Get the latest news from around Illinois.
The Center Square: GOP lawmakers call on state watchdog to audit IDES
Four Republican House members are requesting an audit of the Illinois Department of Employment Security after repeated complaints from people seeking unemployment benefits during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The agency has been plagued with problems, including staffing and website issues, since the statewide stay-at-home order because of the pandemic that put more than 1.1 million people out of work.
State Journal-Register: Republicans want audit of IDES problems
Many residents are still struggling to receive state unemployment benefits after weeks of trying, and now state lawmakers want an audit to review the department’s responses.
House Republicans said residents from all over the state are contacting them about the unemployment agency’s slow responses to their requests for help. The issues, lawmakers said, still persist even after Gov. JB Pritzker told them that the state has taken steps to pare down the backlog of applicants.
Capitol News Illinois: Pritzker lifts ban on worship services starting Friday
People in Illinois will be allowed to attend worship services starting this weekend without fear of prosecution as the state enters Phase 3 of Gov. JB Pritzker’s “Restore Illinois” reopening plan.
Pritzker made the announcement during his daily COVID-19 briefing Thursday in Chicago, the same day a new lawsuit was filed in Lake County Circuit Court challenging the ban on public gatherings of more than 10 people as it applied to worship services.
The Center Square: Illinois comptroller says no raises for lawmakers, but legal challenges could change that
Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza set out to squash some rumors about whether or not Illinois lawmakers will be getting raises after they didn’t explicitly freeze their annual cost of living adjustment that automatically hikes their pay.
In a video released Wednesday, Mendoza, a former lawmaker and Democrat, said she will be cutting checks that include no additional raises for the General Assembly.
Chicago Sun-Times: CPD officers ordered to undergo training about asphyxiation, watch George Floyd video
Chicago Police Supt. David Brown has ordered all Chicago Police officers to undergo mandatory training on “positional asphyxiation” in light of the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
“I want to make it clear that this behavior is not acceptable in Chicago, will not be tolerated under my command, and quite frankly has no place in law enforcement anywhere,” Brown said in a statement Thursday.
Chicago Tribune: Mayor Lori Lightfoot says Chicago will move to phase 3 of her reopening plan on June 3 but warns: ‘COVID-19 is still very much part of our present’
Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Thursday delivered the news stir-crazy and out-of-work Chicagoans have been awaiting for weeks: restaurants, hotels and many more businesses will get to start opening their doors next Wednesday, albeit with reduced capacities and tight rules in place designed to stop COVID-19 cases from spiking as more people emerge from their homes after months under a stricter stay-at-home order.
The opening of libraries and park buildings west of the lakefront, along with other city services, will happen on June 8, Lightfoot said. The mayor said she will have to see how things go with these initial steps before considering reopening the city’s lakefront.
The Center Square: Illinois small businesses desperate to open, NFIB survey finds
Small business owners are eager to reopen and many are afraid they won’t survive the pandemic, according to a recent survey by the Illinois Federation of Independent Business.
“There are some desperate folks out there,” said Mark Grant, director of the Illinois chapter of the federation.
Chicago Sun-Times: Ex-Mayor Richard M. Daley, son bankrolling lender profiting off Cook County land deals
Former Mayor Richard M. Daley and his son Patrick Daley are among the financial backers of a venture that’s cashing in by financing rehabbers who buy homes from the Cook County Land Bank Authority and flip them for double, triple, even 50 times the amount they paid the county months earlier.
The company, Renovo Financial, has financed 75 purchases over the past five years of homes that were then refurbished and sold. Sixty-five of the properties financed by Renovo have been resold at a median of $145,341 over what the rehabbers paid the land bank, records obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times show.
Crain's Chicago Business: Kaegi to cut assessments on homes, condos by 8 to 12 percent
The assessor’s office is lowering assessed values of single-family homes and condominiums in south and west suburban Cook County by 8 to 12.2 percent, citing the negative impact of the pandemic, according to a report the assessor released today. Kaegi also is reducing values on apartments, office buildings, shopping centers and other commercial properties in the south and west suburbs, part of a broader plan to ease the burden of the health and economic crisis on all property owners.
The Center Square: Chicago to be held back from governor’s Phase 3 plan as courts consider executive authority to reshape state’s economy
Phase 3 of Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s reopening plan kicks in for the entire state on Friday, but not in Chicago.
This comes while a number of lawsuits challenge the governor’s stay-at-home orders.
Chicago Sun-Times: Memorial Day ‘fail’ by city’s new top cop tied to preoccupation with curbing overtime, alderman says
David Brown failed his first major test as Chicago’s police superintendent because he was more concerned with cutting overtime than fighting violence and failed to share his Memorial Day weekend plans with local leaders, an influential alderman said Thursday.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot has condemned the “out of control” violence that turned Memorial Day weekend into a “bloodbath” and held Brown personally responsible, the chairman of the City Council’s Committee on Public Safety went even further.
Chicago Tribune: Pushback from school administrators delays bill to ban seclusion for Illinois students
After months of debate about schools’ use of seclusion and face-down restraints on children, Illinois lawmakers did not act last week on a measure that would have banned the controversial practices immediately, instead delaying the decision until the fall at the earliest.
Although Gov. J.B. Pritzker and state schools Superintendent Carmen Ayala have vowed to stop the practices of putting children alone in locked rooms and holding them down on the floor, the bill faced opposition from school groups that viewed oversight requirements as too burdensome.