Illinois’ Legislative watchdog resigned yesterday. Legislative Inspector General Carol Pope sent her letter of resignation to members of the Legislative Ethics Commission, offering to step down immediately, stay on while they find a replacement or remain until her term ends December 15th.

The 67 year old Pope is a former Menard County state’s attorney and former circuit and appellate judge based in Petersburg says that the position “has no real power to effect change or shine a light on ethics violations.” Pope, a Republican and Melrose Park native became the LIG in March 2019. Her term was originally supposed to end in June 2023.

In the letter, Pope called her job a “paper tiger” and said her repeated efforts to improve the office and its independence were ignored by the current and past General Assembly. Pope said the recently passed legislative ethics package would actually weaken her office, saying that true ethics reform isn’t a concern by the state’s lawmakers. Pope says that the LIGs office is complaint driven, cannot start an investigation without approval by the General Assembly, and has no subpoena power.

Through the first half of this year, Pope’s office received 31 complaints alleging wrongdoing by lawmakers or staff and opened six investigations, with three pending, according to the office’s most recent quarterly report.

Republican State Senator Jil Tracy of Quincy who is the Legislative Ethics Commssion chair said she understood Pope’s frustration expressed in her legislation letter but called the ethics problem in Springfield amounts to “a few bad apples” according to an interview with WTAX. Tracy said, “They don’t want to see people wearing wires, or people going to jail.” General Assembly Democrats wrote a response letter saying the ethics reform package on the governor’s desk is “an excellent first step” in cleaning up the Capitol’s ethics problems.

The Litchfield Police Department is looking for a woman who may be on the run in Northern Macoupin County.

46 year old Tania G. Brooks who may also be going by the name of Tania Boerckel is wanted in Montgomery County for Financial Exploitation of the Elderly. Brooks also has an active warrant in Macoupin County for failure to appear in court on a theft charge stemming from an April 2020 arrest.

Brooks was last seen in the Gillespie area and may possibly be moving north. Brooks is described as a white female who stands approximately 5’3″, with long brown hair, and brown eyes.

If you have any information about Brooks whereabouts, you may go to the Macoupin-Montgomery Crimestoppers website, call them at 1-800-352-0136, or contact the Litchfield Police at 217-324-5991. If your anonymous tip leads to Brooks’ arrest, you may be eligible for up to a $5,000 reward.

West Central Illinois bucked a grim trend when it came to overdose deaths last year.

Several national news outlets reported that more than 93,000 drug overdose deaths occurred last year, according to data from the National Center for Health Statistics. The report said many addiction specialists, drug counselors and policy experts blamed the 30% increase on a combination of the COVID-19 pandemic and the continued spread of the synthetic opioid fentanyl in the illegal narcotic supply.

The most common overdose deaths nationwide were attributed to opioids, methamphetamine, and cocaine. According to data from the Illinois Department of Public Health’s vital statistics, overdose deaths in Brown, Cass, Greene, Morgan, Pike, and Scott counties went down over the past 3 years. Overdose deaths in the 6 county region was at 34 in 2018 and fell down to 29 last year. Any drug involving an opioid is the common cause of overdose, with at least 10 deaths over the last 3 years.

Nationally, the number of overdose deaths was more than double the estimated number of motor vehicle fatalities. In the 6 county region, they are about the same with traffic crashes actually being more fatal.

According to IDPH’s Drug Overdose Prevention Program portal, the Sangamon County Department of Public Health and the Human Services Center which covers the 6 county radius, the number of trained individuals in their went up over last year’s fourth quarter, and the distribution of naloxone kits doubled likely leading to overdose prevention in the area.

The Illinois Department of Transportation announced today that the Lincoln Service, Carl Sandburg/Illinois Zephyr and Illini/Saluki state-supported Amtrak trains will resume full service effective Monday.

With the resumption of a full schedule, there will be five daily roundtrips between Chicago and St. Louis, two daily roundtrips between Chicago and Quincy, and three daily roundtrips between Chicago and Carbondale.

Tickets for Amtrak trains can be purchased at amtrak.com/midwest for travel beginning Monday.

The City of Virden is without their municipal pool this summer and for the future. Virden Mayor George Murphy has taken to social media in recent months explaining why the city council decided to permanently close the pool back in February.

In a social media post today, Murphy showed the public that the pool had been operating at loss of over $36,000 on average annually since the 2010-2011 fiscal year for the city.

Murphy explains that the municipal pool was never intended to be a revenue stream for the city, but the current city council voted in February that they would no longer be able to financially support the operations.

Murphy highlighted the numerous benefits of the pool to area families over the year, and said that the pool was studied by the current council over a year for a way to make it financially viable, but was unable to come up with a way for it to stand on its own.

In a post in April, Murphy said that the pool’s current condition has deteriorated and is in need of a new liner and plumbing and the original pump of the pool is beyond its operational life. Murphy also cited the new minimum wage laws enacted by the state that would create more insurmountable debt to the city.

Murphy said it’s a sad loss to the community because of the hard work and dedication of many from the Virden community over the years, but the bottom line for the current council was finances.

Information has been released about a rural Jacksonville man involved in multiple arrests since last Friday.

