Politics
For at least two hours of the ride home, Charles Collins feared someone was following his father’s car, looking to take him back to prison for the rest of his life. At an interstate rest stop between Western Illinois Correctional Center and Chicago, Collins said the reality of his freedom settled in and he let…
Read Full Article A southern Illinois federal judge officially declined to issue an injunction to delay the Jan. 1 registration requirement under the state’s assault weapons ban. U.S. District Judge Stephen McGlynn issued the 34-page order on Friday. Gun rights advocates requested an emergency injunction to halt the registration of guns and accessories covered in the legislation, known as the…
Read Full Article Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias rejected more than 304 vanity and personalized license plates this year that were deemed too obscene or defamatory. The Secretary of State’s office received 54,768 requests for vanity and personalized plates this year, including the 304 that were denied because of their inflammatory or offensive nature or because they…
Read Full Article Small business advocates are discussing the impact new Illinois laws going into effect Jan. 1 could have on employers. Several laws will go into effect in 2024, including Senate Bill 2034, which extends bereavement time for workers when dealing with the loss of a child. Other measures include the previous General Assembly’s Senate Bill 208, which…
Read Full Article With Illinois lawmakers scheduled to return to legislative session in less than a month, a recent government fiscal forecast provides an overview of the budgeting landscape that awaits them. The bottom line from the five-year forecast from the Governor’s Office of Management and Budget: The current fiscal year is now projected to end with a…
Read Full Article A judge on Monday temporarily postponed sentencing dates for four former executives and lobbyists at the state’s largest utility company convicted of conspiring to bribe former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan. The ComEd 4 — former state lawmaker and lobbyist Michael McClain, former ComEd CEO Anne Pramaggiore, former ComEd lobbyist John Hooker and former contract…
Read Full Article Missouri’s highest court this week heard arguments over the constitutionality of a two-year-old state law terminating parental rights following a conviction for certain crimes against children. The case, heard Wednesday by the state Supreme Court, involves a Jefferson County father whose parental rights were terminated after he pled guilty to child molestation and sexual misconduct in…
Read Full Article CHICAGO – The Illinois Commerce Commission on Thursday curtailed proposed rate hikes and rejected grid plans from two major electric utilities, mirroring a series of bombshell decisions rendered last month that cut increases for Illinois’ four largest gas utilities. The ICC rejected the pair of plans from Commonwealth Edison and Ameren Illinois that were…
Read Full Article SPRINGFIELD – The U.S. Supreme Court issued two orders this week turning down requests to block enforcement of Illinois’ assault weapons ban while challenges to the law are still being heard in lower courts. On Wednesday, Justice Amy Coney Barrett turned down a request from Republican state Rep. Dan Caulkins, of Decatur, and other gun rights advocates…
Read Full Article A little over six months after pushing Democrats in the General Assembly to pass a law targeted at limited services pregnancy centers, Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul has agreed in a legal filing to stop the state’s enforcement of it. Raoul’s decision to permanently halt enforcement of the law came in an agreed order that…
Read Full Article Gov. JB Pritzker on Friday signed into law a measure that will allow for the limited development of new nuclear power generation technology in the state. The measure, House Bill 2473, does not allow new large-scale power generation facilities like the six plants that are already operational in the state, but rather allows for new smaller-scale…
Read Full Article CHICAGO – Certain detainees leaving Cook County jail will now be given a state ID card upon release in a new pilot program announced Monday by Sheriff Tom Dart and Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias. Inmates released from Illinois prisons have been receiving state IDs at no charge since late 2020 when state leaders launched…
Read Full Article Over the years, Carrie Ward’s organization, the Illinois Coalition Against Sexual Assault, has worked with law enforcement agencies and attorneys across the state on how to better understand the complexities of sexual violence cases. But one part of the criminal justice system has been largely absent from that training: judges.
