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About 2:50 a.m., officers found a 50-year-old man outside unresponsive with a gunshot wound to the head and hand in the 1400 block of West 17th Street, police said.
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Sep 10, 2021, 3:32am CDT
Man fatally shot in PilsenSun-Times Wireon September 10, 2021 at 8:32 am Read More »
After 1:30 a.m. Chicago time, there are no restrictions to shopping or important decisions. The moon is in Scorpio.
For the rest of the month, romance is passionate! Anything to do with your love life will be powerful. You will also attract money through your spouse, business partner or bank. Good time to ask for a loan. Ka-ching!
Today fair Venus moves opposite your sign to stay until the end of the month. This is one of the best places for Venus for all relationships — love affairs, professional partnerships, coworkers and even your enemies. Things will flow smoothly!
As of today, until the end of the month, your health will improve. (But you will be more tempted than usual by desserts and sweets, fattening foods. (Death by chocolate!) Discussions with coworkers will definitely be friendlier.
Lucky you! For the rest of the month, fair Venus will be in one of the most fun parts of your chart attracting amusing diversions, parties, sports and social outings. Enjoy fun activities with kids. Creative activities are favored. Romance is blessed. (Be still my beating heart.)
You will enjoy redecorating your home in the next few weeks. (Leos are proud of home and castle.) This same influence will also make you want to entertain at home. Possibly, real estate opportunities will appear, as well?
You can make money from your words in the next few weeks, certainly until the end of the month. This is particularly good news for those of you in editing, writing, acting, teaching plus sales and marketing. Your relations with everyone will improve because you will be so charming.
For the next few weeks, you can attract money to you. Yay! This is why business negotiations are favored now until the end of the month. Meanwhile, Libra rules haute couture. Expect to shop for beautiful things for yourself and loved ones.
Today Fair Venus moves into your sign to stay until the end of the month. This creates a lovely window of time that allows you to make peace with others. It’s a good time to enjoy friends or to take a vacation or do whatever you like because Venus ranks pleasure above work. Lucky you!
Fair Venus will be hiding in your chart from now until the end of the month, which means many of you will indulge in a secret love affair. For some, it might be more lighthearted — perhaps a secret flirtation? Others will feel gratified to help someone in need.
Your relations with friends and groups will improve beautifully now until the end of the month because you will enjoy the company of others. Furthermore, they will be glad to see your face. Even meetings and group settings, including business conferences, will be favored. Good fortune, indeed!
Starting today until the end of the month, fair Venus will be sitting at the top of your chart creating favorable circumstances for your business and professional life. Authority figures will like you. Regardless of what you do for a living, others might seek out your advice about design, office layout or artistic matters.
From now until the end of the month your desire to travel will be strong. Suddenly, you need to “get away from all this.” You want fun, pleasure, excitement and adventure! Some of you might strike up a relationship with someone who is “different.” Great time for a vacation!
Filmmaker Guy Ritchie (1968) shares your birthday. You are confident and easygoing. You have a natural warmth when dealing with others. You have common sense, grit and determination. Many of you have high ideals. This is a happier year! The pace is lighter and more fun-loving. You are more involved with home and family. You might also give yourself a personal makeover, plus add new touches to your home.
Horoscope for Friday, Sept. 10, 2021Georgia Nicolson September 10, 2021 at 5:01 am Read More »
A 17-year-old female was among two shot Thursday night following an altercation at a gas station on the South Side.
A man, 40, was pumping gas in the 400 block of East Pershing Road when he began arguing with occupants of a black Infiniti sedan and someone inside fired shots, striking the man in the leg, Chicago police said.
He then returned fire, striking a 17-year-old inside the Infiniti in the arm, police said.
He self-transported to the University of Chicago Medical Center, where he was listed in critical condition, police said.
The teen was driven by a friend to Provident Hospital of Cook County, where she was listed in fair condition, police said.
No one from the Infiniti was in custody as of early Friday morning.
Lawmakers in the Illinois House advanced wide-ranging energy legislation Thursday, inching the state closer to an overhaul of that sector.
The Senate bill passed the chamber 83 to 33 and now returns to the Senate so members can concur with the House’s legislation. Senators plan to return Monday in hopes of sending the legislation to Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s desk.
The sweeping legislation provides more than half a billion dollars to keep Exelon’s nuclear plants open. But it also raises utility rates anywhere from about $3 a month to $15, according to conflicting estimates.
