The Spin: Trick-or-treating on, polls remain open as COVID-19 surges in Illinois | Jennifer Pritzker is politically homeless | Study: Property tax hikes exceed inflation in Cook County
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Mayor Lori Lightfoot said this morning on CNN that Halloween trick-or-treating will proceed because, well, she’d be hard-pressed to stop it. And Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Friday said polling places will be open as planned on Nov. 3.
But the surge in COVID-19 cases in Illinois is prompting business restrictions. The state announced tighter restrictions for restaurants and bars in suburban Cook County today that for now will not be allowed to open for indoor food and drink service. Likewise Metro East, which includes the Illinois area around St. Louis, will be under the same restrictions under the state’s regional mitigation plan.
Several suburbs have seen the same fate, and some bars and eateries are balking, pointing to some statewide data showing less the 10% of the cases are tied to bars. The state’s top public health official has said that number doesn’t paint the whole picture, noting that contact tracing often reveals that those who have come down with the virus frequently list a bar or restaurant as a place they’ve gone in the days leading up to their diagnosis.
In the last 20 years, property taxes have risen three times the rate of inflation, a new study from Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas shows. It offers a script to especially hard-hit homeowners along with Chicago City Council members ready to revolt against Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s proposal to raise property taxes to close a pandemic-exacerbating budget gap.
Meantime, the mayor is defending another revenue generator in her budget — going after drivers traveling 6 to 10 mph above the speed limit.
Welcome to the Spin.
It feels like the lid is being put back on the pot.
Starting midweek, suburban Cook County and the Metro East region outside St. Louis will halt indoor dining and bar service to curb the spread of COVID-19, the state announced today. Will and Kankakee counties are also under the stricter rules for a second time, and DuPage and Kane counties similarly saw rollbacks.
The Tribune’s Jamie Munks and Dan Petrella write: “The two regions will join four other regions of the state under stricter rules that also include a smaller gathering cap of 25 people. As of Wednesday, roughly half of the state’s population will be living under the tighter restrictions. A week ago, only one of the 11 regions in Pritzker’s reopening plan was subject to those rules.”
“Lake and McHenry counties hit a combined 8.1% rolling positivity rate as of Friday, which means restrictions could come within days if the rate doesn’t drop. Chicago was at 7.7%, up from 6.2% a week earlier,” Munks and Petrella note.
Data points: The state announced 4,729 newly diagnosed cases of COVID-19 and 17 additional deaths. That brings Illinois' total to 378,985 diagnosed cases and 9,522 deaths. The state’s positivity rate is now up to 6.3% on a a seven-day average, up from 5.4% a week earlier and 3.5% at the beginning of October.
“There seems to be a Covid storm on the rise and we have to get prepared,” Pritzker said during a news conference today in Peoria.
Cook County to give direct payments to suburban residents hurt by COVID-19 pandemic, the Tribune’s Alice Yin reports.
Chicago faring worse than NYC right now: During an appearance on CNN this morning, the mayor was asked why Chicago, where the positivity rate is over 7%, is doing worse than New York City. The mayor said New York and its neighbors in the Northeast aren’t seeing the surge Chicago’s neighbors in Indiana, Wisconsin and Iowa are. “Unfortunately the Midwest has consistently been up for now for the last few weeks,” Lightfoot said. “And so the virus obviously doesn’t respect to graphic boundaries. Everywhere around Chicago is going up.”
Related: Illinois hits another sad COVID-19 milestone — 5,000 deaths in long-term care — as cases rise, the Tribune’s Joe Mahr reports.
With some in-person instruction continuing for sophomores and freshmen, Lake Forest High School teachers say county health department’s COVID-19 warning being ignored by school board, reporters Karen Ann Cullotta and Daniel I. Dorfman write in the Tribune.