Read Full Article Gun owners face a Jan. 1 deadline to register their assault weapons with the state under Illinois’ assault weapons law. But between lawsuits and ongoing policymaking, the exact guns, accessories and ammunition covered under the Protect Illinois Communities Act remain unclear to many gun rights advocates, who point out that the ban includes some of the most…
Read Full Article Pratt sees opportunity for 'new challenge' as he files to run for state's attorney in Hancock County
QUINCY — Christopher Pratt, an attorney in the Adams County Public Defender’s Office since 2016, filed last week to run for state’s attorney in Hancock County. Pratt, who was promoted to deputy chief public defender in 2020, filed as a Republican. He will face incumbent Bobi James in a primary on March 19. No Democratic…
Read Full Article SPRINGFIELD – The Illinois Supreme Court ruled Thursday that automobile insurance policies must cover people against uninsured motorists and hit-and-run accidents, even if the person covered by the policy is not in a vehicle at the time of the accident. The case involved a 14-year-old Chicago boy, Cristopher Guiracocha, who was struck by a hit-and-run…
Read Full Article By the end of the month, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey expects to complete work on the mountain of public records requests submitted to the office last year. That will allow the five-person team working through the Sunshine Law backlog to finally turn its attention to the nearly 300 pending requests filed since Bailey took…
Read Full Article SPRINGFIELD – The Illinois Supreme Court ruled Thursday that people may obtain records about their own Firearm Owners Identification cards, but they may not use the state’s Freedom of Information Act to do so. In a 7-0 ruling, the court said the Illinois State Police acted properly when it denied FOIA requests from individuals who…
Read Full Article The Illinois Supreme Court on Thursday ruled the state’s strongest-in-the-nation biometric information privacy law does have an exemption: health care workers who use fingerprints or similar scans to access things like medication, materials or patient health information. The nurses alleged their hospitals’ use of these medicine cabinets violated Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act by not…
Read Full Article QUINCY — There was not baton or torch involved, but State Representative Randy Frese (R-Quincy) certainly made it clear he wants former Quincy mayor Kyle Moore to take his place in the Illinois Statehouse. “Over the course of the past eight years in, in my duties as a state representative, I’ve had the opportunity to…
Read Full Article SPRINGFIELD – A group of temporary staffing agencies and their trade associations are asking a federal court to block enforcement of a new state law that governs how day laborers and temp workers are managed and paid. The lawsuit, filed earlier this month in Chicago, challenges several changes enacted this year to the Illinois Day and…
Read Full Article Monday morning marks the official beginning of the 2024 election cycle in Illinois, opening up the week-long period when candidates for local, state, congressional and judicial races are required to turn in the signatures they’ve spent the last two months collecting to get on the ballot. The first day of petition filing has traditionally taken…
Read Full Article Missouri could be the first state with a near-total abortion ban to use the initiative petition process to restore access. But time is running short, with a May deadline to collect enough signatures looming and court battles over ballot summaries still plodding along. And while voters in Ohio became just the latest to overwhelmingly back abortion rights on…
Read Full Article The Illinois Supreme Court on Tuesday heard arguments in a case alleging the state’s 2019 law that consolidated nearly 650 individual police and firefighter pension funds actually hurt retirees by diluting their voting power. The nearly three-dozen pensioners and 17 individual pension funds that sued over the law have already lost twice in lower court.…
Read Full Article SPRINGFIELD – Officials at the Illinois State Board of Education say they’re receiving more requests for increased funding for next year than the state could possibly afford, and they’re bracing for the possibility that budgets will start to tighten in the near future. “It does appear that revenue will be a little bit tighter in…
Read Full Article QUINCY — State Sen. Jil Tracy (R-Quincy) said the Pritzker Administration should not be diverting millions of taxpayer dollars to non-citizens – especially without any input from Illinois lawmakers. On Nov. 16, Gov. JB Pritzker announced he is re-allocating $160 million from the Illinois Department of Human Services to help assist Chicago with its influx…
Read Full Article CHICAGO – As winter quickly approaches, Gov. JB Pritzker on Thursday announced plans for the state to spend an additional $160 million to aid and house a sustained influx of migrants sent to Chicago from the nation’s southern border. The administration sold the plan as a three-phase approach: “welcome, shelter, independence” – aimed at meeting…
Read Full Article The high-stakes nature of one of this year’s biggest public corruption trials became clear Wednesday when a defense attorney predicted an ominous argument from prosecutors: That federal guidelines call for life sentences for four people convicted of conspiring to bribe then-Illinois House Speaker Michael J. Madigan.