The House returned Thursday to take up, and pass, the legislation after the Senate advanced its own version last week during a special session. The House version is largely identical to that bill.
State Rep. David Welter, R-Morris, said he thought the moment would be “more joyful. His district represents half of the state’s nuclear fleet and “thousands and thousands of jobs.”
Welter expressed “frustration” that his side of the aisle has been shut out of the negotiations on the bill and the bill wouldn’t get the full support of the Republicans in the chamber.
“We tell people they have to vote their districts,” Welter said. “We hear that often. That’s why I’m up here today, that’s why I’m going to support this bill because I have to vote my district, but this process is crap.
“Failed leadership is why we are here today … I will be voting yes because the people back home expect me to. I can’t go back home voting no on this bill.”
State Rep. David Welter, R-Morris, tells lawmakers that he will vote for the bill, but expresses frustration on the lack of bipartisan discussions on the energy proposal on the House floor on Thursday.Justin L. Fowler/The State Journal-Register via AP
Welter and other Republicans criticized the bill for doing “nothing” to settle debts for ratepayers in some communities and raising the rates they’ll pay for their electricity.
State Rep. Marcus Evans, D-Chicago, said the bill he sponsored would cost ratepayers about $3 a month, while an AARP study claims that amount might be closer to $15.
State Rep. Tony McCombie, R-Savanna, said “this is a bad bill.”
“It’s not about clean energy,” McCombie said. “It’s about renewable energy. This is not pro union, this is not pro family. This is not pro clean energy. This is extortion.”
Some Democrats said they didn’t want to sacrifice a good bill for a perfect one.
House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch said the bill will help “people all over this state.”
“Let’s put the rhetoric aside the politics aside and think about the people that we all represent,” Welch said. “What we have done here today is monumental, and it should be celebrated, not castigated. It’s historic and it will positively impact people in each and every one of our districts.”
House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch, D-Hillside, left, talks with state Rep. LaShawn Ford, D-Chicago, during debate of a comprehensive energy proposal, on the House floor on Thursday.Justin L. Fowler/The State Journal-Register via AP
The sweeping legislation provides $694 million over five years to Exelon’s Byron, Dresden, and Braidwood nuclear plants. Those funds will also help keep the LaSalle nuclear plant open. That subsidy will cost the average residential ratepayer about $0.80 a month.
Municipal coal firing plants — Prairie State and Springfield’s City Water, Light and Power — will be required to cut their emissions by 45% by 2035 before closing 10 years later unless they can generate green hydrogen or use similar technology to get to zero carbon emissions.
If Prairie State fails to meet the 2035 emissions goal, it will have to close one of its two generation units by 2038.
Private coal and oil fired facilities will be required to close by 2030 and natural gas-firing plants will also be required to close by 2045.
The bill ends the controversial formula rate system and transitions to a “performance-based” system that will be overseen by the Illinois Commerce Commission for utilities that serve more than 500,000 customers.
It also requires the commerce commission to investigate how ratepayer funds were used in line with with actions by ComEd that were detailed in a deferred prosecution agreement involving the utility. That investigation could result in refunds to residential ratepayers.
The bill also requires utilities to establish the position of a chief ethics and compliance officer who must submit annual reports to the ICC.
The bill received support from organized labor, environmental groups and advocates as well as Pritzker who said the measure “puts consumers and climate first, while protecting and creating jobs.”
Members of the House also voted to accept changes to an ethics package that the governor called for in an amendatory veto. The chamber failed to approve those changes during their special session last Tuesday after Republicans withdrew their support for the bill.
Ahead of Thursday’s vote, Republican lawmakers urged their colleagues to vote no on the “watered down” legislation.
State Rep. Kelly Burke, D-Evergreen Park, said before the vote the chamber’s standing ethics committee will “continue to hear and vet bills in the new session, so please, let’s get this bill into law, and then continue our work.”
Shortly after the vote, state Rep. Frances Hurley filed a motion to reconsider, which means the bill can’t advance until that motion is removed.
A source within the House’s Democratic ranks said the motion was filed “out of an abundance of caution” after two Republicans voted yes on the bill. The motion will make sure they don’t try to block the measure.
David Montgomery’s press conferences have gotten a lot more interesting since his rookie summer, when he stood on the practice field in Bourbonnais giving six-word answers while shielding his face from the sun and looking anything but comfortable.
