Lawmakers have advanced a measure that will soon be sent to the governor’s desk that would allow certain immigrants to become police officers in Illinois.
Current federal law prohibits a non-U.S. citizen from becoming a police offer throughout the country. House Bill 3751 looks to change that law in Illinois.
The measure states that any immigrant who the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has deferred under the federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals process is allowed to apply for the position of a police officer, deputy sheriff or special police officer.
The measure was amended by the Senate on Thursday and received pushback from Republican lawmakers.
State Sen. Chapin Rose, R-Mahomet, criticized the idea of a non-citizen being able to arrest a U.S. citizen in Illinois.
“To hand the power to arrest and detain a citizen of this state, or a citizen of any state in the United States, to a non-citizen is a fundamental breach of democracy,” Rose said. “It is antithetical to the police power of any state.”
Senate President Don Harmon, D-Oak Park, supports the bill and said during debate that history shows people from different backgrounds have been law enforcement officers for a long time.
The District 220 Board of Education meets this evening at 7:00 PM at the District Administration Center, 515 W. Main Street. Topics on their agenda include:
Consideration for the Board of Education to authorize the Assistant Superintendent of Business Services/CSBO to approve contracts for the procurement of natural gas and electricity and to elect and designate the price terms of such contracts. The price terms of such contracts shall not exceed the rate of forty-four cents ($0.4400) per therm for natural gas and 6.9 cents ($0.069) per kilowatt hour for electricity, and for periods not to exceed 36 months.
Consideration to Approve BHS Trip to the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Ontario
A copy of the agenda can be viewed here. The meeting will be livestreamed on the district YouTube channel.
The city kept 126 beds but isn’t using them. The state has 1,125 more beds from the makeshift hospital but says the city hasn’t asked for them. And the city is missing out on $30 million from Springfield to support immigrants.
Construction workers put the finishing touches on a 500-bed temporary COVID-19 hospital at McCormick Place on April 3, 2020. It ended up going unused. | Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune pool photo
Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Gov. J.B. Pritzker stood together in April 2020 at the start of the coronavirus pandemic to showcase the rapid transformation of an empty convention hall at McCormick Place East into a medical facility with 500 beds — and 2,500 more to be installed later.
It turned out the makeshift COVID-19 hospital wasn’t needed because existing hospitals were able, after all, to meet the demand of treating coronavirus patients. So the beds were moved to warehouses, and the facility was dismantled as quickly as it was set up.
Now, with at least 8,500 refugees from Latin America having been transported to Chicago from Texas since last August in a political tug-of-war over national immigration policy, those beds are available for use in temporary shelters.
The city kept 126 full-size beds from the McCormick Place temporary hospital. City officials say it would be difficult to set them up quickly because the beds include a mattress, headboard, footboard, bed frame and no linens.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot, Gov. J.B. Pritzker and U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., tour the COVID-19 care facility in Hall C at McCormick Place on April 17, 2020. Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere / Sun-Times
Instead, the Lightfoot administration chose to send cots for immigrants to sleep on at temporary shelters because they’re “easy to deploy and set up during an emergency,” according to Mary May, a spokeswoman for the city’s Office of Emergency Management and Communications.
“At this time, it is simply not as practical to use the limited number of beds we have in storage.”
Village of Barrington Hills Board of Trustees 2023 (L-R): JC Clarke, Darby Hills, President Pro Tem/Trustee David Riff, President Brian Cecola, Laura Ekstrom, Thomas Strauss, Jessica Hoffmann
From our Village website:
“Congratulations to our newly sworn Trustees: Darby Hills, Jessica Hoffmann and John Carpenter Clarke or as he prefers, “J.C.”!
At a special Board of Trustees meeting on Monday, May 8, 2023, the newly elected were sworn into office and took their seats among the sitting Board, commencing their four-year term. President Cecola called the meeting to order at 6:30 PM at which time the new Board discussed the business at hand.
Congratulations to Trustee David Riff who was unanimously voted as President Pro Tem by his fellow Board Members!
President Cecola then read the proposed Trustee Committee assignments followed by a vote from the Board. Who was assigned to which Committee? Visit our website to find out: Barrington Hills Village Board of Trustees”
Editorial note: It’s been brought to our attention that Trustee Riff had a very important bowling league tournament to compete in immediately following Monday night’s ceremonies, thus explaining his attire.
The Barrington Hills Park District Board will hold a, “Park Board & Decennial Committee on Local Government Efficiency,” meeting this evening in person and via Zoom at 7:00 PM. Topics on their agenda include:
Illinois may soon force new home builders to include electric vehicle charging infrastructure.