Read Full Article This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with Capitol News Illinois. In late December, a teenage boy with a broken arm was left to suffer alone in his cell at a youth lockup in rural southern Illinois. Staff were aware he’d been seriously injured; he told them he was in pain and…
Read Full Article SPRINGFIELD – Illinois lawmakers adjourned their fall veto session Thursday afternoon without renewing a controversial program that provided indirect state support for students attending private and religious schools. The Invest in Kids program will sunset as scheduled on Dec. 31, meaning donors to six state-approved private school scholarship funds will no longer be able to…
Read Full Article HANNIBAL, Mo. – On Tuesday Hannibal voters will head to the polls to decide on only two issues. The Nov. 7 election will not only decide who will replace and finish the term of former Mayor James Hark who resigned in June, but voters will also decide if the city manager will be required to…
Read Full Article In a 2-1 ruling Friday, a federal appeals court ruled that Illinois’ assault weapon ban does not violate the U.S. Constitution, setting up a likely appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. “The Second Amendment to the Constitution recognizes an individual right to ‘keep and bear Arms.’ Of that there can be no doubt,” the majority opinion began,…
Read Full Article Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft wrote ballot titles for six proposals to restore abortion rights that were “replete with politically partisan language,” a Missouri appeals court unanimously ruled Tuesday. In an expedited decision issued a day after hearing arguments, a three-judge panel of the Western District Court of Appeals upheld, with only minor revisions, the revised ballot…
Read Full Article Treasure Dowell has called Missouri’s social services department three times a day for nearly a month and has yet to speak to a human being. Sometimes she is automatically disconnected hours before the call center closes because it has reached capacity for the day. Other times she waits hours, her phone on speaker atop the…
Read Full Article SPRINGFIELD – The Illinois State Police are facing pushback from gun rights advocates over proposed rules requiring owners of certain firearms to register them before the end of the year. ISP is in the process of adopting new rules to implement part of the state’s new assault weapons ban – officially named the Protect Illinois…
Read Full Article SPRINGFIELD – Elementary and secondary students in Illinois showed consistent improvements in their reading and math scores while the state’s high school graduation rate reached a 13-year high for the most recently concluded school year. Those are some of the conclusions from the most recent annual statewide school report card, released Monday by the Illinois State…
Read Full Article JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — A St. Louis lawmaker is demanding that Missouri regulators investigate what she called an “egregious exploitation” of social cannabis equity licenses, following a report by The Independent last week about a company that recruited out-of-state license applicants on Craigslist. State Sen. Karla May, a St. Louis Democrat, sent a letter on Thursday to the state’s…
Read Full Article SPRINGFIELD – Vowing to make Illinois the top state in the nation for child care accessibility, Gov. JB Pritzker unveiled a plan Tuesday to consolidate all the state’s early childhood programs and funding into one new state agency. “Early Childhood program governance has to be unified in its focus on serving children and families, easing…
Read Full Article STEUBENVILLE, Ohio — Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio isn’t just Catholic. It’s “passionately Catholic,” according to the tagline on its website. It is known as a traditionalist hardliner on church teachings, according to some Catholic scholars. So it caught some people by surprise when the university announced last week that it would not only…
Read Full Article Gun laws, scholarship tax credits, nuclear energy – but not new spending – on table for veto session
SPRINGFIELD – When lawmakers return to the Capitol next week for their annual fall veto session, they have a full agenda, including a handful of vetoes from Gov. JB Pritzker to consider overriding, in addition to deciding whether to revive a private school scholarship program. But additional state spending is unlikely to be on their…
Read Full Article Until eighth grade, Carter Bremer went to school on a standard five-day schedule. After moving to Harrisburg, he stopped going to class on Mondays. Now a senior at Harrisburg High School, Carter has spent just four days a week in school for the past five years, giving him more time to spend on sports, a…
