THE ILLINOIZE: Thursday Free for All...The police disability drama that looks terrible for Lightfoot...More on Martwick's graduated income tax...Judge slams Department of Corrections on mental health
February 23, 2023
Good morning, Illinois.
Just a quick rundown for you today.
The Senate is in at 11 this morning. The House is in at noon.
Just a quick programming note for subscribers: no newsletter tomorrow. I have some dad duty things today and that’s the priority.
Let’s get to it.
YOUR THURSDAY FREE FOR ALL
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Lightfoot defends police pension board against criticism it unfairly denied cops with COVID full disability benefits (Chicago Tribune)
In dueling news conferences, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza clashed over whether the city’s benefits for police officers disabled by COVID-19 is fair to cops.
At issue is a ruling by the city pension board that denied Mendoza’s police officer brother, Sgt. Joaquin Mendoza, full disability benefits after he was infected with COVID-19 and was disabled. Susana Mendoza accused the city of setting impossible standards for cops to receive benefits and criticized the mayor’s political appointees on a pension board for a decision giving him fewer benefits.
For her part, Lightfoot said she takes police officer safety seriously but defended the board’s decision as having been issued by a board and affirmed by a court.
“It’s not for me to second-guess a decision that was rendered by a board,” Lightfoot said.
Just a week before the municipal election in which Lightfoot is seeking a second term, Mendoza sought to blame the mayor’s appointees on the Policemen’s Annuity and Benefit Fund board for voting to deny duty benefits to her brother and another officer. Mendoza claims that more than a dozen other officers who contracted COVID-19 have disability cases “in the pipeline.”
“I do hold the mayor accountable because that’s her board,” Mendoza said. “And so she can’t say with one face that you support the men and women in uniform, our first responders, and then do what they did to them.”
Four of the eight members of the police pension board are appointed by the mayor.
Mendoza said Tuesday she’s seeking passage of state legislation that would grant police officers, firefighters and emergency medical technicians who survived COVID-19 the duty disability benefits.
Mendoza said her brother contracted COVID-19 in 2020 while working 17 straight days on the job, according to a news release. Mendoza said her brother spent 72 days in the hospital, suffered kidney failure, lost his ability to use his left arm and suffered five strokes.
Good on Mendoza for taking on a member of her own party. Let’s also remember that Sgt. Mendoza and others like him were working over-overtime at the height of the pandemic before a vaccine was available. They deserve our support.
Related: Lightfoot denies playing politics with police pension board (Chicago Sun-Times)
It's back: Lawmakers take another run at graduated income tax (Crain’s Chicago Business)
As promised, a new proposal for an Illinois graduated income tax has been introduced in Springfield, and though its prognosis is iffy at best, it is has some significant differences from the “fair tax” plan by Gov. J.B. Pritzker that voters rejected in a 2020 referendum.
Under legislation filed by state Sen. Rob Martwick, a Northwest Side Democrat, tax rates on low-income single filers would be cut to as low as 4%, well under the state’s current 4.95% flat rate and the 4.75% rate the governor proposed. The tax rate wouldn’t even hit the 4.75% mark until a person's annual income tops $100,000.
At the opposite end, rates would max out at 6.95% on annual income above $500,000 for individuals and $1 million for couples who file jointly. That's lower than the maximum 7.95% rate in Pritzker’s plan.
The changes would mean that, while the plan would help middle-class and working families while hitting the wealthy, overall it would be revenue neutral. Unlike the defeated "fair tax," this revised plan would raise only as much money for the state treasury as the current flat tax, not more.
Even if approved by legislators, the changes could not be enacted unless voters separately approve a constitutional amendment dropping the current ban on a graduated tax. Martwick is working on separate, enabling measure that would put the matter back in front of voters.
So far, Martwick’s new bill is stuck in the Senate Committee on Assignments, and it’s not clear whether Senate President Don Harmon, D-Oak Park, will allow the measure to be referred to another committee in which it could receive a hearing. Nor is there any sign Pritzker is willing to expend more political capital on the issue.
Judge orders IDOC to comply with health care decree (WGLT Radio)
The Illinois Department of Corrections has failed to create and implement a plan to improve medical care at state prisons, a federal judge ruled Tuesday in an opinion that cited a history of delays by IDOC to comply with a 2019 federal consent decree.
In a ruling from the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois’ Eastern Division, Judge Jorge L. Alonso reminded the IDOC of its obligation under a 2019 agreement to work with a court-appointed monitor to develop and put in place major improvements to health care. The lawsuit is based on a 2010 complaint from Don Lippert, a diabetic inmate at Stateville Correctional Center who claimed he was denied his twice-daily doses of insulin, that grew into a class action against the state.
“For reasons that the COVID-19 pandemic does not fully explain and that remain unclear to the Court, defendants never prepared and submitted any implementation plan that came close to fitting” the 2019 agreement until December 2021, said the judge.
Efforts to resolve differences between the state and the monitor’s recommendations broke down last year, resulting in the IDOC bringing a new version of the plan for the state’s 29,000 detainees to the table.
“Not only was this not the process that the parties agreed upon and that the Court had ordered, but plaintiffs and the monitor believe this new version of the plan had regressed rather than improved,” the judge said in his ruling.
In its arguments against implementation of specific mandates, the IDOC relies in large part on a federal court ruling handed down last year in a lawsuit on mental health care for the 12,000 inmates on the state’s behavioral health caseload.
POLITICAL POTPOURRI
Pritzker touts Smart Start Illinois in Rock Island visit (Quad-City Times)
Illinois becomes 12th state, 1st in Midwest, to allow self-attestation (Capitol News Illinois)
Decatur council to lawmakers: Don't mess with TIF districts (Decatur Herald & Review)
Congressman Eric Sorensen ‘optimistic’ Congress can beat farm bill deadline (WGLT)
Former Congressman Adam Kinzinger to release book in October (Associated Press)
Editorial: Don’t sweep up innocent people with crime-fighting automated license plate readers (Chicago Sun-Times)
Opinion: Legislators don’t need to adopt Bears priorities (Shaw Media)
Opinion: Governor's wind-farm reversal rubs more salt in downstaters' wounds (Champaign News-Gazette)
SOME TOP LINKS FROM THE WEEK SO FAR
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