THE ILLINOIZE: Thursday Free for All...Highland Park...Assault Rifles...Governor's Day...ComEd...Criminal Justice Reform
August 18, 2022
Good morning, Illinois.
Happy Republican Day at the Illinois State Fair. The annual joint State Central Committee/County Chair’s breakfast is this morning at the Wyndham City Center in downtown Springfield followed by the traditional noon rally at the Director’s Lawn at the State Fairgrounds. My guess is you’ll hear a lot of jabs directed at JB Pritzker. Just a hunch.
If you missed our Livestream/Podcast with Rep. Mark Batinick and Ted McClelland yesterday, you can watch it here.
It’s Republican Day at the State Fair. The GOP has brunch at the Wyndham City Centre and will rally at noon in the Director’s Lawn. The Governor will be in Lincoln at 10:30 opening a new solar farm.
Just a programming note, I’m out next week on a business trip out of state, so we won’t be doing any newsletters next week. Let me know what I’m missing at patrick@theillinoize.com.
Let’s get to it.
YOUR THURSDAY FREE FOR ALL
(note: we’re not responsible for paywalls and restrictions from other news outlets)
GOP lawmakers ask Illinois State Police for more details on how it handled report on alleged Highland Park shooter (Chicago Tribune)
Republican state lawmakers are pushing Illinois State Police for a more detailed account of how the agency handled a report from local police about the man who would allegedly go on to commit a deadly mass shooting at the Highland Park Fourth of July parade.
In the days after the shooting, state police issued two news releases providing information on how the agency handled a clear and present danger report from Highland Park police nearly three years before Robert Crimo III allegedly opened fire on the parade, killing seven people and wounding dozens more.
Police went to Crimo’s home in September 2019 and confiscated several knives after receiving a report that he had threatened to “kill everyone” in his household. Officers didn’t make an arrest, but they did send a clear and present danger report to state police, a step law enforcement agencies can take if they believe someone would pose an imminent threat if granted access to firearms.
What’s clear is that at the time, Crimo did not have a state firearm owner’s identification card or a pending application, so the state police did not retain the Highland Park report. When he successfully applied for a FOID card with the help of his father about three months later, there was nothing on file to raise a red flag.
Sen. John Curran (R-Downers Grove) said after the hearing that state police should have erred on the side of public safety in determining whether Crimo presented a clear and present danger and let him “come in and prove by preponderance (of the evidence) that he was fit for a FOID card” during the appeals process laid out in state law.
Related: Highland Park City Council calls for federal, state assault weapons ban as Democrats in Springfield ponder next move (Chicago Sun-Times)
Naperville's ban of sale of certain rifles: Opponents warn of lawsuits, elections (Daily Herald)
Gov. J.B. Pritzker calls on the ‘coalition of the sane’ to defeat ‘the lunatic fringe’ as Democrats rally at the Illinois State Fair (Chicago Tribune)
Illinois Democrats looked to both the past and the future as rallying points on their day at the Illinois State Fair Wednesday, castigating former Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner’s one-term stewardship of the state and warning that the party’s candidate for governor in November, Darren Bailey, would be even worse.
In highly-charged, partisan language, Democratic leaders accused Republicans of sowing division by promulgating views many consider extreme.
“In America, in the face of what the Supreme Court and the radical right wing are trying to do to the fundamental rights of every American, we, the coalition of the sane, owe something better to our children and our grandchildren. We need to win and we need to keep our promises to the people who elected us,” Gov. J.B. Pritzker said at the annual Democratic county chair association brunch.
Pritzker defeated Rauner in 2018 and is facing a reelection challenge from Bailey, a downstate farmer and state senator endorsed by former President Donald Trump. He is now solidly in charge of a state party that is trying to move past internal divisions that were revealed in the election last month of his candidate, state Rep. Elizabeth Hernandez of Cicero to be the new state party chair.
Democrats head into the Nov. 8 general election holding all statewide offices, supermajorities in the legislature, both U.S. Senate seats, a majority of congressional seats and control of the Illinois Supreme Court.
Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton called Bailey a “Trump-endorsed MAGA extremist” who would “do everything in his power to try to turn back the clock on our progress.”
Related: Democrats rally, target GOP during Wednesday events (State Journal-Register)
Pritzker’s state fair strategy: Blast GOP ‘lunatic fringe’ and bzzzzzzzury Dem squabbles: ‘I think we’re all working very well together’ (Chicago Sun-Times)
Illinois State Fair political days through the lens of veteran political reporters (Bloomington Pantagraph)
Governor's Sale of Champions at the Illinois State Fair. (State Journal-Register)
ComEd customers will get their bribery scandal refunds (Crain’s Chicago Business)
The average household ratepayer in northern Illinois will get a $4.80 credit on their electric bill next April in recompense for Commonwealth Edison’s nine-year-long bribery scheme.
The Illinois Commerce Commission unanimously approved ComEd’s $31 million offer to settle the issue of how much ratepayers should be refunded for the scheme, aimed at currying favor with then-House Speaker Michael Madigan. ComEd is adding another $7 million under Federal Energy Regulatory Commission jurisdiction, so the total refund is $38 million.
Multiple laws Madigan shepherded through the Legislature from 2011 to 2016 resulted in hundreds of millions of additional revenue to ComEd. They included the formula-rate authority that allowed ComEd to increase delivery rates with minimal oversight by the ICC. That authority expires after this year.
The commission rejected arguments from Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul and the Citizens Utility Board that the refund should have been higher. They argued that ComEd parent Exelon’s move to provide the utility with $200 million in equity in order to pay a fine to the federal government resulted in higher rates and should also have been part of the refund.
Commissioners determined that ComEd’s deferred-prosecution agreement with the U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago allowed for the $200 million equity infusion and so it shouldn’t be included.
WHAT IS ACTUALLY IN THE JUSTINCE REFORM LAW (The Illinoize)
There are few more controversial topics in state government than the January 1 rollout of a new criminal justice law that ends the long-standing cash bail system in Illinois.
Multiple prosecutors and police groups have been raising alarms over the law, known informally as the SAFE-T Act.
“The biggest problem I see with the law is that there are categories of offenses for which, even if the defendant is a real threat to the public, they cannot be detained based on the actual charge,” said DuPage County State’s Attorney Bob Berlin, a Republican.
The Senate passed the bill around 5 A.M. the morning the legislative session was scheduled to end in early January last year, and the House passed the legislation with literal minutes remaining before the expiration of the old General Assembly.
“The legislature has given us this entirely new system with, let’s acknowledge, absolutely little to no input from us, the people who have to make this work,” said Democratic Champaign County State’s Attorney Julia Rietz. “They will say we had input, at 4 in the morning, maybe we had some input. But, we did not sit down and say ‘this is how it will work.’”
Related: Our visit with Sen. Robert Peters (D-Chicago):
Analysis suggests Chicago police deployment doesn’t match up with when most shootings take place (Chicago Tribune)
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