Heading into his third season, Montgomery walks into the room engaged but relaxed. Nothing about this makes him nervous anymore. It even seems fun, if that’s possible for an athlete in a press conference. He taps on each microphone to make sure they’re live and then lets it fly.
He’ll joke — or maybe he meant it — that quarterback Andy Dalton tolerates his nonstop questions because, “he ain’t told me to shut up yet,” or take the conversation down a bowling detour that eventually led him to challenge a reporter to a game. The entire experience has shifted from arduous to effortless.
“Just simply experience,” Montgomery said. “When I come in as a rookie, you don’t know what to expect or what kinds of questions you guys ask, or how serious I can be.
“It’s a natural thing that happens. Once you begin to get comfortable with people, you open up and talk about things you’re not normally used to talking about. [Reporters] showed me the utmost respect, so what would it be like for me not to do the same? That’s how I look at it.”
The sentiment is appreciated, and seeing Montgomery so at ease as questions dart at him from every angle is reflective of how he’s grown as a running back, too. He no longer looks or sounds like a rookie. He doesn’t even seem like a young player anymore despite just turning 24.
Montgomery was one of the few offensive players worth noticing on the Bears last season as he jumped from 889 yards rushing as a rookie to 1,070 with eight touchdowns. He also added 54 catches for 438 yards, showing he was on his way becoming the multi-dimensional back the Bears envisioned when they drafted him out of Iowa State in the third round in 2019.
He managed those numbers despite instability all over the Bears’ offensive depth chart. Between Mitch Trubisky and Nick Foles, quarterback play was problematic all season. They also used five starting offensive lines over the first 10 games before settling on one that worked for the final six.
“It’s definitely good to have that reassurance that you’ve got a group of guys that you’re rolling with,” Montgomery said.
It’s also helpful to get consistent opportunities, and that’s been a challenge with coach Matt Nagy. Every time Nagy talks about getting Montgomery 20 carries per game, it sounds like a great idea. But he has gotten that many just eight times in 31 games.
“I think it’s very doable,” Nagy said. “Getting him the football is a good thing. He can make a lot of people miss.
“When you’re able to get in that fourth quarter and you have the lead and you can hand the ball off to David Montgomery, that’s a good thing. Unfortunately we haven’t been in that situation enough in the past two years, so it’s limited him a little bit with carries.”
But Nagy is the play caller, so it’s on him to remain disciplined rather than abandon the run if the Bears fall behind early. He says he trusts Montgomery. He needs to show that by giving him the ball.
Northwestern coach Pat Fitzgerald wasn’t worried about the Wildcats looking past an FCS team. All he had to do is show the ugly video from last week.
Northwestern hosts Indiana State on Saturday (11 a.m., BTN) looking to steady itself after a wobbly and decisive season-opening loss to Michigan State at home last week.
“I think we have plenty to fix, partner,” said Fitzgerald, in his 16th season and by far Northwestern’s winningest coach at 106-82. “It won’t be hard for us to stay focused.”
The Wildcats’ 38-21 loss to the Spartans was every bit as lopsided as the score indicated. They watched as Kenneth Walker III ran for a career-high 264 yards and a personal-best four touchdowns, including a 75-yard score on the game’s first play from scrimmage. They trailed 21-0 in the second quarter, and were outgained 511-400 in total yards and 326-117 in rushing.
For a team coming off its second Big Ten West championship in three seasons, it was quite a wakeup. Northwestern lost major contributors on offense and defense from last year. Then again, Michigan State has no shortage of newcomers with 20 transfers and its sights set on a quick turnaround after struggling in coach Mel Tucker’s first season.
The Wildcats need to put that one behind them and avoid looking ahead to Duke next week as they prepare to face Indiana State in the first meeting between two schools that started playing football in the 1800s. The Sycamores (1-0), an FCS team, beat Eastern Illinois 26-21 on Aug. 28 in their first game since 2019.
Indiana State initially postponed last season to the spring because of the pandemic, then opted not to play at all. The school cited safety concerns over what would have been a short turnaround this year.
“We got a great opponent,” coach Cam Mallory said. “But it’s about us getting better from Week 1 to Week 2.”
A positive for Northwestern last week was quarterback Hunter Johnson.