Read Full Article Gov. JB Pritzker is self-funding the launch of a new political advocacy group aimed at fighting for abortion rights across the U.S. – an extension of sizable donations he’s been making in Democratic politics for several years. The billionaire governor, whose rising national profile had garnered feverish speculation about a run for president in 2024,…
Read Full Article Navigator CO2, a Nebraska-based company specializing in carbon capture and sequestration, announced Friday it is canceling plans to build a 1,300-mile carbon dioxide pipeline that would have run through central Illinois. The plan included several hundred miles of pipeline in Illinois which terminated at sequestration sites designed to store the greenhouse gas underground. The company,…
Read Full Article FROM THE NEW YORKER: “Last fall, on a sunny day in the Chicago exurbs, J. B. Pritzker, well on his way to reëlection as the Democratic governor of Illinois, was knocking on a few doors and talking up his candidacy. A Republican had won every gubernatorial election in DuPage County since 1932, until Pritzker came…
Read Full Article CHICAGO – As lawmakers prepare to return to Springfield later this month for their annual two-week fall veto session, advocates are pushing for a measure that would require law enforcement to take guns away from people hit with domestic violence orders of protection. In May, Democrats in the Illinois House passed a bill including that provision, but…
Read Full Article SPRINGFIELD – The supply of education professionals continues to improve in Illinois despite strains brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, but persistent issues remain in certain regions of the state and within some teaching fields. That’s the conclusion of a new report by the education advocacy group Advance Illinois, which was instrumental in the 2017 passage…
Read Full Article MACOMB, Ill. — The Macomb Area Chamber of Commerce will be the host of a legislative luncheon, presented by Comcast NBCUniversal, on Monday, Oct. 23, at the Park Place, 127 E. Carroll. Check-in/social begins at 11 a.m. with a buffet lunch served at 11:30 a.m. The noon featured speakers will include State Senators Mike Halpin…
Read Full Article SPRINGFIELD – Unions representing nurses in Illinois are pushing for legislation that would impose mandatory staff-to-patient ratios in hospitals, nursing homes and other health care facilities. But lobby groups representing hospitals and nursing homes say they are steadfastly opposed to the legislation, arguing that a nationwide nursing shortage makes it impossible to comply with such…
Read Full Article Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey expects to finally complete work on public records requests submitted to the office under his predecessor by the end of the year. A review by The Independent of the massive Sunshine Law backlog — which stood at 315 pending requests on Friday — found inquiries from reporters and political operatives, as well…
Read Full Article Gov. JB Pritzker on Tuesday condemned the deadly attacks on Israel over the weekend by the militant group Hamas, telling those gathered outside a synagogue in Chicago’s north suburb of Glencoe that Illinois “unequivocally stands” with the people of Israel. The governor, who himself is Jewish, was one of a handful of elected officials and…
Read Full Article There is $60 million at stake on the meaning of two words in the Missouri Constitution. On Thursday, a Cole County judge said he will provide the definition as soon as possible. The money, from the state road fund, would mean significant raises for thousands of employees in the Department of Transportation. The question Circuit…
Read Full Article Marc Smith is one of 3 state agency leaders to announce end-of-year departure plans Illinois Department of Children and Family Services Director Marc Smith will resign effective Dec. 31, he told colleagues in an all-staff town hall meeting Wednesday morning. For years, critics had called on Smith to resign or be fired, amid legislative hearings,…
Read Full Article CHICAGO — Gov. JB Pritzker was in Hyde Park Tuesday at the University of Chicago’s library to discuss Illinois’ fight against book bans. The university is building a collection of every book that has been banned in the U.S. and is partnering with the Digital Public Library of America to make books more accessible where…
Read Full Article ROCKFORD — In 2016, before Donald Trump’s presidency paved the way for the eventual overturning of Roe v. Wade, Democrats in Illinois passed what would become the first in a series of laws shoring up reproductive rights in the state. That law altered Illinois’ 1970s-era Health Care Right of Conscience Act – a statute passed in…