27 year old Dustin R. Black was arrested on Friday morning by Murrayville Police. Black was allegedly involved in a break-in at Murrayville Town Hall.

Murrayville Police Chief Derek Suttles says that Black broke into the Murrayville Fire & Police building by shattering a window and then removed a window to the adjacent Murrayville Streets Department building. Suttles says that Black then allegedly began removing tools and equipment from the building, with some tools found by Murrayville Police Thursday night lying in the street during the investigation of subsequent break-ins. Suttles says that further damage at the police station was later discovered. He says that Black allegedly went across the street and entered a Murrayville Fire Engine and left the door open.

Suttles says multiple calls came in from around the village of semi tractor trailers being broken into. Suttles says that Black allegedly broke into the semis and started them leaving them to run overnight. One of the semis as the Murrayville FS facility had it’s engine become inoperable due to it being left on overnight. Suttles estimated the damage to the truck to be over $1,500.

Suttles says that Black was apprehended by Murrayville Police after returning to Town Hall shortly after the acts were allegedly performed at around 3AM Friday. Police on the scene told Suttles that Black was acting erractically and also said that he was armed. During the course of Black’s arrest, police located a loaded 9 milimeter handgun in Black’s waistband.

After posting bond and being released on Friday, Suttles says that a party familiar with Black placed an order of protection at the Morgan County Courthouse. Suttles says that Black then allegedly violated that order by going to the protected party’s house at 8:44 yesterday morning. He remains held at the Morgan County Jail awaiting a bond hearing.

The City of Jacksonville is exploring an ordinance to govern home-operated solar panels in the corporate limits.

The City Council heard from City Planner Brian Nyberg about some of the problems that the city could possibly face with the implementation and eventual de-commissioning of solar panels on private property in the corporate limits.

Nyberg says he has a model ordinance from Illinois Solar for the council to look at for consideration. Nyberg says that several current businesses like Lincoln Land Community College, Pathway Services, and other residential solar panels will have to be looked at: “So, this is either just small [panels] up on top of a roof or small ones in the back yard. There is already some that are on the ground that are in the corporate city limits, and we did not have an ordinance prior to that. We will have to see the plans [at businesses], but Wal-Mart already has them on top of their building and [the city] did get to see that plan prior to them putting it in. It was actually a really good plan. I think solar power is a good thing, we just want to make sure that it is done right.”

Nyberg says several questions have come before the Historic Preservation District about use of the panels in recent months: “There is language in [the model ordinance] as far as what sides of the roof they can do it on. It’s got to go in front of the Historic Preservation Society. Some of the language in there is how high up they can be, that they have to be certain distance from the roof, and they have to follow the pitch of the roof, too. A lot of them, you can actually see that they are pitched differently than the roof. Specific to the Historic District, there are a few more stipulations and restrictions that you’ll have to abide by.”

Nyberg says that the whole country is behind on recycling and decommissioning of panels. He says he’s done some research and believes that the state will eventually catch up to Europe and other countries that have had solar power as a part of their grid for awhile: “What we put in the language was that you have to follow the state regulations as far as solar energy system recycling and disposal. Right now, as far as the majority of the states in the U.S. especially Illinois, there’s really nothing as far as disposal or recycle. I have done a little research and other countries are way ahead of us right now. I assume that within the next 2 to maybe 5 years that the restrictions [on disposal] are going to start happening because the lifespan of most panels are 20-30 years, and we are in that end-cycle for a lot of them. I think we are going to see a problem coming up in the near future, and I think the states are going to solve the disposal problem for us. We will just add that language once it’s made into our ordinance.”

The model ordinance will be up for possible consideration at a future city council meeting.

Illinois has finally implemented a workshare program that was passed into law in 2015.

IL-Workshare announced last week that it will be receiving a $4.2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Labor to fully implement the program. Work-share laws, also known as short-time compensation, allow companies to avoid mass layoffs by reducing workers’ hours so they’re still employed, while also allowing them to receive partial unemployment benefits.

The grant is likely a reimbursement to the state after Illinois had to give back $4.3 million in federal funds in 2015 after former Governor Bruce Rauner failed to implement the program despite support from his business allies.

The University of Illinois Economic Policy Institute said in analysis this week that had the state properly implemented the program almost 7 years ago, the state would have likely saved between 43,000 and 124,000 jobs during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to Illinois NPR’s report, Illinois businesses could’ve saved a collective $1.2 billion in turnover costs from work-share in 2020.

Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul has accepted a settlement in the Purdue Pharmaceutical opioid case from a federal moderator.

Under the agreement, the Sackler Family who owns Purdue Pharmaceuticals must provide $1.5 billion more than they originally offered as settlement in the case, instead requiring the family and their foundation to provide a total of $4.5 billion for prevention, treatment and recovery efforts in communities across the country in the opioid addiction crisis.

In addition, the agreement, for the first time, requires Purdue to make public tens of millions of documents related to their role in the crisis. The proposal was filed in bankruptcy court last Wednesday and is subject to court approval.

The settlement will bring an end to a 2 year long investigation into the company reportedly pumping hundreds of thousands of pills into pharmacies and reportedly strong-arming agencies in prescribing opioids that were improperly marketed. Purdue Pharma representatives have not made comment on the settlement agreement.