Once a highly touted transfer from Clemson, Johnson posted career highs in completions (30), attempts (43), yards (283) and touchdown passes (three) in his first start since 2019. The three TDs were the most by a Northwestern quarterback in a season opener since Dan Persa threw three against Vanderbilt in 2010.
For a quarterback who made just two appearances last year behind Peyton Ramsey and did not throw a pass, it was a promising opener.
“I’m really proud of Hunter,” Fitzgerald said. “He’s been through a lot. I thought he really had a great offseason.”
Indiana State safety Michael Thomas had two interceptions in the opener, returning the second one 75 yards for a touchdown to make it a 10-point game in the fourth quarter. He also had a team-leading 10 tackles.
Northwestern lost leading tacklers Blake Gallagher and Paddy Fisher as well as cornerback Greg Newsome II from a defense that ranked among the nation’s stingiest last season. It clearly showed in the opener. Michigan State converted on all five trips inside the red zone.
Last season, Northwestern ranked fifth in the nation and led the Big Ten in scoring defense. In the red zone, the Wildcats were sixth in the country.
Receiver Bryce Kirtz had his best game in two seasons at Northwestern with seven receptions for 80 yards. By comparison, he had six catches for 67 yards over nine games as a freshman last year.
With Johnson at quarterback, perhaps that was no coincidence. After all, they played together at Brownsburg (Ind.) High School.
“My freshman year, which was in 2016, I did not play varsity,” Kirtz said. “But my sophomore year, I did play varsity. Hunter was my quarterback. … He helped me adjust to that. He made me feel way more comfortable out there, just kinda telling me ‘you got it,’ giving me confidence out there, definitely. The best memory I have with Hunter is just him kinda teaching me how to play football out there at the higher level and then now here in college.”
Kirtz also has a connection to Indiana State. His father Andre ran track and brother Tyler — who plays football at Ball State — was recruited by the Sycamores.
Northwestern lost No. 1 running back Cam Porter to a season-ending lower-body injury in camp. Evan Hull looks like he’s ready to take on a bigger role after running for 87 yards on nine carries in the opener.
“We’ll see how the game goes, the ebb and the flow. At the end of the day, I think Evan’s earned the (role),” Fitzgerald said.
Virginia coach Bronco Mendenhall hopes the idea that his team practices early in the morning will help on Saturday when they face Illinois with a rare 10 a.m. start to the game, which will be carried on ACC Network.
“We’re an early morning practice team, and so really this fits our normal routine in terms of when we practice,” Mendenhall said. “So I wouldn’t anticipate — man, I’m hopeful it won’t affect us much in terms of our normal routine.”
First-year Fighting Illini coach Bret Bielema is hoping his team’s routine also aligns well with the early start, but also laments that that’s not the only similarity he finds when comparing the Cavaliers’ program with his own.
In Mendenhall’s first game at Virginia in 2016, the Cavaliers lost 37-20 to Richmond of the Football Championship Subdivision. Bielema’s team won its opener, 30-22 over Nebraska, but lost 37-30 last week to UTSA, also an FCS program. This will be their first road game of the season.
“I thought about as a coach in transition here, I had to endure that on Saturday,” Bielema said. “And as much as I didn’t like it. You don’t appreciate it. Don’t understand it. Don’t want to accept it. It’s real. It happened. And if I ignore it like it never happened, it’s never going to be something you can learn from.”
Mendenhall moved many of the Cavaliers’ operations into Scott Stadium after the Richmond loss, feeling that his team didn’t seem as comfortable as he would have expected on their home field, and Virginia no longer has that problem. They’ve won 18 of their last 20 home games, including last week’s 43-0 victory against William & Mary in their season opener.
Bielema isn’t sure how his team will respond, but said “the greatest crime we can ever commit was to have that loss not to amount to learning forward,” and film study has been key to that learning process. “I think it’s just a constant as a head coach is pointing out good football and correcting bad football.”
Some other things to watch for when Illinois plays at Virginia:
The Fighting Illini may have starting quarterback Brandon Peters back, but Bielema said Artur Sitkowski, a transfer from Rutgers, will start. Peters hurt his non-throwing shoulder against the Cornhuskers. Sitkowski was 22 for 42 for 266 yards with three touchdown passes against UTSA.
The Illini used some stretch runs with success against Nebraska, and that’s an approach that North Carolina State used effectively against the Cavaliers last year. “It has been an emphasis and a target for us, so hopefully we’ve improved,” Mendenhall said.
