Excerpts from recent editorials in newspapers in Illinois
August 14, 2016
The (Champaign) News-Gazette
Watch that wallet
Voters will have some costly economic decisions to make and endure in the November election and afterward.
Taxpayers - be ye city, county or state - had better get ready.
Public officials at all levels are chomping at the bit to get into your wallets.
That's not to say they don't have good reasons to ask your money to become taxpayer money - government, like people, has legitimate needs too. But when neither has enough, something has to give.
So the future is pretty much written in stone with an exclamation point in the form of a dollar sign - $.
The Champaign school board is putting the finishing touches on a roughly $200 million property tax proposal for massive school construction and renovation.
The Champaign County Board is similarly positioning itself to ask voters to approve a quarter-cent sale tax hike to pay for facility improvements that include closing the downtown jail and expanding the current satellite jail.
Finally, House Speaker Michael Madigan - one way or the other - will get the state income tax hike he's been advocating for more than two years, and it will be a doozy. Assuming the state's budget mess ever gets worked out, Madigan can be expected to push for the current 3.75 percent state income tax to increase to around 5 percent. Before the Legislature increased the rate in 2011, the state income tax was set at 3 percent.
Other tax proposals also are making their way to the surface, including suggestions that property taxes be increased to support the purely optional decision to maintain a money-losing Champaign County Nursing Home.
And don't forget the federal government: Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, the likely winner in November, has a broad array of tax hike proposals. She says they're aimed at mostly upper-income earners, but that's what politicians always say when they put a knife to taxpayers' throats and demand their wallets.
So the message seems to be clear - look out.
Things might be different if the country or state had a growing income that was producing natural revenue growth. But it's not.
The only real good news on the economic front right now is relatively low unemployment of less than 5 percent. But that number is misleading. Unemployment numbers are so because so many people have dropped out of the workplace - they've simply given up on finding a job so they've quit looking. That display of hopelessness allows the government to not count them as unemployed.
Economic optimists repeatedly cited the fact that the economy continues to growth, and there's no question that things have been - and still could be - worse. But public opinion polls report that, despite the positive growth rate, substantial numbers of people believe that the 2008-09 recession is still with us.
A recovery that is frequently characterized as a continuing recession isn't much of a recovery. But that's where we're at.
Everybody is being squeezed. Neither President Barack Obama and nor this state's elected leadership is advocating an economic growth package a la President Reagan in the 1980s and President Clinton in the 1990s.
These are tough times. The question is how much tougher things will get and for whom.
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August 11, 2016
(Arlington Heights) Daily Herald
The fight to stem heroin addiction must continue
The recent death of Michael Szot, the Geneva 23-year-old we wrote about in this space Tuesday, unfortunately is a reminder of the work still to be done to fight heroin abuse in the suburbs and nationwide.
Szot was sentenced to four years probation, a year of work release jail time and 200 hours of community service after a 2014 fatal drunken-driving crash in Naperville. He spoke to high school students about his bad decisions that led to the crash.
But he died in June at Waubonsee Community College in Sugar Grove due to "combined (heroin, fentanyl and diphenhydramine) drug intoxication." His death is a high-profile example of what Kane County Coroner Rob Russell talked about just last month.
"We've had a record-shattering heroin death year so far," Russell told the Kane County Board. "And the totals I'm talking about don't include some we're still awaiting toxicology results. So there will be more. And those totals don't include the synthetic fentanyl deaths that we're also seeing come onto the scene."
It was grim news. Russell said there were 19 heroin deaths confirmed between Dec. 1 through the start of July. The most recorded in Kane County in one year is 27 in 2012.
The spike comes despite efforts locally, statewide and nationally to stem the rise of heroin abuse and heroin deaths. It points to the need of police departments, local governments, addiction experts, schools, parents and others to continue their efforts to educate the public -- youth in particular -- to the dangers of heroin and other drugs.
In Kane County, sheriff's police and many local departments have begun carrying naloxone, an opiate reversal agent to help stem the tide of overdose deaths that reached a critical point in Illinois just two years ago. DuPage County officials last month said 86 lives have been saved in DuPage since the beginning of the year with the use of naloxone. Lake County also has seen positive results. That's good news and bad news: lives are saved but so many are still caught in the throes of addiction.
More work is needed. Illinois, however, is leading in the fight. A state law approved last year now has morphed into a federal law signed by the President late last month that makes naloxone much more readily available. The Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act is also known as Lali's Law, named in memory of a Stevenson High School graduate who died of a heroin overdose. Its passage is proof that work started in communities just like those in the suburbs can be effective. We mustn't give up. Our kids need help.
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August 11, 2016
Belleville News-Democrat
Custody cases must leave children whole
Families are rarely perfect, but imagine the scene at your dead son's funeral when his ex-wife says she is taking back the girls that you have cared for and raised during the past 12 years. It just makes a person cringe.
Maybe mom wasn't there as much as she could have been. Maybe she got behind on child support. Maybe she did the best she could with the time she had with her girls. Maybe she had issues in her life that she needed to work through so she could get to a better place. Maybe she felt hostility and alienation.
Maybe grandma got in trouble with the law for financial dealings with an elderly person in her care. Maybe she was there when the girls were miserably sick through the long night. Maybe she fought an expensive legal fight for custody of the granddaughters she loved.
Not a perfect family. No one is without some flaw.
But the well-being of the girls is the main thing, even to these legal combatants. Their actions make it clear that both parent and grandparents care deeply about the girls, even if their opponent in court would strongly object to that idea.
Illinois law always favors the biological parent, and maybe with good reason. Grandparent visitation rights are pretty well defined, but custody rights are less defined except for some extreme circumstances.
Few things are as tough as family court, and that is why Solomon's resolution of a child custody case is a story of biblical proportions.