More information has become available on the arrest of a prominent member of the Greenfield community who turned himself in to police Sunday.

23-year-old Austin L. Bishop of Greenfield turned himself into Greenfield Police and was later taken into custody by Greene County Sheriff’s Deputies at 8:20 Sunday morning on a Greene County arrest warrant for unlawful grooming.

According to charging documents filed by Greene County State’s Attorney Caleb Briscoe on Friday, Bishop is alleged to have requested nude photos and videos of a minor via text message.

Briscoe says upon the filing of the charges, Circuit Judge Schmidt issued a warrant for Bishop’s arrest in the amount of $15,000.00 with 10% to apply. He says Bishop did turn himself in and posted the necessary cash bond to secure his pretrial release. A condition of his release is that he have no contact with the alleged victim while the case is pending.

A first appearance for Bishop in front of Greene County Circuit Judge Zachary Schmidt has been scheduled for November 1st.

Bishop is a former volunteer baseball coach for Greenfield-Northwestern High School and an IHSA Sports Official. Bishop also has served on the Greenfield Volunteer Fire Department. According to Greenfield Superintendent Kevin Bowman in an email, Bishop resigned his post as volunteer assistant baseball coach on September 22nd.

According to Illinois’ Compiled Statutes, Unlawful Grooming is defined as when an individual knowingly uses a computer online service, Internet service, local bulletin board service, or any other device capable of electronic data storage or transmission to seduce, solicit, lure, or entice, or attempt to seduce, solicit, lure, or entice, a child, a child’s guardian, or another person believed by the person to be a child or a child’s guardian, to commit any sex offense. According to the statute, any person under the age of 17 is considered a child. Grooming is a Class 4 felony.

Those charged with grooming can face a prison sentence of 1 to 3 years, along with a monetary fine of up to $25,000. If a person engages in grooming and proceeds to travel to meet a child as a result, he or she can face even more severe penalties.

U.S. Senate Republicans blocked a House-passed bill to suspend the debt limit and avert a government shutdown by the end of the month. The stop-gap spending bill failed to pass along party lines.

The move comes after Republicans had insisted that Democrats act alone to address the debt limit and leaves Congress without a clear plan to keep the government open with the threat of a potential shutdown looming by the end of the week. The House-passed bill would have kept the government open through December 3rd.

The Senate voted on a procedural motion to advance the legislation, which needed 60 votes to succeed. Since Democrats control 50 seats, they would have needed 10 Senate Republicans to vote in favor. In the end, the measure failed 48-50.

Illinois Senator Dick Durbin took to the Senate floor during the bill’s debate to remind GOP members that the debt they are refusing to pay was incurred under the Trump Administration: “Lest you think that this fiscally conservative Donald Trump was a good Republican through his 4 years when it came to debt, think again. The greatest increase in America’s national debt in any four-year period in our history, a 36% increase, occurred during the Trump Administration. Let me repeat, raising the debt ceiling has nothing to do with future spending. We are paying Donald Trump’s bills. We are acknowledging what was done by the House and Senate – Republicans and Democrats – what was spent and now has to be repaid. This is about paying what we already owe, and it’s also about averting an economic catastrophe. As a candidate, Donald Trump used to say he was ‘King of Debt.’ His reckless spending as president with America’s credit card added nearly $8 trillion to our national debt. That is one-third of the entire debt that was incurred during the Trump Administration.”

Durbin went on to lambast tax cuts given during the first year’s of President Trump’s term and Republicans for political gamesmanship.

Fellow Illinois Democrat Senator Tammy Duckworth released the following statement after the vote last night:

“As members of Congress, it’s our job to do what’s best for the people of this country. Republicans have completely abdicated that responsibility by blocking the CR and refusing to lift the debt ceiling, which has historically been a bipartisan effort-most recently as Democrats worked with Republicans during the Trump years to raise the debt limit multiple times.

“Our Constitution is clear: the validity of the public debt of the United States, as authorized by law, shall not be questioned. Congressional Republicans’ stubborn refusal tonight to let our country pay its bills is a stunning dereliction of duty and violates our Constitution’s mandate that our nation’s full faith and credit is not up for debate.