Senate Bill 40 would require buildings to have EV capable conduits, and would apply to new and existing homes, apartments and condo buildings. It also would require new construction of homes and multi-unit buildings to include basic infrastructure for electric vehicle charging in a certain number of parking spaces.
Proponents said it can be up to six times more expensive to retrofit a parking space for electric vehicle charging than it is to install the necessary infrastructure at the time of construction.
“Charging your car is a lot less expensive than buying gas, and we should make this as easy as possible for eclectic car owners,” said state Rep. Robyn Gabel, D-Evanston, the bill’s sponsor.
House Republicans voiced concerns over the costs and the strain that will be put on the electric grid.
“If less than one percent of cars on the road are EVs, and less than 0.1% of cars in my district are EVs, I just don’t see why we are having people in downstate Illinois pay for this infrastructure,” state Rep. Travis Weaver, R-Pekin, said.
Pritzker has voiced support for measure backed by secretary of state
SPRINGFIELD – A bill that would block libraries from receiving state grants if they ban books cleared the Illinois Senate Wednesday and will soon be sent to Gov. JB Pritzker, who is expected to sign it.
House Bill 2789 is an initiative of Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias, whose office oversees the Illinois State Library and administers several grant programs for public and school libraries.
It would require that as a condition of qualifying for those grants, libraries adopt either a written policy prohibiting the practice of banning books or the American Library Association’s Library Bill of Rights, which includes a statement that “(m)aterials should not be proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval.”
“This right-to-read legislation will help remove the pressure that librarians have had to endure from extremist groups like the Proud Boys who have targeted some of our libraries and their staff,” Giannoulias said during a news conference after the Senate vote. “This first-of-its-kind legislation is important because the concept of banning books contradicts the very essence of what our country stands for.”
In June 2022, the Community High School District 99 school board came under pressure to remove the book “Gender Queer” from its library shelves. According to a Chicago Sun-Times article, that pressure came from a group of conservative parents as well as members of the far-right Proud Boys. The book, written and illustrated as a graphic novel, is a memoir about a nonbinary person grappling with issues of gender identity and sexuality as a teenager and young adult.
According to the American Library Association, “Gender Queer” was the most frequently challenged book in 2022, drawing 151 requests for its removal because of its focus on LGBTQ issues and allegedly explicit sexual content. All told in 2022, the ALA said it documented 1,269 demands for books and other resources to be removed from libraries, the largest number of attempted book bans since the organization began collecting data more than 20 years ago.
Senate Republicans, however, argued that the bill would put too much power in the hands of the ALA and that putting the group’s Library Bill of Rights into law would force local libraries to enact extreme policies.
For example, Sen. Sue Rezin, R-Morris, cited a provision that said libraries that also provide exhibit spaces and meeting rooms to the public “should make such facilities available on an equitable basis, regardless of the beliefs or affiliations of individuals or groups requesting their use.”
Barrington School District 220 hired longtime school administrator Nathaniel Rouse as the district’s first-ever director of equity, race and cultural diversity initiatives in August of 2020. Apparently, Rouse recruits Board of Education candidates HE (and presumably his union) deems to be “sound” during school hours.
Posted Tuesday by CUSD 220:
“At the May 2 Barrington 220 Board of Education meeting, the new Board was sworn into office. New Board member Diana Clopton, along with re-elected Board members Barry Altshuler and Leah Collister-Lazzari, will all serve four-year terms on the Board.
Clopton and her husband moved to the Barrington area in 2011. They have two children who attend Prairie Campus and Station Campus. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Finance from the University of Illinois At Urbana-Champaign and a MBA from Northwestern University. Clopton currently works as an Associate Marketing Director at a bio-pharmaceutical company.”
Illinois State University is set to hold segregated, identity-based graduation ceremonies for the class of 2023.
The ceremonies will be hosted by registered student organizations in collaboration with the school’s Multicultural Center over the course of a month.
According to the school, these ceremonies provide “opportunities for our underrepresented students to celebrate their successes and graduation in a unique way.”
The first of these, called the “Lavender Graduation,” is scheduled to occur on April 22, and according to a press release, will honor “LGBTQIA+ lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and ace-identified graduates.”
The following week, the school plans to hold a “Nuestros Logros” ceremony, which will recognize “Latino/a/x graduates.”
Following this is the “MAPS” ceremony which will take place on May 6 and include “Middle Eastern, Asian, Pacific Islander, and Southeast Asian graduates.”