The Cavaliers and Illinois have played twice previously, both times in bowl games, and the Illini won both. This game marks Illinois’ first road game against a nonconference Power-5 team since they faced North Carolina in 2015.
James McCourt made field goals of 52 and 53 yards in the loss to UTSA, giving him six from 50 yards or more for his career. He’s the first Illini placekicker in program history to hit two field goals from at least 50 yards in the same game.
The Cavaliers gained 545 yards against the Tribe and have topped 500 yards in their last three home games. They gained 518 yards against Abilene Christian on Nov. 21 and 549 against Boston College in last year’s home finale.
It is a fact of life in a nation of immigrants that government, the courts and social services work best when offered in the native tongue of those immigrants.
That is why a judge may require a translator in court for a defendant from, say, Belarus. That is why voting instructions are offered in languages other than English, such as Spanish and Cantonese.
And the higher the stakes, the less our nation should allow an inability to speak or understand English to be a barrier to fair play and justice.
But when it comes to the State of Illinois agency that bears the heavy responsibility of working with children and parents in family crisis, that bit of common sense — work with the families as much as possible in their own language — too often is not practiced, despite a federal court order.
The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services is required to provide services in Spanish to Latino families, as part of a 1977 order called the Burgos consent decree. But as the nonprofit journalism site ProPublica reports, DCFS has failed for years to abide fully by the decree.
Caseworkers who work with Spanish-language clients may not speak Spanish. Children from Spanish-language families are placed in foster homes where nobody speaks Spanish.
ProPublica first reported in 2019 that DCFS had violated the Burgos decree almost 300 times since 2005, and that number likely was an undercount. Then early last year, Cook County Public Guardian Charles Golbert conducted his own mini-investigation and found that the problem continues.
For 10 months, lawyers from Golbert’s office counted the number of new cases that involved Spanish-speaking families. Then the lawyers checked how many of those families’ case files included a critical document that indicates whether DCFS should be providing the families services in Spanish.
Of the 80 or so cases Golbert’s lawyers identified, as ProPublica recently reported, not one included the so-called language determination form.
Our message today is simple. We know DCFS has a tough job, working to protect and care for the most vulnerable children in the state. And we know state resources are tight. But in a state in which almost 13% of the population speaks Spanish as their primary language, it is obvious that more DCFS caseworkers should speak the language, and the agency should be doing more to hire accordingly.
At the moment, ProPublica reports, DCFS employs just 153 bilingual workers, though under a 2008 state law it should employ 194. Latinos make up about 8% of the 16,000 children in state care. Nobody should feel confident that caseworkers who cannot speak Spanish are fully on top of any case — picking up on signs of neglect or abuse — that involves a family that only speaks Spanish.
If DCFS can’t get there alone — if it continues to fail to meet the benchmarks of the Burgos decree — perhaps it is time for a federal court to appoint an independent monitor.
“When you have an agency with a record of recalcitrance, despite public attention in continuing to neglect its responsibilities, then that is an appropriate time for outside, independent, well-resourced monitoring,” Thomas Saenz, president and general counsel at the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, told ProPublica. “Otherwise you’re not going to change the culture.”
State law could come to rescue, if only a bit. This month, Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed into law a bill that creates a task force to examine the disparate racial impacts of DCFS policy on the families that enter the child welfare system. As part of that effort, the task force is expected to explore language, cultural and heritage issues.
Also, DCFS created a Burgos workgroup last year that meets twice a month to address compliance with the court, and monthly reports on violations are being produced.
The Latino population in Illinois continues to grow. The need for DCFS to provide services in Spanish will grow even more pressing.
Send letters to [email protected].
Confession: I have always felt warmly toward Texas, but I can’t square the big-hearted, boisterous, self-confident place I’ve known with the petty, mean-spirited, downright vindictive anti-abortion law the state’s Republican legislature and governor have endorsed.
Welcome to Beijing on the Brazos. It’s as if 29 million Texans had surrendered to fundamentalist authoritarianism, brandishing Bibles like copies of Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book, vowing punishment against sinners and informing on their relatives and neighbors.
As I say, this is not the Texas I know: a sprawling, geographically and ethnically complex state larger than France, which sometimes feels like the nation that it was — as Texans never quit reminding you — from 1836 to 1845.
