM LAST WEEK
YOUR MONDAY FREE FOR ALL
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Illinois grapples with rise in sports gambling problems as bets hit $1B a month (Chicago Tribune)
The safest bet for Sunday’s Super Bowl is that there will be millions of dollars spent gambling in Illinois. Wagers placed with the state’s sports gambling industry soared in 2022, with gamblers betting nearly $10 billion and casinos raking in $800 million in revenue from gamblers’ aggregate losses.
Bets on the big game will be fun entertainment for many, but the growing stakes go beyond money: Three years into legalization, sports gambling problems are also on the rise.
Problem-gambling therapists, researchers and long-term Gamblers Anonymous members told the Tribune they are seeing a jump in the number of people seeking treatment for sports gambling problems. The struggle seems to hit young men under 35 years old particularly hard and is robbing them not just of money, front-line workers say, but of connection, time and hope.
“If we don’t address it really quickly, we’re going to have some tragedies,” said Elizabeth Thielen, senior director of Lake County’s Nicasa Behavioral Health Services.
Illinoisans bet $1 billion on sports for the first time in October, then did it again in November and December, state data shows. The legalization of sports gambling generated over $142 million in tax revenue last year from lost bets and sportsbook licenses, much of it earmarked for the state’s infrastructure-focused Capital Projects Fund.
But it has also led to a surge in sports gambling’s accessibility and acceptability. The practice quickly has become a commonplace part of sports culture. Commercials flaunting “risk-free” bets now flood televised sports games and social media sites. Legal betting areas are set to open at the United Center and Wrigley Field. “Bet tenders” roam some Chicago bars, nudging people to make accounts and place wagers on the now-omnipresent smartphone betting apps.
“You can see it getting worse by the minute. On TV, sportscasters talking about point spreads. There’s advertisements everywhere. You’re not going to be able to go to a bar and watch a game without somebody in your group talking about gambling,” [gambling addict] Jimmy said. “It’s attacking everybody now.”
I may or may not have had the Chiefs and the over yesterday. Cha ching.
Related: Building a suburban dome worked in Phoenix area — but would it for Bears? (Chicago Sun-Times)
Armington farm family featured in Super Bowl ad (Bloomington Pantagraph)
‘Tired of being abused:’ Watchdog report shows Choate patients forced to handle own excrement (Capitol News Illinois)
Newly released reports from the Illinois Department of Human Services’ watchdog office reveal shocking instances of cruelty, abuse and poor care of patients who have mental illnesses and developmental disabilities at a state-run facility in rural southern Illinois.
The eight reports, obtained last month under the Illinois Freedom of Information Act, provide new evidence of an ongoing crisis at Choate Mental Health and Developmental Center, which has been the subject of numerous investigative articles by Lee Enterprises Midwest, Capitol News Illinois and ProPublica.
In one report from November, the IDHS inspector general wrote that two Choate employees who had broken a patient’s arm in October 2017 bragged about how staff got away with abusing patients by providing scant details on reports and blaming resulting injuries on accidental patient falls. The staffers also boasted about intimidating and bullying other employees to keep them from reporting abuse and bragged that they retaliated against those who spoke up.
In another report, the inspector pointed to years of concerns about the care provided to patients who have pica, a disorder in which people feel compelled to swallow inedible objects such as coins and zippers.
Several nurses told an investigator that it was common practice to force patients with pica to dig through their own excrement with gloved hands or a spatula to determine whether objects they swallowed had passed, the inspector general found. The investigation was triggered by a complaint to the agency’s abuse hotline made last spring by a facility monitor who observed a patient walk out of the bathroom with a bag of feces. Patients questioned by investigators said they felt disgusted by the practice and viewed it as punitive.
A clinical consultation conducted on behalf of the inspector general found that the practice violated nursing standards and amounted to incompetence on the part of the Choate nursing department. The facility was cited for neglect, though the inspector general did not cite individual nurses for misconduct because the investigation found it was a “widely accepted procedure.” This week, an IDHS spokesperson told reporters that the practice was “limited to the reported incident and was stopped immediately upon discovery.”
In yet another report, the inspector general cited two nurses for neglecting a terminally ill patient in the days before he died in July 2021. One of the nurses failed to properly manage his pain, and the other failed to notify a physician that the patient had lost 21 pounds in one week. These shortcomings caused him to experience pain, emotional distress and further deterioration of his physical health, according to the inspector general’s clinical review. Proper care “could have provided him a higher quality of life and more time with his family,” the report said.
This entire situation is horrifying. If the state can’t get this cleaned up, it needs to be sold or closed, ASAP.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker OKs measure relaxing restrictions on felons changing their names (Chicago Tribune)
Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Friday signed into a law a measure that loosens restrictions for people with past felony convictions who want to legally change their names.
The measure passed last month in the Illinois Senate after being approved with bipartisan support in the House in 2021.
While opponents have argued the measure would allow felons to escape scrutiny and potentially commit more crimes, supporters maintained the legislation would protect transgender individuals who face discrimination, as well as victims of human trafficking who face danger from their abusers.
Under the new law, which takes effect Jan. 1, there is no longer a lifetime ban on name changes for people who have been convicted of identity theft, as well as for those on state registries for convictions on offenses that include murder, arson and various sex crimes. For all other felonies, the law lifts a 10-year waiting period from the completion of a sentence for people to change their names.
Judges will have the final word over approving name changes for people convicted of felonies that had been subject to the lifetime ban, and the measure would allow county prosecutors to object to those name-change petitions. In those cases, the petitioners would have to convince judges that they want to change their name because they’re transgender, were victims of human trafficking, for religious reasons or because they got married.
POLITICAL POTPOURRI
State regulators approve Medinah Temple landlord of proposed temporary Chicago casino (Chicago Sun-Times)
Why it's Illinois law to recycle old electronics, and where you can drop them off (Daily Herald)
Illinois craft brewers want to send beer straight to your house (Crain’s Chicago Business)
Advocacy groups push for expansive paid family, medical leave in Illinois (Capitol News Illinois)
Sorensen: 'Federal government works for the people' (Quad-City Times)
Former Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn endorses Jesus ‘Chuy’ Garcia for mayor (Chicago Sun-Times)
Ghost buses, CTA budget woes, shared streets: Transportation challenges ahead for Chicago’s next mayor (Chicago Tribune)
Editorial: Conflicting goals complicate governor's budget planning (Champaign News-Gazette)
Opinion: Democratic Party’s 2024 convention: The choices are down to Chicago, Atlanta (Chicago Sun-Times)
Opinion: Illinoisans rejected a progressive tax once. They'd do it again. (Crain’s Chicago Business)
Opinion: Pritzker agrees counties can’t set own limits on wind, solar projects (Shaw Media)
Opinion: Is Civic Committee's pension tax plan non-starter in Springfield? (Champaign News-Gazette) [I didn’t realize he quoted me until after I had pulled the link, so I’m going with it anyway.]
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