Read Full Article Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias last week filed administrative rules that would increase the age at which a driver is required to pass a driving test when they renew their license, raising it from 75 to 79. The rules – proposed by Giannoulias to the legislative Joint Committee on Administrative Rules – would keep…
Read Full Article QUINCY — The historic 1993 flood of the Upper Mississippi River caused billions of dollars in damages, displacing more than 74,000 people from their homes and disrupting the region’s transportation and economy. The Upper Mississippi River watershed has experienced more frequent flooding with higher river stages with major floods happening in 2008, 2013, 2014 and…
Read Full Article SPRINGFIELD – Six months before the next presidential primary elections in Illinois, county clerks and other local election authorities are asking for the public’s help in stopping misinformation campaigns before they get started. Officials from 25 counties scheduled a series of news conferences Tuesday in Tazewell, McLean and LaSalle counties. At the Tazewell event, the…
Read Full Article Ameren Missouri announced plans Tuesday to burn more natural gas in the coming years, though it claims the decision doesn’t undermine pledges to reduce its carbon emissions. The St. Louis-based utility, which serves more than 1.2 million Missouri customers, says it is still planning to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2045. Ameren announced its plans…
Read Full Article SPRINGFIELD – In 1946, the Illinois Supreme Court heard a case that would eventually become a landmark in American legal history. The public school district in Champaign, like many other districts in Illinois at the time, allowed a group of local religious leaders to use their schools to teach elective classes in religion and openly…
Read Full Article PALOMA — Republican State Representative Randy Frese will not seek another term for the 99th Illinois House District seat. “It has been both an honor and a privilege to represent the fine people of West Central Illinois for the past eight and a half years,” Frese said in a press release issued Wednesday. “The job…
Read Full Article SPRINGFIELD – Illinoisans who own weapons that can no longer be purchased or sold in the state under its new assault weapons ban can soon register those weapons so they can legally keep them. The law, officially known as the Protect Illinois Communities Act, bans the sale and possession of firearms defined as “assault weapons” as…
Read Full Article Illinois on Monday will become the first state to fully abolish cash bail through an act of the legislature — a major criminal justice overhaul spurred by the advocacy of a progressive faction of the Democratic Party that’s grown increasingly powerful in recent years. The reform goes into effect after nearly three years of brutal…
Read Full Article Missouri lawmakers greeted a proposed $300 million increase to the formula that funds the state’s public schools with questions Wednesday, with some believing the figure seemed appropriate and others wondering if a change to the state’s accountability system drove estimates too high. The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education unveiled its proposed budget for fiscal…
Read Full Article Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias was in Washington, D.C. this week to testify before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee regarding a new state law aimed at deterring book bans. Giannoulias, whose position also includes the title of “state librarian,” this spring championed legislation allowing his office to withhold state money from public libraries if they ban…
Read Full Article The Illinois State Fair – a multi-million dollar annual agriculture festival in Springfield – reported a nine-year attendance record this year. The state Department of Agriculture, which hosts the fair each year, reported on Tuesday that about 708,000 people attended the fair, an 11 percent increase from 2022. Department officials attributed the increase to good…
Read Full Article Gov. Mike Parson prevailed on all his vetoes Wednesday when the state Senate refused to consider any of the 14 budget overrides approved by the Missouri House. The House achieved two-thirds votes to override vetoes on 10 budget lines providing raises for the Missouri State Highway Patrol and the Capitol Police Department. The other successful override votes were on…