Parts of Texas resemble Louisiana; others, Oklahoma. The Texas panhandle feels a lot like Nebraska, and basically everywhere south of San Antonio feels like Mexico. The territory around Lubbock somewhat resembles the moon. Unless you really put the hammer down, it’s a two-day drive from Beaumont to El Paso or Amarillo.
Texas can be hard to get your mind around. However, having lived there two different times, taught at UT-Austin and traveled everywhere reporting for Texas Monthly magazine, I’ve always felt an intoxicating sense of possibility. If I hadn’t basically married Arkansas, I’d probably live somewhere near Austin.
During my time there, I interviewed a priest in Orange who sponsored two dozen Vietnamese immigrants, covered the great Rockdale football mutiny (undefeated state champs who went on strike against their coach), and hit the road with the Corpus Christi Seagulls, a minor league baseball team. I interviewed migrant workers outside Amarillo, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist at UT-Austin, studied the heavens at the university’s observatory in the Davis Mountains and learned to handle a pistol from an ROTC instructor at Rice University. (Bottom line: Don’t.) I made the pilgrimage to Alvin to interview the great Nolan Ryan.
You don’t meet a lot of shy, retiring Texans. Willie Nelson is your classic example; also, the Eagles’ Don Henley. Buddy Holly, Beyonce, Waylon Jennings and Stevie Ray Vaughn. Jerry Jeff Walker was raised in upstate New York, but his rendition of Gary P. Nunn’s “London Homesick Blues” may be the purest example of slide guitar Texas nationalism extant.
Texas is filled with writers and journalists I admire, from Lawrence Wright and my pal Stephen Harrigan to the late Larry McMurtry. I once drove from Cody, Wyoming, to Little Rock, Arkansas, listening to “Lonesome Dove” and was tempted to carry on to Memphis just to finish the story.
Coming to the point, Texas was also home to two of the strongest American women of my own or anybody else’s generation: Gov. Ann Richards and the inimitable Molly Ivins, the wittiest American journalist since H.L. Mencken.
Molly once observed of a Dallas congressman, “If his IQ slips any lower, we’ll have to water him twice a day.” She described Bill Clinton as “weaker than bus-station chili” — unfair, in my view, but definitely memorable.
One can only imagine what either woman would have made of Texas’ current Gov. Greg Abbott — a poser last seen vowing to protect the state from imaginary invasion during “Operation Jade Helm.” Austin’s own native hoaxer Alex Jones had persuaded thousands of dupes that networks of secret tunnels were being dug between vacant Walmart stores to help ISIS fighters infiltrate. Christian patriots would be imprisoned in FEMA reeducation camps.
Sure enough, the invasion never came. Fresh from that mighty triumph, Abbott has now succeeded in passing an idiotic law empowering every testosterone-challenged goober in Texas to carry a gun anywhere — no lessons or permit necessary. That will cost dozens of lives, but it’s the abortion law that’s getting all the attention.
Look, there has been a strong undercurrent of authoritarianism in Texas culture since slavery times. But this takes it further: If a 13-year-old child gets impregnated by her uncle, Texas now demands that she bear the child. Otherwise, a vindictive relative or nosy neighbor can collect a $10,000 bounty for winning a lawsuit against an abortion provider and, possibly, putting them out of business.
It’s like the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act on steroids. Already, a self-described “Christian” group has put up a website, ProLifeWhistleblower.com, inviting people to inform on anybody obtaining or facilitating abortions. The cheapest form of cheap grace imaginable.
Anyway, it’s official: Every Texas woman’s womb belongs to the state. What’s more, thanks to the cunning and cowardice of the U.S. Supreme Court, every state where fundamentalist Bible-beaters hold sway will soon rush to enact similar laws — even if it ultimately means political disaster, which I think it does.
Because Americans just won’t stand for turning embittered ex-husbands and vengeful mothers-in-law into bounty hunters. So spare me the theological and biological fundamentalism. Nobody thinks abortion is a good thing, but it’s sometimes the least-bad option. Other people’s intimate life decisions are nobody else’s business, in Texas or anywhere else.
Gene Lyons is a columnist for the Arkansas Times.
Send letters to [email protected].
Texas ain’t what it used to beGene Lyonson September 9, 2021 at 10:25 pm Read More »
Bidders for two new suburban casinos will get one last chance to put their best hands together next month in hopes of landing the lucrative, long-sought gambling licenses.
