Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Aug. 3 announced a $5 million advertising campaign with the tagline “It only works if you wear it” in an effort to encourage the wearing of face coverings.

He announced the campaign at the Illinois Emergency Management Agency Operations Center in Springfield and said the costs are reimbursable through federal coronavirus relief funds.

Pritzker said the campaign will permeate “really every kind of medium that you can think of,” including “a good deal on social media,” cable, broadcast TV, Hulu, YouTube and many other platforms.

The added push for face coverings, which have been mandated in the state since May 1, came as the state’s rolling seven-day positivity rate for COVID-19 tests hit four percent that day.

When asked if the state or local governments should impose fines for those not wearing masks, Pritzker said “the idea here is not to chase people down on the street and say, you know, ‘hey you're not wearing a mask and I'm going to throw a ticket at you.’”

He said the first priority is to ask those without masks to put one on.

“People who refuse to wear a mask, people who are entering public premises where they know they're supposed to wear a mask, and who have been reminded, and who aren't, those people certainly should be, you know, reminded again by police and ultimately if they're absolutely refusing in public, they're putting other people at risk, so it's worthy of considering fine at a local level,” he said.

When asked if the Legislature should return to Springfield to codify some of the mandates Pritzker has put in place, he said the legislative body “hasn't been willing to move forward on a mask mandate.”

Pritzker warns of cuts

Pritzker said Aug. 3 Illinois faces the prospect of having to make deep spending cuts over the rest of the fiscal year if Congress does not pass an economic relief package that helps states make up for the massive loss in revenue they’ve seen since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

As a result of the virus and associated stay-at-home orders, base revenues flowing into state coffers fell during the fiscal year that ended June 30 by a little more than $1.1 billion.

In May, state lawmakers passed a budget for the new fiscal year that began July 1 that was roughly $5 billion out of balance compared to revenue estimates available at the time. The plan was to fill in the gap by borrowing from the Federal Reserve and by passage of a proposed constitutional amendment to allow the state to levy a “graduated” income tax that would impose higher tax rates on higher levels of income.

The budget authorized borrowing roughly $4.5 billion through the Federal Reserve’s Municipal Liquidity Facility, something the Fed board approved earlier this year as a way to help state and large local governments make up for the loss of revenue they’ve seen.

In Illinois, the plan was to borrow that money and pay it back with aid that lawmakers expected Congress to approve.

Although the U.S. House has passed its own version of a relief package that includes about $500 billion to help states make up for their lost revenue, the latest Senate proposal does not include such aid.

And as recently as July 23, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told CNBC, “the president is not going to bail out Chicago and New York and other states that prior to the coronavirus were mismanaged.”

Without federal aid, however, Pritzker said there will be significant cuts and job layoffs in Illinois and throughout the country.

Mendoza sees fiscal danger as well

Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza is adding her voice to those warning the state will face dire consequences if the federal government does not approve an economic aid package for state and local governments.

“Without question, Illinois — and every other state, frankly — will need financial support from the federal government to bring much-needed stability back to state and local government,” Mendoza wrote in the latest edition of her Fiscal Focus magazine, which she distributed in a news release Aug. 3.

Mendoza, a Democrat who has served as comptroller since December 2016, noted the state began the fiscal year on July 1 with a backlog of past-due bills totaling nearly $5.4 billion. But that was only because the state borrowed $1.2 billion from the Federal Reserve’s Municipal Liquidity Facility — money that has to be paid back in its entirety, with 3.52-percent interest, during the current fiscal year that ends June 30, 2021.

She also noted the state has borrowed another $400 million from the state treasurer’s office and the state’s general revenue fund still owes about $763 million that it borrowed from other funds in previous years, which has to be repaid in installments through 2024.

She said the total amount due in the current fiscal year between borrowing from the Fed, the treasurer’s office and interfund borrowing is $1.63 billion.

But as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to ravage Illinois and the rest of the country, revenues flowing into state coffers are expected to fall significantly.

“As Illinois considers the possibility of engaging in additional borrowing, it must be cautioned this is not ‘free money.’ It must be repaid,” she said. “Adding some $6.5 billion in potential borrowing, especially with interest rates of more than 4 (percent), to the $2.66 billion in short-term borrowing already owed would have consequences on Illinois’ financial outlook for years to come.”

Among those consequences, she said, would be another sharp spike in the state’s backlog of bills outside of the core payments for debt service, pensions, K-12 education, employee payroll and social and human services.

Southern Illinois spike

The novel coronavirus is worse in southern Illinois than it is in the Chicago area and college parties thrown by returning students risk exacerbating the spread of COVID-19, Pritzker said at an appearance at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale on Aug. 4.

Southern Illinois’ Region 5 of the state’s COVID-19 mitigation plan had a test positivity rate of 7.3 percent as of Aug. 1, while the Region 4 Metro East area on the Missouri border had a rate of 7.2 percent. Those were pushing the 8-percent threshold which would initiate state action to mitigate the spread of the virus.

The other regions range from 3.1 percent in eastern Illinois to 6.4 percent in Kankakee and Will Counties. Region 11, which includes all of Chicago, had a 4.9 percent positivity rate.

If a region hits the 8 percent positivity rate for three days, or if the positivity rate increases for seven of 10 days along with sustained seven-day increase in hospital admissions, it would also initiate mitigation efforts. Those include moving some sectors of the economy back to restrictions seen in previous phases of the state’s reopening plan.

Unemployment fraud

The state has identified more than 120,000 instances of fraud in its unemployment system since March, approximately 114,000 of which targeted the federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program that has been ripe for exploitation nationwide, according to the FBI.

That program, passed by Congress as part of COVID-19 relief efforts, allows independent contractors and others to apply for unemployment benefits they would otherwise not be entitled to. The program launched in Illinois in May.

