A former Morgan County employee who pleaded guilty in 2018 to the theft of thousands of taxpayers dollars and was arrested again in January for illegal use of a business’ credit card is heading to prison.

46 year old Stacy S. Brickey of Woodson was sentenced to 5 years in the Illinois Department of Corrections in Morgan County Court yesterday for fraudulent use of a credit card.

Brickey was arrested in January after a former employer noticed fraudulent purchases made on a company credit card and notified Jacksonville Police.

Brickey pleaded guilty in 2018 to one count of theft after she used a Morgan County credit card to buy personal items such as groceries, gift cards, and a generator during her time as an administrative assistant for the Morgan County Highway Department.

Brickey was remanded back to the custody of the Morgan County Sheriff’s Department after yesterday’s sentencing.

An Adams County woman remains behind bars after a motion seeking her release from jail was denied yesterday.

37 year old Natasha L. McBride of Quincy, who is charged in connection with a fatal 2020 traffic crash that killed a Rushville grandmother and her grandchildren, will remain in Adams County Jail held on $5 million bond.

Adams County Circuit Judge Amy Lannerd denied Public Defender Todd Nelson’s motion seeking McBride’s release that said that the prosecution could produce no compelling reasons to keep McBride incarcerated pending her trial.

Nelson filed the motion on April 25^th, and the following day visiting Cass County Judge Timothy J. Wessel ordered a status hearing set for Monday on the motion.

According to Muddy River News, Judge Lannerd cleared the courtroom for 30 minutes to discuss the motion with Nelson and Adams County Assistant State’s Attorney Josh Jones before issuing her decision to deny the motion.

Lannerd has set further status on the case for May 24^th.

UPDATE: The Schewe Community Center was reopened late yesterday afternoon after repairs.

The Illinois State Fire Marshal’s Office has closed the Schewe Community Center in Beardstown until further notice.

The Beardstown Park District made the announcement on Monday on Facebook, saying that a sewage smell was the source of the closure and that the Park District was attempting to make repairs.

The Park District said in the post that they believe they know the root of the problem and will be attempting to put fixes in place to reopen the building.

The announcement says that summer programs for the Park District will continue as scheduled. The Sudbrink Water Park is still scheduled to open on time on Saturday, May 28^th and all high school and little league ballgames will continue at the park.

The Beardstown Park Pool House across from the Armory will be open to take summer program registrations from 8AM-1PM and 3-6PM on weekdays, and from 8AM to Noon on Saturday.

Park District leadership has refused further comment and have asked the public to continue to watch the Park District’s Facebook Page for more updates.

Illinois’ top education official is urging school districts to stop working with police to ticket students for misbehavior.

On the heels of a report published jointly by Pro Publica and the Chicago Tribune on Thursday, Illinois State Superintendent of Education Carmen Ayala said the costly fines associated with the tickets can be immensely harmful to families, and there’s no evidence they improve students’ behavior at school.

Ayala says that superintendents who refer students to police for ticketing have “abdicated their responsibility for student discipline to local law enforcement.” Ayala says the State Board of Education intends to survey school districts to learn more about their disciplinary practices and look at issues she says that are non-compliant with state law.

Governor J.B. Pritzker’s Office says it’s something that his office immediately jumped on to begin talks with legislators to close loopholes and address the issue in state law.

The report showed that local police are issuing thousands of tickets a year to students for violations of municipal laws, often for misconduct as minor as littering or vaping. Each ticket can come with hundreds of dollars in fines or fees, forcing many families into payment plans and some districts send debt from school tickets to collection agencies.

An Illinois law passed in 2015 prohibits schools from using fines to discipline students. Instead, the investigation found, schools have been referring students to police, who then write costly tickets — taking advantage of what Ayala referred to as a “loophole” in the law. Students received more than 11,800 tickets for school misbehavior in the last three school years, reporters found.

Locally, the report noted that Jacksonville School District 117 issued 19 tickets to students during the past three school years. The report could not confirm if those debts were sent to collection agencies. The report says that the infractions include but are not limited to city ordinance violations for fighting, truancy, and disorderly conduct. A 2019 Illinois law prohibits police from ticketing juveniles for truancy.

No other small schools in the area received FOIA requests from reporters.

By comparison, Springfield School District #186 issued 18 tickets to students during the time frame. At least 1 municipality did send debts from those tickets to a collection agency. Springfield #186 did not issue any tickets for truancy.

Jersey Community Unit District #100 issued 15 tickets. It was undetermined if the fines assessed from those tickets were sent to collection agencies, and Jersey CUSD #100 didn’t issue any tickets to students for truancy.

The report examined 199 school districts from across the state that included more than 500 Freedom of Information Act requests to districts and police departments.

Ameren-Illinois says that false claims have been made about the Carbon Mitigation Program through the Clean Energy Jobs Act. Commonwealth Edison filed new rates with the Illinois Commerce Commission for utilities on April 27th that included an average of $18/month credit to their customers.

Director of Communications and Public Relations for Ameren-Illinois Tucker Kennedy says that the claims that Ameren opted out of the program is false: “The claims by some of the consumer parties and third parties are blatantly false. Ameren-Illinois was never involved in the negotiations on the Carbon Credit Program. We were never given an opportunity to opt in or opt out. These very same groups that were negotiating the legislation publicly stated that the utilities would not be involved in crafting the new law, and we were not at the table. This provision was written specifically to subsidize the Exelon facilities in Chicago, which are in a completely separate energy market from those of us in downstate. So, the legislation was specifically applied to electric utilities serving 3 million retail customers in the state i.e. ComEd, Ameren-Illinois has 1.2 million customers. This was not a law that was written for downstate and we were not able to opt in or opt out of that program.”