“If Republicans continue to refuse to pay the bills that were racked up during the Trump years-including the massive $2 trillion tax scam to the ultra-wealthy and corporations-despite having enough resources to do so and despite every Democrat voting for it, then it will be clear they would rather play politics than govern for the good of our country.”

CNN reports that Senate Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky did attempt to bring up a clean stopgap bill to keep the government open that would not include the debt limit provision as an alternative to what Democrats wanted to pass. Senate Democrats objected to a unanimous consent request to advance that proposal.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a Wall Street Journal article last week that if the U.S. defaults on its debt, it could trigger great financial turmoil for the country including skyrocketing interest rates and possible stock market crash. Democrats have not yet announced an alternative proposal, but leaders have been conferencing with the Biden Administration on a possible path forward to keep the government from shutting down.

Washington D.C. politicos have the clock ticking on this hyper-partisan showdown with the country’s economic stability likely hanging in the balance.

A new program is aiming to make it easier for community college students to earn a 4-year degree.

The effort is a partnership between SIU-Carbondale and the Illinois Community College Board, the program lets students graduating with an associate’s degree jump into 1 of 6 online bachelor’s degree programs at SIU. ICC Board Executive Director Brian Durham says this will be a big help to students who can’t go away to school. He says it will also ensure that all their college credit will transfer: “[This program] makes [college] more affordable. Community College students would do their first two years at the community college and then, they would go to SIU without ever leaving their home, but they would have access to a $4,000 a year scholarship from SIU. We want to do everything we can to clear away barriers for students so that they can get their education at the community college and have opportunities at SIU or any other university that might want to talk to us about doing a similar kind of agreement. We really want to empower students to have as much access as possible.”

Community Colleges will have to sign up for the “Saluki Step Ahead” Program. Degrees offered include accounting, business administration, psychology, criminal justice, radiological sciences, and healthcare management. All of the coursework for the program would be performed online, and certain qualified students will be eligible to receive a $4,000 scholarship for each of their last two years significantly reducing any financial hurdles they may face.

People seeking Illinois unemployment benefits online will soon face additional steps to ensure they’re not using stolen identities.

The Illinois Department of Employment Security and the Illinois Department of Innovation & Technology announced today the “ILogin” system. The system includes safeguards already used by some states and in much of the private sector, such as multifactor authentication (MFA).

Claimants who have previously filed an unemployment insurance claim will be required to complete an account setup process when first accessing ILogin, which will include establishing a new ILogin ID and preferred method of multifactor authentication, which can include an access code received via text message or phone call. The new ILogin account will replace any current IDES username and password and will grant claimants access to their existing IDES account.

New claimants filing an unemployment insurance claim will be required to undergo an identity proofing registration process in addition to completing the account setup process when accessing ILogin. All users, new and existing, must have an email address to register with ILogin and access their account online.

The IDES unemployment insurance system will be the second public facing system to integrate ILogin. Additional State of Illinois applications will also be utilizing ILogin in the coming months which will provide a uniform login process to users who have accounts with multiple state systems.

More information, including how to create a new ILogin account, assistance with forgotten or resetting passwords, and assistance with setting up MFA, can be found on the ILogin FAQ webpage.

The system comes online after IDES said they had stopped over 1.7 million unemployment fraudulent claims in a report released this Spring, and possibly paying billions in fraudulent benefits during the heights of the COVID-19 pandemic over the last year and a half.

Memorial Health Systems has rebranded their hospitals.

On Friday, Passavant Area Hospital will have its name changed to Jacksonville Memorial Hospital. CEO Dr. Scott Boston says it’s not the first time the hospital has had a name change: “Originally the hospital in Jacksonville that was started back in the 1870s was called Jacksonville Hospital. It wasn’t until about 25-30 years later that the hospital actually transitioned to Passavant Hospital in honor of Rev. William Passavant, who was a Lutheran minister that was instrumental in getting the hospital established in Jacksonville. Our legal current name is Jacksonville Memorial Area Hospital. We go by the name of Passavant Area Hospital, and that’s how we do business. We’ve had that name for several decades now. It’s a very well established name in our community. However, in 2014, we did make affiliation with Memorial Health Systems at that time. Truly, we became part of Memorial Health System, but we just didn’t change our name at that time.”

