Both the majority and minority opinions in the Illinois Supreme Court’s landmark ruling on the SAFE-T Act last week claimed the other side was ignoring the “plain language” of the Illinois Constitution. Each focused on a single, but different, word. As the all-Democrat majority noted, the judiciary must look at the “plain language used in its natural and popular meaning when the constitutional provision was adopted.” For the majority, the “plain language” in question was from the Illinois Constitution’s Bill of Rights: “All persons shall be bailable by sufficient sureties, except for the following offenses where the proof is evident or the presumption great.”

The last time a sitting Illinois Republican congressperson faced a real primary challenge from a non-incumbent was more than seven years ago, when then-state Senator Kyle McCarter (R-Lebanon) challenged US Representative John Shimkus (R-Collinsville). Even so, nobody really thought McCarter had much of a chance, and, as expected, he ended up losing to Shimkus by more than 20 points. We’ve seen reapportionment-related GOP primaries between congressional incumbents - the most recent being U.S. Representative Rodney Davis’s 2022 crushing loss to fellow U.S. Representative Mary Miller (no relation) - but serious challenges of sitting Republican US Representatives are otherwise fairly rare here.

Senate President Don Harmon told Public Radio talk-show host Brian Mackey in late June that some of the most prominent business association leaders had “punched us in the nose” after the Senate Democrats devised what he called a “good-faith solution” to solve problems created by the state’s super-controversial Biometric Information Privacy Act. Harmon also claimed the Senate Democratic proposal the business groups attacked was “very friendly to the business community that has been asking for these changes.”

Back in May, Governor JB Pritzker told reporters that his administration had given lawmakers seven options to rein in costs of a health-care program for undocumented immigrants, which was growing well beyond affordability.

As I told you last week, the staid and conservative Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago’s latest and more liberal ideas on taxes and crime reduction have caused some folks to sit up and take notice, including Illinois Senate President Don Harmon. “I think that the Civic Committee is approaching major problems with a very different perspective,” Harmon said.

Back in February, the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago proposed some sweeping revenue changes designed to significantly boost the state’s credit rating to “AA” over time and help accelerate the state’s pension payments to bring down its huge, unfunded liabilities. The group’s proposals were striking because their members are some of the wealthiest people in the state. In the country, even.

An often bitter, loud, and racially-divisive debate played out before, during, and after last week’s Chicago city-council meeting where members voted to pass a temporary funding package to shelter asylum-seekers.

House and Senate Republicans claimed during budget-related floor debate last week that the super-majority Democrats had masked the true size of their plan by delaying the start of some spending until the second half of the upcoming fiscal year. Yes and no. Republicans pointed to the $317 million cost of increasing Medicaid provider reimbursement rates, including for hospitals. But that new spending doesn’t begin until January 1, the halfway point in the 2024 fiscal year, which begins July 1.

From Illinois law: “No unit of local government shall levy any tax on stock, commodity, or options transactions.” That statute has long been targeted for elimination by the Chicago Teachers Union and its allies. The CTU reliably shuns any proposal to increase property taxes across the board, instead pushing often-times “magical” solutions as alternatives. It’s one way the union has maintained its popularity among Chicago voters.

A few weeks ago, Senator Robert Peters posted a tweet that he knew would generate backlash. What he didn’t know was that it would go national. The tweet was in response to teens converging on downtown Chicago. The Chicago Tribune reported three teenagers were wounded in two shootings and 16 were arrested during the violence: “I would look at the behavior of young people as a political act and statement. It’s a mass protest against poverty and segregation.”

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