More than two years after casinos were authorized for Waukegan and the south suburbs as part of a sprawling gaming expansion, state regulators on Thursday laid out the clearest timeline yet for issuing those coveted licenses.
Four applicants for the south suburban license and three for Waukegan will make public presentations of their proposals at a special Oct. 13 meeting of the Illinois Gaming Board, which could give initial approvals to the winning projects by mid-January.
Gaming Board Administrator Marcus Fruchter said the presentations will help in “narrowing the field down to three finalists” for the south suburban gambling house, as required under the Illinois gambling law signed by Gov. J.B. Pritzker in June of 2019.
The Waukegan field is already down to three bidders, but those developers will also have a chance to “explain why each would be suitable for licensure,” Fruchter said during a board meeting Thursday.
The eventual six total finalists will then make their “best and final offers” for the licenses in a competitive bidding process, according to Fruchter. Winners could get the early green light to start breaking ground by the second week of January.
That’ll mark two and a half years since Pritzker’s signature created the suburban licenses in a package that promises to nearly double the number of places to bet across the state.
“I understand COVID made delays, but that’s an awfully slow process. That’s a snail’s pace,” said state Rep. Anthony DeLuca, a Chicago Heights Democrat who wrote a letter to Pritzker last month calling on him to “spur IGB into action.” The letter was also signed by Blue Island state Rep. Bob Rita, who shepherds all gaming legislation in Springfield.
State Rep. Bob Rita (right) chats with Marcus Fruchter, administrator of the Illinois Gaming Board, during the public opening of BetRivers Sportsbook in Des Plaines in March 2020.Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times
“It’s disappointing that the fact we have a date in October — still more than a month away — is exciting progress. At least now we have substantive information showing that the process is moving along,” DeLuca said.
Fruchter, who has blamed the pandemic for the licensing delays, said the Gaming Board is doing its best to pick winners “in an ethical, expeditious, transparent, independent and thorough manner.”
At the same time, his perennially understaffed agency has also been tasked with vetting other new casino applicants while also policing an expansion in video gaming and building the framework of Illinois’ entirely new legal sports betting industry from the ground up.
Pritzker, who is counting on the new gambling tax revenue to help fund an ambitious $45 billion capital infrastructure plan, has stayed out of the fray.
The suburban applications were delayed further earlier this year as the Gaming Board struggled to find a consultant to handle the bidding process.
Guests play roulette at Excalibur Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas last year. Casino developers will make their final pitches next month for licenses in Waukegan and Chicago’s south suburbs.Getty
The agency has already given preliminary approvals to new casinos in Rockford and downstate Williamson County, as well as at Hawthorne Race Course in Stickney and at the Fairmount Park racetrack near East St. Louis. None of those selections had to go through competitive bidding.
But the Waukegan and south suburban processes are still well ahead of the crown jewel of the 2019 gaming expansion: the newly authorized Chicago mega-casino. After a tepid response from major casino corporations, Mayor Lori Lightfoot pushed back the city’s application deadline to Oct. 29. It’ll be months before the city picks a developer, let alone advances a proposal to the Gaming Board.
Yet another new casino is in the pipeline in Danville, but they’re behind schedule too, with a new application following an initial bid that fell apart last year.
The Waukegan applicants include a group led by billionaire Neil Bluhm’s Rush Street Gaming, which already runs the state’s biggest existing gambling cash cow, Rivers Casino in Des Plaines. Bluhm is also weighing a bid for the Chicago casino.
His Waukegan proposal is up against bids from Las Vegas-based developer Full House Resorts and Lakeside Casino LLC, a company led by former Grayslake state Sen. Michael Bond, who already has his own video gaming company.
Neil Bluhm, chairman of Rivers Casino, talks with a reporter during the public opening of BetRivers Sportsbook at Rivers Casino in Des Plaines last year.Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times file
The four south suburban proposals, each backed by their respective suburban host, come from Calumet City, Lynwood, Matteson and a site that straddles the border of Homewood and East Hazel Crest.
“This will create jobs and economic opportunity for families,” said DeLuca, who added that he doesn’t have a horse in the race. “That’s what this is about. Not creating new gamblers, but getting people who are spending $100 right across the border in Indiana to stimulate the economy here, where it’s needed so badly.”
The special Gaming Board meeting is scheduled for 9 a.m. Oct. 13 and will be open to the public. It’s not yet known if the meeting will be held in person or streamed online, as has been the case for most of the pandemic.