Kennedy says part of the problem is a one-size-fits-all approach to energy legislation for the state: “Downstate Illinois has seen a steady transition out of its base load power generation as we have started to transition out from fossil fuel and we’ve attempted to fill that void with renewable generation. Up north, they have a sizable nuclear fleet that is subsidized by Chicago ratepayers and have excess generation. We have ended up in a situation now, where because of some global issues, because of what’s happening in Ukraine, what’s happening with inflation – all of these issues are coming together to cause a shortage in supply. When you have a shortage in supply in our downstate market, it results in an increase in power supply prices and that’s what happening to ratepayers in downstate. Chicago is not going to experience that same issue.”

Kennedy says Ameren is making preparations to supply customers with enough energy through the summer in lieu of Midcontinent Independent System Operator or MISO seeing a possibility of rolling brown-outs and blackouts this summer: “When the regional grid operator says that regions without sufficient generation face an increased risk for potential of controlled outages, that’s a concern. That gets our attention. I will say that we’re confident today that our delivery system is stable and that we have reliable power that will be there when it is needed this summer. The MISO statement does underscore the issue and the challenges that we face with this transition that we are making in the state and in the nation to renewable energy, which we need to do. It’s something that’s good for us. It’s good for the country. It’s good for society. Our only caution has been that it needs to be done in a steady, measured way so that we don’t leave the zone or our area short of what we need in order to meet the demands for our customers. When you’re short of the energy as stated by the federal grid regulator, then that has consequences for power supply prices.”

Kennedy says people will beginning to see the impact on their bills in the beginning of June. He urges anyone struggling to pay their utility bills to utilize Ameren’s customer assistance programs.

Governor J.B. Pritzker spokesperson Jordan Abudayyeh said Monday to Capitol Fax that no new gas plant would help with MISO’s current projection saying that the the build-out of new renewable energy sources would have more of an impact. She also said that MISO should consider accelerating the interconnection of new renewable sources into the grid must faster.

Kennedy says that Ameren-Illinois wasn’t in a position to speak on the generation side of the power market as they simply work the supply side.

Similar price hikes are coming to the states of North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, Iowa, and Missouri.

Jacksonville Main Street had to rearrange some plans on Saturday, but still managed to get a great event together.

Maifest was originally supposed to be hosted on the Downtown Square, but a threat of rain and storms throughout the day had to push things to McClelland Dining Hall on the old MacMurray College campus.

Jacksonville Main Street Executive Director Judy Tighe says that vendors, craft beer lovers, and music lovers all showed up to make the afternoon great: “I’m so grateful that we have the opportunity to work with Mike Hayes and Water’s Edge Winery and McClelland Dining Hall so that this is an option. This a fabulous Plan B. Obviously, with the last few days of weather, everybody knows that Plan B has been a good thing to have. We’re really, really happy with the turnout. We had almost 40 different craft beers to sample. We had plenty of food and music. It turned out to be a good day.”

Tighe says the event also wouldn’t have had such a seamless transition to the indoor venue without the constant support of Main Street’s volunteers. The next Main Street event will be the kick off of the Downtown Concert Series next month with C.J. Ryder and the Past Masters.

University of Illinois-Springfield faculty and administration came to a tentative agreement on a new contract over the weekend, averting a possible strike.

The deal was reached late Saturday afternoon after intense bargaining with a federal mediator on Friday and beginning again on Saturday.

According to the State Journal Register, the new deal would be for 4 years and be retroactive to August 16^th and run through August 2025. Kristi Barnwell, associate professor of history who heads UIS’s United Faculty said to the SJ-R on Saturday that no date has been set for faculty to ratify the contract. No further specifics on the contract have been released, but UIS United Faculty’s Facebook Page says that specifics will be made public once the contract is formally ratified.

Wages had been the major sticking point between the two sides. UIS United Faculty had authorized a strike set to begin this week if no deal had been reached.

In a joint statement released by the administration and UIS United Faculty, the two sides said they looked forward to continuing to work together to fulfill the school’s mission.

Another Central Illinois court has rejected attorney Thomas DeVore’s attempt to block Governor JB Pritzker’s COVID vaccination-or-testing mandates for public employees.

The latest ruling came Thursday in a case filed in Christian County on behalf of 46 employees of the Illinois Department of Corrections from 18 separate facilities who objected to the requirement to show proof of vaccination against the virus or submit to regular testing.

DeVore, who is a Republican candidate for Attorney General, was also attempting to have the case moved to the 5^th Appellate District Court in Sangamon County, but the motion was denied and the Temporary Restraining Order was denied.

Judge Stanley Brandmeyer pointed to recent appellate court decisions that found such rules can be imposed by public employers as a workplace safety measure. DeVore filed an appeal to the decision on Friday.

The trial for a Springfield man accused of carjacking and sexually assaulting an elderly woman near Quincy has been pushed back following a request to review DNA evidence.

The motion to continue the case of 34 year old Bradley Yohn from the May 9^th jury docket in Adams County was approved on Friday by visiting Judge Michael Atterberry, according to WGEM. The approval came at the end of a contentious hearing in which Yohn accused Assistant Public Defender John Citro of ineffective counsel and ended with Yohn walking out of the courtroom.

The meeting began with Yohn telling Atterberry that he would like a new attorney, and the judge told him a different attorney would take time to become familiar with the facts in the case. Yohn walked back the request when he was told it would delay his trial. Yohn also objected to the delay in his case to review the DNA evidence by his own counsel and also requested a change of venue because of the extensive media coverage of his case.

Yohn accused the court of violating his civil rights by not giving him a speedy trial and then walked out of the courtroom.

A status hearing on the case has been set for May 10^th. Yohn remains held at the Adams County Jail on $15 million bond.