Chicago Tribune. April 4, 2024.
Editorial: Republicans are right to call out failings of Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s Illinois Prisoner Review Board
Jayden Perkins’ death shines a tragic spotlight on Prisoner Review Board
The horrifying case of Crosetti Brand has surfaced an issue that’s been percolating in Springfield for four years: the performance of the Illinois Prisoner Review Board.
The state body, comprising up to 15 members and by law required to include representatives of both parties, is responsible (among other things) for the critical job of deciding whether and when criminals should be paroled. It was the Prisoner Review Board that ruled last month it couldn’t continue to hold Brand when he clearly committed acts that should have been deemed parole violations and should have returned him to prison. Brand was initially paroled late last year after serving eight years of a 16-year sentence for home invasion and aggravated battery involving an ex-girlfriend.
After the board decided it lacked evidence to continue holding him despite his threats early this year to a different woman he had dated more than a decade before, he was released and the following day attacked her, according to police and prosecutors. Her 11-year-old son, Jayden Perkins, was killed on March 13 trying to defend his 33-year-old pregnant mother, who was badly injured but survived.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker reacted by accepting the resignations of the Prisoner Review Board member who heard Brand’s case and the board’s chairman. Those were proper steps to take.
But the issue of the board and how it’s operated under Pritzker is far from settled. Senate Republicans who sounded the alarm for years on questionable parole decisions (well before the Crosetti Brand fiasco) now are proposing wide-ranging legislation to reform the board and to increase penalties for violations of orders of protection in domestic situations. Among other things, the bill would require more stringent qualifications for board members, who are paid nearly $100,000 a year.
“We have been raising red flags,” state Sen. Jason Plummer, R-Edwardsville, said Tuesday at a news conference to unveil the bill. “We have been warning about the lack of qualifications of some of the governor’s appointees for years. Literally years. … I don’t know why it’s taken a dead child for people to recognize some of these people are not qualified to serve on the board.”
Plummer, the top Senate Republican on the Executive Appointments Committee, said the board under Pritzker has been more than twice as likely to parole convicts, including murderers, than the past three governors, including two Democrats.
Those parolees include some notorious examples such as Chester Weger — the so-called Starved Rock Killer, convicted of the 1960 murder of three women out for a hike — who was released in 2020 at age 83. Another was the 2021 release of Johnny Veal, who along with a second man was convicted of killing two Chicago police officers in 1970. Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, generally sympathetic to restorative-justice and rehabilitation arguments, opposed Veal’s parole, describing the cop killings as “cold-blooded executions” and adding that Veal boasted about it.
Yet another was Ray Larsen, given a 100-to-300-year sentence for murdering a 16-year-old fishing in a forest preserve in 1972. The board moved to release him in 2021, and Larsen immediately violated parole and was a fugitive for a week before authorities caught up with him at a local hospital. While Larsen was unaccounted for, Foxx’s office warned surviving family members of Frank Casolari, Larsen’s victim, since Larsen previously had threatened to harm family members, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.
Under Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner, the Prisoner Review Board voted 12-0 to deny Larsen parole. Under Pritzker, the board granted Larsen’s release on a 9-3 vote.
Republicans in Springfield often struggle to be heard, since Democrats enjoy overwhelming majorities in both legislative chambers. But they’ve been right to call out the governor on the failures of the Prisoner Review Board, and Democrats in the capital should have heeded their warnings far earlier.
Like it or not, Pritzker bears part of the responsibility for the nightmare Jayden Perkins’ family has endured. Many of his Prisoner Review Board appointees have reflected a philosophy emphasizing criminal rehabilitation over victims’ concerns, and the board’s decisions have followed suit.
So what now?
We hope it goes without saying that Democrats must engage honestly with Republicans. Senate Majority Leader Don Harmon, D-Oak Park, says he’ll review the GOP proposal. Hopefully, that review won’t be just cursory. If Republicans’ proposal to require a minimum 20 years of consecutive experience in the criminal justice system isn’t the right prescription, Democrats need to negotiate a set of qualifications to reassure the public that board members won’t be more sympathetic to criminals than to victims.
The Pritzker administration says it already either is doing what the GOP bill calls for or is responding to the Jayden Perkins tragedy with enhanced training around domestic violence for board members.
While lawmakers begin the process of considering systemic changes, the governor himself needs to reassure Illinoisans that he’s committed to a parole system that’s fairer to victims and better accounts for the safety of the public than the one over which he’s presided so far.
Here’s a good way to start. There currently are 11 members of the Prisoner Review Board following the two recent resignations; four seats are vacant. Pritzker would do well to quickly find four new appointees with solid public-safety bona fides that garner Republican support.
Bipartisan agreement around the handling of an issue as sensitive as early release of violent criminals is in the governor’s ongoing political interest. It’s good public policy as well.
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Chicago Sun-Times. April 7, 2024.
Editorial: Take a wait-and-see approach before eliminating subminimum wage for tipped workers in Illinois
Lawmakers in Springfield should first see how Chicago restaurants fare under the city ordinance to phase out the subminimum wage. If restaurants in a foodie city like ours start struggling, that would be a big red flag.
Chicago is taking its time to fully phase out the subminimum wage for restaurant servers, bartenders and other tipped workers. It won’t be until 2028 when businesses will be required, under an ordinance passed by the City Council in October, to give all those employees a base pay of $15.80 per hour, the citywide minimum wage.
