Illinois Lawmakers Discuss Budget, Policy Before End of Spring Session

(Andrew Adams / Capitol News Illinois)

Illinois lawmakers have a lot on their plates over the next month. With the spring legislative session coming to a close at the end of May, the clock is ticking to approve a budget. And deadlines for adding referendums to the November ballot are even earlier.

Meanwhile, affordability is front of mind for many, as bills on megaprojects and zoning reform make their way through the General Assembly. 

State Reps. Tony McCombie (R-Savanna) and Kam Buckner (D-Chicago) joined “Chicago Tonight” to discuss ongoing budget and policy negotiations. Excerpts from the conversation are below.

On the proposed Illinois budget:

McCombie: “To be a ‘maintenance budget’ it would be a flat budget, and this had $728 million in proposed increases. … You can’t keep doing this every year as you’re the governor and not expect increased spending.”

Buckner: “I’ve heard many of my colleagues say this is a ballooning budget, but the truth is a balloon floats away when it has no anchor. … (This budget is) anchored in schools, anchored in healthcare, anchored in pensions, public safety, human services.”

On a so-called millionaires’ tax:

McCombie: “We have a May 3 deadline (for ballot referendums) so it’s not going to hit the House and the Senate. For sure this is one that I think will have to wait, thankfully.”

Buckner: “We have to find a way to make sure that all folks in this state are paying their fair share and we’re not doing it in a regressive way. … We’ve got to be able to tell the story about what we’re going to do with the money, and why we can be trusted with it.”

On the megaprojects bill:

McCombie: “This is about local control. If the locals don’t want economic development and people to come into their communities and do this, they don’t have to. … But we have a real opportunity to grow our state, and I think this could be a path to do it.”

Buckner: “We’ve put together a bill that has the things that (the Chicago Bears) have talked about, and other businesses around the state have talked about wanting. What we were told was that the Bears want property tax certainty. And what we’ve also have been told by our constituents is they want some property tax relief. And we dared to believe we can do both of those at the same time.”

New Book Examines the Tulsa Race Massacre and Legal Battle Over Reparations

(Courtesy of the Department of Special Collections, McFarlin Library, the University of Tulsa)

It’s been nearly 105 years since the Tulsa Race Massacre claimed the lives of hundreds of Black Tulsans.

Over the course of two days in 1921, a mob of White people terrorized and burned down a thriving Black community known colloquially as Black Wall Street. Close to a century after what’s believed to be the worst incident of racial violence in American history, a lawsuit was filed on behalf of the last few remaining survivors.

The legal battle, the stories of the survivors and their descendants, and the case for reparations is outlined in an upcoming book called “Redeem a Nation: The Century-Long Battle to Restore the Soul of America.” It’s authored by Damario Solomon-Simmons, a civil rights lawyer who served as the case’s lead attorney.

He said he is a “son of Greenwood” who grew up hearing stories of how prosperous the community was, filled with Black businesses and professionals. It wasn’t until he was in college that he learned of the massacre.

Solomon-Simmons and his team filed the lawsuit in 2020. At the time, there were three living survivors of the massacre who were all over the age of 100. There is now one remaining survivor, Lessie Benningfield Randle, who is 111 years old and was about 5 years old at the time of the attack. The Oklahoma Supreme Court threw out the case in 2024, citing that while the grievances were legitimate they did not fall within the scope of the state’s public nuisance statute.

For Chicago native John W. Rogers Jr., the destruction of Black Wall Street hits close to home as his great-grandfather, J.B. Stradford, was a survivor of the white supremacist attack that left his Greenwood hotel, the largest Black-run hotel at the time, destroyed and leveled.

“My great-grandfather’s wealth would now be worth over $100 million,” Rogers said. “To think what we could do with that in our family — the amount of philanthropy, political empowerment that could come to our community if we were able to benefit from that wealth.”

Feds to Dismiss Conspiracy Charges Against Remaining ‘Broadview Six’ Defendants

The Dirksen Courthouse is pictured in Chicago. (Capitol News Illinois)

Federal prosecutors have dismissed felony conspiracy charges against the remaining members of the “Broadview Six,” and instead intend to proceed to trial on lesser misdemeanor counts in the politically charged case.

The announcement came during a pretrial hearing Wednesday before U.S. District Judge April Perry in the Dirksen Federal Building in downtown Chicago, court records show.

Andrew Boutros, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, said the decision to drop the conspiracy charges demonstrated “that we are fully prepared to adjust our positions” after evaluating facts and the law, along with new information. 

An initial indictment against the group alleged they conspired to surround an ICE vehicle, “with the intent to hinder and impede” a federal agent from proceeding to the Broadview facility and “discharging the duties of his office.”

Already prosecutors dropped all charges against two of the six initial defendants, Catherine Sharp and Joselyn Walsh. But the four others — Kat Abughazaleh, Michael Rabbitt, Andre Martin and Brian Straw — are still set to go to trial. Prosecutors now intend to file a superseding indictment that only includes misdemeanor charges.

Even so, Abughazaleh said the decision to drop the conspiracy charges is a “huge win.”

“This case has cost myself, one of my closest friends, and four others immeasurable amounts of stress, money, and opportunity,” she said in a social media post Wednesday. “But the federal government knew they couldn’t try this BS and had to drop the felony charge.”

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