Blast from the past: In this final week of the campaign, former Democratic Illinois U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez is out with a new Chicago-centric ad focusing on how LGBTQ+ and immigration issues intersect. It begins with the touching story of two men, one a front-line hospital worker who was once living in the country illegally but is now a citizen who was able to marry his husband. It closes with an energetic Gutierrez saying, “Make a plan, vote.” The ad is airing on broadcast networks in the Chicago market. Watch it here. A Spanish language version will be available on social media.
Libertarian candidate in Cook County state’s attorney pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct in 2019: Brian Dennehy, who is in a three-way race against incumbent Kim Foxx, a Democrat, and Republican candidate Patrick O’Brien, told the Tribune he pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct “to dispose of the case and get on with my life.” Read Alice Yin and Christy Gutowski’s story here.
In contentious election year, political parties recruiting thousands in Illinois to keep an eye on polling places Nov. 3, the Tribune’s Dan Petrella and Kelli Smith write in a new piece here.
Voting by mail skyrockets in suburban Chicago collar counties, writes Sarah Freishtat in the Aurora Beacon News.
Column: Illinois should modernize its quaint old Supreme Court justice retention system: “If you think it’s weird that, in one of the most important, expensive and high-profile races in Illinois this year, Illinois Supreme Court Justice Thomas Kilbride is, in effect, running for retention against ‘Somebody Else’ and needs to win in a landslide to claim victory, you’re right,” Tribune columnist Eric Zorn writes. Read it here.
The “Sister Mayors” – all Democrats – take on the debate questions they say GOP ticket of President Trump, Vice President Mike Pence dodged at recent debates: Mayor Lightfoot, who was part of the “sister mayors” lineup, fielded the question asked of Pence about abortion and turned it into a sharp critique of the former Indiana governor, saying he signed legislation restricting choice on the matter that - making him “decidedly anti-choice” and “anti-woman.” Watch the video here.
Jennifer Pritzker, a retired Army colonel and founder and chair of the Pritzker Military Museum & Library in Chicago, and a cousin to Democratic Gov. Pritzker writes in this Tribune op-ed: “As a social liberal and fiscal conservative, it’s not clear that I have a place in this political environment.
“Although I’m still a registered Republican, I no longer support or identify with the party. Its current leader has failed both his party and our country, as made clear, just to start, by the more than 222,000 deaths from COVID-19 — a disease that our top scientists agree didn’t have to cause so much human misery and economic pain. Yet I’m certainly not a Democrat, as that party leans toward government overreach that puts individual liberties at risk.” Read the whole piece here.
Lately, Jennifer Pritzker has made headlines for donating big bucks to defeat cousin J.B. Pritzker’s effort to get voters to approve a constitutional amendment that would dump the flat income tax in favor of a graduated system where the levy rises with income.
Opening the wallet again: “Ken Griffin, in a billionaire battle with Gov. J.B. Pritzker over the governor’s effort to switch Illinois to a graduated-rate income tax system, pumped another $7 million of his wealth to oppose it,” the Tribune’s Rick Pearson writes, citing state campaign finance reports. The issue is on the November ballot.
As this rate, those big donations combined could have made a small dent, for instance, in the state’s $12.8 billion in unpaid bills. To date, Griffin, the founder and CEO of Chicago-based Citadel, a hedge fund and investment firm, has dumped $53.75 million while Pritzker, an heir to the Hyatt Hotel fortune, has kicked in $56.6 million.
Op-ed: Penny Pritzker, former Commerce secretary in the Obama-Biden White House, writes in Yahoo Finance: “President Trump ... promised greater job growth than President Obama, but in his first 36 months in office, fewer jobs were created per month than during that same period in President Obama’s first term.” She goes on to write: “The Biden economic plan will not only help our country recover from the disastrous effects of the Trump coronavirus response — it will create millions of good paying jobs.” Read the full piece here.
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New study shows Cook County property taxes climbing higher than other bills
In the past 20 years, the total property tax tab went up by 99%, while the regional cost of living went up by just 36%, the Tribune’s Hal Dardick and John Byrne write in a new piece about Cook County Treasurer Pappas’ just-released tax study.