But already, some progressive Illinois lawmakers are pushing forward on a proposed bill that would eliminate the state’s subminimum wage for tipped workers across the state over a two-year period.
We support the end goal here, which is making sure that workers earn a decent living. But the restaurant business operates on notoriously thin profit margins, and it seems like every week we read or hear about another beloved eatery shutting down. Each closure is a blow to customers but most of all, to workers and restaurant owners. Something is lost every time a distinctive small neighborhood restaurant closes.
So we urge state lawmakers to follow the same take-it-slow approach. Let the proposal simmer a bit, continue negotiating with the industry, and most of all, first gauge how the city’s restaurants fare after Chicago implements its ordinance. That ordinance will add an 8% raise in July on the current $9.48 hourly wage for tipped workers.
A watch-and-wait approach makes sense especially for the sake of smaller restaurants, as we noted last year regarding Chicago’s proposal.
If ma-and-pa establishments in a bustling foodie city like ours start struggling to stay afloat, or even fail to survive as Chicago’s subminimum wage is phased out, taking the same step so quickly for restaurants elsewhere in Illinois could have a much more drastic effect, especially downstate, where fewer tourists venture.
The Illinois Restaurant Association helped to negotiate the five-year phase-in for Chicago’s ordinance, but the group is staunchly opposed to the newest tipped worker state proposal, arguing that House Bill 5345 would hurt “smaller, family-run and minority-owned businesses the most,” as the Sun-Times’ Tina Sfondeles reported last week.
Menu prices are sure to increase, making restaurant visits less appetizing. We’re also wondering: Will customers continue to eat out as often and tip generously — or at all — when prices increase and service charges and other fees are added to bills? And what about those servers who already make more than minimum wage because of tips, especially in bustling, high-end establishments? Nationally, according to a 2022 survey by the National Restaurant Association, tipped workers make an average of $27 an hour.
State Rep. Lisa Hernandez, D-Cicero, the bill’s sponsor, said she won’t make any hasty decisions and vowed during a committee meeting Wednesday the measure won’t be put to vote in the full House before negotiating amendments, according to Capitol News Illinois. That’s wise. Suburbs like Cicero that are neighbors to Chicago would benefit from a higher wage to help keep workers from taking jobs in the city for higher pay, as Cicero Mayor Larry Dominick argues in a recent op-ed published by the Sun-Times.
Hernandez’s proposal would require that service charges such as tips go to employees, not their bosses. It would also require that tips bring workers to the full minimum wage — currently $14 an hour in Illinois but slated to go up to $15 in 2025 — on a per shift basis, instead of weekly or biweekly.
Restaurant owners who skirt the law by failing to make up the difference when their servers’ tips don’t bring them to the full minimum wage add to the problem of low pay for tipped workers, many of whom are Black women and Latinas, as a 2021 report by the Center for American Progress pointed out. That report advocated for an incremental phase-out of the subminimum tipped wage nationwide.
Every worker deserves fair pay for a day’s work. A dash of patience and careful study will make sure that happens for tipped workers, too — without hurting restaurants and high-earning tipped workers in the process.
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Arlington Heights Daily Herald. April 5, 2024.
Editorial: Keep your eyes on the road
This month, it’s more than just dumb to text while driving.
It could also be expensive.
More than 200 law enforcement agencies throughout Illinois this month are stepping up enforcement of the state’s texting while driving law, which spells out clearly what you may and may not do behind the wheel. Here are a few salient points:
• You may not use an electronic communication device ― a cellphone, a personal assistant, table or portable computer ― to communicate with others while you’re driving.
• That includes Zoom meetings and all manner of social media sites to watch or stream video.
• That also means you may not use your phone while you’re sitting at a red light, unless you’re in park or neutral.
• As with other crimes ― and let’s call this what it is ― if you hit someone or something, drive erratically or commit another traffic offense while fiddling with your phone, the penalties multiply. You’ll face a minimum $1,000 fine.
• In Illinois, if you badly injure someone while texting and driving, you face a Class A misdemeanor, which carries with it up to a year in jail and a maximum fine of $2,500. If you kill someone, you face a Class 4 felony. That’s mandatory jail time of 1-3 years and a $25,000 fine.
The law does not apply to anyone calling in an emergency, first responders using a device in an official capacity during an emergency, truckers using CB radios, using a walkie-talkie or reading a text that appears on your vehicle’s information screen.
All of this is meant to keep your eyes on the road.
In this day of social media saturation and the expectation that you can be reached wherever you are at all times, the fear of missing out is real. We get that. But when you’re driving down the road in your hermetically sealed, climate-controlled cabin, you tend to lose sight of the fact that you’re in control of tons of steel, plastic and glass moving at a high rate of speed. Driving is an inherently dangerous activity, and despite the advent of anti-lock brakes, blind-spot sensors and lane trackers, the most important safety feature will always be you, the driver.
The AAA Foundation found that distractions remain almost half a minute even after ending whatever distracted activity you’re involved in.
In 2021, 193 people died in distracted driving crashes in Illinois, according to the Illinois State Police. Every one of them was completely avoidable.
Young drivers, burdened with a lack of experience and imbued with an aura of invincibility, are most prone to breaking the law and facing its consequences. Crash statistics bear that out.
There is nothing that can’t wait until you have an opportunity to park or pull over on a shoulder.
Be preachy about it with the young drivers in your lives. Lead by example.
As we tell our kids, driving is serious business. Please treat it as such.
END