Read Full Article Democrats in Missouri, like their counterparts nationally, will use 2024 to test a new system for determining the party’s presidential preference now that the public primary for all parties has been abolished. Instead of reverting to a caucus-only system, the process used in most elections prior to 2000, the Missouri Democratic Party is seeking comment on a…
Read Full Article A new battery manufacturing plant is set to open in northern Illinois next year after the state offered more than $330 million in tax incentives to make it happen. Gotion, a Chinese battery manufacturing and development company, announced on Friday that it will build a lithium-ion battery manufacturing facility in Manteno, about 50 miles south…
Read Full Article A group of businesses filed a complaint with state regulators last week alleging that Chicago electric company Commonwealth Edison improperly raised customer bills this summer. The complaint – centered on a portion of the 2021 Climate and Equitable Jobs Act that allows utilities to recoup carbon mitigation investments – alleges the utility failed to follow the proper…
Read Full Article QUINCY — City Treasurer Linda Moore took advantage of the public forum at the beginning of Monday’s Quincy City Council meeting to chastise aldermen for tabling the vote on a resolution to adopt a pledge of civility at their Aug. 28 meeting. “We were elected by the people to lead them as elected officials,” Moore…
Read Full Article CHICAGO — As former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan prepares for a federal jury to decide whether he ran “a criminal enterprise” as the state’s most powerful politician, he now faces a team of prosecutors emboldened by their perfect record of convictions in two trials. Madigan, 81, once so dominant that he was known as…
Read Full Article Six initiative petitions filed last week seeking to add rape and incest exceptions to Missouri’s abortion ban are facing pushback from both sides of the issue, pilloried as either an anti-abortion wolf in sheep’s clothing or a clandestine push to allow abortion on demand. Filed by Republican political operative Jamie Corley with assistance from Democratic…
Read Full Article This article is an update to the original story, which was produced by WBEZ, Chicago’s NPR news station, and Injustice Watch, a nonprofit news organization in Chicago focused on issues of equity and justice in the court system. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker defended the number of dying and disabled prisoners released under a landmark law that went into…
Read Full Article CHICAGO – A coalition of elected officials and business leaders in Illinois is calling on President Joe Biden to ease work restrictions for asylum seekers and other long-term undocumented workers – a move they say is both humane and would help solve ongoing labor shortages. In the year since Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and other…
Read Full Article $1,000 grants to FFA chapters will be available this fall Farmers and residents of rural communities often face stigma when it comes to mental health challenges, but state leaders hope to change that. Governor JB Pritzker announced Tuesday that chapters of FFA – the group once known as Future Farmers of America – will be…
Read Full Article A recent survey found growing displeasure with Missouri schools. A majority of respondents — 56% — rated their local schools as only fair or poor, and 71% said that about public schools generally in the state, according to SLU You/Gov poll results released Tuesday. More of the voters surveyed also said that charter schools — small public…
Read Full Article CHICAGO — Tim Mapes, a Hancock County native whose rose to the pinnacle of power in the State of Illinois as the right hand man to Michael J. Madigan when he served as speaker of the Illinois House, has been found guilty on perjury and obstruction of justice charges by a federal jury. Mapes, who…
Read Full Article CHICAGO – After a nearly three-week trial that pulled back the curtain on the inner workings of former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan’s world, the fate of one of Madigan’s most loyal aides is now in the hands of a federal jury. Tim Mapes, who spent more than 25 years as Madigan’s chief of staff,…
Read Full Article SPRINGFIELD – Six interagency law enforcement task forces received grant funding this spring to combat car thefts through an initiative of Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias’ office. Giannoulias was in Belleville Tuesday to promote the initiative and highlight a $2.5 million grant to the Metro East Auto Theft Task Force, which brings together law enforcement…
Read Full Article CHICAGO – In more than two weeks of his obstruction of justice and perjury trial, one fact about the longtime chief of staff to former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan came up time and again: Tim Mapes was detail-oriented. Mapes not only served as Madigan’s top aide for more than 25 years, but he also…