Pritzker said at a COVID-19 update in Chicago on Aug. 5 the federal program was “poorly designed” and fraud calls have exacerbated issues state unemployment systems are already having in processing claims.

“This is a brand new program that the federal government rushed to develop and then left each state to create its own separate system,” Pritzker said. “As a result, there were massive holes for illegal fraudsters to steal federal dollars from taxpayers across the country.”

He said the state has been asked to cooperate with federal investigators, and noted anyone that has not applied for unemployment benefits but receives either a debit card or correspondence from the Illinois Department of Employment Security should report it.

“In addition to working with law enforcement, IDES is also taking every action to track down and cut off fraudulent claims, reviewing flagged files to identify commonalities and patterns,” Pritzker said. “The highly experienced money launderers who have perpetrated these crimes use the same payment methods that regular filers do. For that reason, the IDES can't simply cut off common dispersal mechanisms that also serve as lifelines for innocent users.”

Pritzker said IDES has processed more than two million total claims in 2020, so the number of fraudulent claims “pales in comparison to the number of Illinoisans in genuine need of assistance.”

Fraud can be reported at IDES.illinois.gov and those reporting will be called back in the order of submission.

Unemployment update

The U.S. Department of Labor reported on Aug. 6 there were 24,712 first time unemployment claims filed in Illinois during the week ending Aug. 1, a decrease of more than 8,500 from the previous week.

The number of continued unemployment claims in the state remained historically high at 629,814 despite a decrease of nearly 19,000 from the previous week.

Nationally, there were nearly 1.2 million initial claims during the week ending Aug. 1, a decrease of nearly 250,000 from the previous week. There were nearly 13 million continued unemployment claims for the week nationally, a decrease of 70,000 from the previous week.

The Illinois Department of Employment Security also announced 20 weeks of state extended benefits are available to those who exhaust the allotted 26 weeks of regular state unemployment and the additional 13 weeks of federal Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation benefits.

IDES encouraged those with unemployment questions to visit IDES.Illinois.gov first before calling the unemployment hotlines, which continue to receive a high volume of calls.

Juvenile justice reform

The state of Illinois plans to begin placing minors in the justice system in smaller, community-based detention centers that focus more on providing intervention services and education.

Pritzker and Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton announced plans to overhaul the juvenile justice system during a news conference on July 31, in Chicago.

A four-year blueprint split into three phases would move the Department of Juvenile Justice from “an antiquated theory of juvenile incarceration” in larger holding facilities into what the governor called a “21st century transformative model.”

Phase 1 is to start immediately with increased investment in community-based interventions and re-entry programs. Phase 2, starting next year, involves housing incarcerated youths in smaller, dorm-like facilities closer to their homes. Phase 3, also set to begin next year, would involve continued investment into communities and the transfer of prison-like facilities from DJJ to the Illinois Department of Corrections for housing overflow adult prison populations.

According to Pritzker, data has shown for decades the Illinois juvenile justice system is too punitive and discriminatory. While the total number of youths in custody has decreased from 282 in January 2019 to 97 by June 2020, the governor said Black children still make up more than 70 percent of those in DJJ care despite being only 15 percent of the under-18 population in Illinois.

Outside of claims of systemic racism, another point of contention is the current system just doesn’t work. Pritzker said between 2010 and 2018, an average of 55 percent of juvenile offenders released from DJJ custody eventually returned.

According to DJJ’s seven-page overview, a benefit of the transformative model would be increased positive outcomes while also saving DJJ and IDOC money.

Asian-American Census Day

Elected officials in Illinois who make up the Asian-American Caucus, along with local community organizations, held Asian-American Census Day on July 31, to promote participation in the census among Asian Illinoisans.

During a news conference in Chicago’s Chinatown Square, Rep. Theresa Mah, D-Chicago, spoke about how the census has benefited the Asian community and why taking part is important.

“Ten years ago, the population that I represent was split into four different state representative districts, effectively giving them no power or say,” Mah said. “The census was really important in helping us draw the boundaries for our current district to empower Asian-Americans in this area and give them a voice in state government.”

Before the 2010 census, no Asian-Americans held a statewide elected position in Illinois. In 2016, Illinois elected Asian-Americans to federal, state and county governments simultaneously for the first time. That election also sent Mah to the General Assembly as the first Asian-American to do so, representing a portion of Chicago that includes Chinatown.

Outside of elected representation, speakers at Asian-American Census Day pointed to Chinese language, Hindi, Korean, Urdu and Arabic ballots and registration forms as examples of access to the legislative process Asian-Americans received due to the census.

The state’s self-response rate for the 2020 census stands at 67.5 percent, which is lower than 2010’s response rate of 70.5 percent. While the Illinois response rate is higher than the national average, the chance of losing federal funding and representation in the U.S. House of Representatives as a result of residents being undercounted looms large. Outreach normally done by community groups has been complicated by the coronavirus pandemic.

AG files amicus brief

Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul and Washington, D.C. Attorney General Karl A. Racine led a group of 20 attorneys general in filing an amicus brief Aug. 3 in federal court supporting a lawsuit challenging a Florida law that prevents previously incarcerated residents from voting unless they pay all legal financial obligations tied to their sentence.

In a news release distributed Aug. 3 to announce the filing, Raoul called Florida’s law a “poll tax,” which was a Jim Crow-era policy intended to keep Black Americans from voting.

“Pay-to-vote laws are discriminatory and serve mainly to suppress Black and other minority voters,” Raoul said in the news release. “I will continue to fight discrimination in any form, which includes ensuring that people who have completed their sentences regain their fundamental voting rights.”

Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service covering state government and distributed to more than 400 newspapers statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.