Pappas, who as county treasurer is an elected leader who likes to remind people she sends out and collects the tax bill but doesn’t set the rates, tells the Tribune she was spurred to conduct the study by taxpayers who have flooded her office with stories of not being able to afford their tax bills.
It arrives as “Lightfoot — facing mounting city costs amid an economic downturn fueled by pandemic restrictions — has proposed another significant property tax increase for next year and raising property taxes every year after that by the rate of inflation,” Dardick and Byrne write.
Chicago police officers responded to a domestic battery call at the home of former top cop Eddie Johnson — It happened Friday night, the Tribune’s Paige Fry and Jeremy Gorner report here. The incident happened hours after the Tribune’s Megan Crepeau and Gregory Pratt reported that a Cook County grand jury has requested extensive documents about the October 2019 night Johnson went out drinking with a subordinate, then was found asleep at the wheel near his Bridgeport home. The incident led to Johnson’s firing. Read that report here.
The Tribune’s John Byrne writes: "Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s budget team began its City Council defense of her tax-heavy 2021 spending plan on Monday, telling skeptical aldermen a $94 million property tax hike is an appropriate way to help balance the city’s books.
More from Byrne: “While Chief Financial Officer Jennie Huang Bennett pitched the increases as reasonable, North Side Ald. Harry Osterman, 48th, pointed out residents also get slammed regularly by county property reassessments and tax increases from other public agencies, and it adds up, he said.”
“And South Side Ald. Sophia King, 4th, asked why the administration didn’t dip further into its $900 million reserves, rather than taxing and relying on so-called scoop and toss refinancing that can end up costing taxpayers more to pay off in the long run,” Byrne writes. “Bennett countered that the city could take years to recover from the pandemic. Relying heavily on reserves now could leave the coffers empty or further erode Chicago’s poor credit rating in years to come, she said.” Read the full story here.
Mayor Lightfoot defended her proposal to issue speeding tickets to drivers caught going as little as 6 miles per hour over the posted limit, during a morning news conference. But some aldermen are already holding their nose over that proposal.
What about cracking down on Lake Shore Drive speeders? Far North Side Ald. Maria Hadden, 49th, said the administration should go after speeders on Lake Shore Drive rather than ticketing people driving near neighborhood schools and parks.
“Living and representing the 49th Ward, I’ve got Rogers Park, beyond Lake Shore Drive, and as someone who used to frequently use Lake Shore Drive, when I think about opportunities for increasing safety, especially traffic safety and how it could overlap with enforcement, instead of grabbing folks – I know it’s not just going to be in the central business district, but in the neighborhoods – for going 6 miles per hour over the speed limit, couldn’t we just do more enforcement on Lake Shore Drive?” Hadden asked during today’s City Council hearing on the mayor’s budget plan,
“I think of all the folks who are coming from the northern suburbs on north Lake Shore Drive, they treat it like a super highway,” she said. “And I know the same is on south Lake Shore Drive and South Shore Drive. So just throwing it out there, if we’re looking for more revenue, we could really increase safety. People fly 70 miles per hour in a 40-mile zone.” (John Byrne)
Amazon’s massive Chicago-area expansion fueled by $741 million in taxpayer money: The Better Government Association’s John Lippert and WBEZ-FM’s Natalie Moore examine the anatomy of how the online retail behemoth makes a deal. From the sounds of things, these folks have a future in Illinois politics if they get out of the next-day delivery business. Read the story here.
Other city news: Chicago police officers responded to a domestic battery call at the home of former top cop Eddie Johnson — It happened Friday night, the Tribune’s Paige Fry and Jeremy Gorner report here. The incident happened hours after the Tribune’s Megan Crepeau and Gregory Pratt reported that a Cook County grand jury has requested extensive documents about the October 2019 night Johnson went out drinking with a subordinate, then was found asleep at the wheel near his Bridgeport home. The incident led to Johnson’s firing. Read that report here.
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