Read Full Article SPRINGFIELD — Illinois Environmental Protection Agency Director John J. Kim announced Tuesday a third funding opportunity of $10 million to assist communities in meeting the requirements outlined in the Lead Service Line Replacement and Notification Act. The Lead Service Line Inventory grant program offers grants to local government units ranging from $20,000 to $50,000 to fund…
Read Full Article Communities across Illinois that lack access to nearby stores that sell high quality food may soon see that change. Gov. JB Pritzker on Friday signed a bill that sets up a program to distribute $20 million for grants and technical assistance for grocery stores as well as funding research into food insecurity. The grants will go to…
Read Full Article CHICAGO – In the fall of 2018, then-state Rep. Lou Lang, D-Skokie, thought he might have been in line for a big promotion in the Illinois House of Representatives. He’d unexpectedly run into a stumbling block earlier in the year when a woman publicly accused him of sexual harassment, but the allegations had been thin…
Read Full Article CHICAGO – Nearly six months after former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan was forced to fire his longtime chief of staff, those in the speaker’s inner circle were once again realizing just how much they’d come to rely on Tim Mapes. It was late November 2018, and Democrats had just won big in the general…
Read Full Article The Missouri State Board of Education unanimously approved an exemption for 19 districts and one charter school to measure student achievement using alternative assessments instead of the state’s prescribed methods. Students in these districts will begin to see changes this fall as districts in the Success Ready Students Network implement their plan. “Progress monitoring during the school…
Read Full Article The Missouri Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld the convictions of two single mothers who were charged with violating the state’s compulsory attendance law after their children missed school without a documented illness. Oral arguments in May focused on what “regular attendance” means and whether the state law was too vague. Ellen Flottman, a public defender representing…
Read Full Article Gov. JB Pritzker on Wednesday vetoed a measure that would have granted existing utilities in downstate Illinois, notably Ameren Illinois, the “right of first refusal” for transmission line construction. This would have given Ameren, the electric utility that serves much of downstate Illinois, authority to build new transmission lines without going through a competitive bidding…
Read Full Article SPRINGFIELD – A gun trade association has filed a federal lawsuit challenging a new Illinois law that restricts how gun dealers and manufacturers market their products. The Connecticut-based National Shooting Sports Foundation filed the suit in the Southern District of Illinois on Monday, just two days after Gov. JB Pritzker signed it into law. “The…
Read Full Article SPRINGFIELD – A new law in Illinois restricts the way gun dealers and manufacturers can market and sell their products and subjects them to civil penalties for violations. Gov. JB Pritzker on Saturday signed House Bill 218 into law. Labeled the Firearm Industry Responsibility Act, it took effect immediately. “We hold opioid manufacturers accountable. Vaping companies accountable.…
Read Full Article CHICAGO – In early 2018, longtime Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan was facing a sexual harassment scandal that his closest advisors worried could doom his political future. A 28-year-old Democratic campaign operative named Alaina Hampton had publicly accused Madigan of mishandling complaints that another top political staffer within the speaker’s close orbit had made unwanted…
Read Full Article Former House Speaker Michael Madigan has long been known as “The Velvet Hammer” for the way he quietly wielded power. But in a federal courtroom Monday, the man once considered Illinois’ most powerful politician may have been given a new moniker: Don Madigan. Testifying in the perjury trial of Madigan’s longtime chief of staff, Tim…
Read Full Article SPRINGFIELD – The state’s ban on high-powered weapons and high-capacity magazines passed a state constitutional test Friday as it awaits a potentially more daunting challenge on the federal stage. In a split decision, the Democratically controlled Illinois Supreme Court ruled 4-3 that the law characterizing dozens of firearms as “assault weapons” and preventing their manufacture…
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