Boston says the name change has been in the works for approximately 3 years, and COVID-19 delayed things from moving forward last year. Boston says it transitions the hospital to better reflect the hospital’s membership with Memorial Health System.

Memorial’s 19 physician clinics and ExpressCare locations will also change to MemorialCare.

Boston says the consistency in the naming coincides with the consistency in care across the whole system: “This is a very common trend among large organizations. You really want your brand to be consistent with what you are doing. We are a healthcare organization. We are integrated. We are providing high quality health care. We really want our brand and our logo being consistent with who we are and consistent across the Health Care System. There’s really no change other than the name and the logo. There’s the same quality of care. It’s the same high quality care. The same people providing [the care]. All of that is going to remain the same.”

Boston says by putting Jacksonville in the name, it places the focus directly on the community in which the care is provided. The public will begin to see new signage across the health system in early October. The half-century-old triple cross emblem will be replaced with a new logo featuring 4 red inward arches that will form a diamond-like pattern. A new website will also go online on Friday at memorial.health. A full list of all the entities affected by the name change will be available on the new website on Friday.

A Sangamon County native is returning home to open for Riley Green next week.

Adam James will be the opening act for the Sangamon County Fair Appreciation Concert on Wednesday, October 6^th.

According to WICS Newschannel 20, James was born on a farm outside New Berlin and moved to Nashville after he graduated college.

The concert is free and open to the public. However, parking on the fairgrounds will be $10.

A guitar signed by Riley Green will be raffled off the night of the show. The grounds open at 5PM with James taking the stage at 6:30PM.

More information can be found visiting http://www.sangcofair.com/.

The FBI Springfield Field Office has a new special agent in charge. FBI Director Christopher Wray has named David G. Nanz as the new SAC. He replaces Sean Cox, who announced his retirement last month after 7 years leading Springfield Division.

Nanz joined the FBI as a special agent in 2001. For the last two years, Nanz has served as an inspector at the FBI Headquarters in Washington D.C.

Nanz earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from George Washington University in Washington and a law degree from George Mason University in Virginia. Before he joined the FBI, Mr. Nanz was a law clerk to the administrative law judges of the National Transportation Safety Board and was later an attorney with an aviation law firm in New York.

The Illinois General Assembly will be taking up a controversial portion of Illinois’ abortion rights laws as a part of their veto session in October.

Senate President Don Harmon said on Friday in an interview that the session may look at repealing the parental notification law in Illinois, where if a woman under the age of 17 needs an abortion, she has to notify her parents unless a judge provides a waiver. The adult family member does not have to give permission for the minor to have an abortion, but an adult family member must be notified.

Harmon says he wants to deal with the last vestiges of the state’s anti-choice laws as well as respond to the recent controversy in the State of Texas.

14th District State Representative Kelly Cassidy has filed a bill in response to Texas’ recent abortion ban law by filing “The EXpanding Abortion Services Act,” for the General Assembly to consider. The acronym of the bill spells Texas. The law is designed to allow private citizens the right to seek at least $10,000 in damages against anyone who causes an unwanted pregnancy — even if it resulted from consensual sex — or anyone who commits sexual assault or abuse, including domestic violence.

Under Cassidy’s bill, half of the damages awarded would go toward a new “State Abortion Freedom Access Fund,” to be managed by the state’s Department of Healthcare and Family Services. The money would also be required to be halved even if a case is settled. The fund would be used as financial aid for people from states with limited abortion access to travel to Illinois for the procedure.

Governor J.B. Pritzker said early last week he wishes to enshrine Illinois women’s abortion rights despite any future of the U.S. Supreme Court’s attempt to overturn the landmark abortion decision Roe v. Wade.

A Cook County woman was arrested at Western Illinois Correctional Facility in Mt. Sterling on Friday.

21 year old Kassandra Fortoso of Cicero was arrested at 11:49AM at the facility outside of Mt. Sterling.

According to Brown County Sheriff’s Deputies, Fortoso was visiting an inmate and was allegedly found in possession of unknown contraband in a penal institution and possession of a controlled substance.

Fortoso is currently lodged at the Schuyler County Jail on $2,500 bond with 10% to apply.