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The Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH), the United States Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and the Illinois Emergency Management Agency (IEMA) worked together to review and confirm  protocols and plans already in place to ensure the Illinois public health system is able to quickly identify a potential case of Ebola.

At this time, there have been no reports or questions in Illinois that have led to Ebola testing for suspected cases. IDPH will continue to monitor for cases. According to IDPH, at this time, Ebola does not pose a great health risk to the people of Illinois.

The director of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources testified Tuesday that if state legislators do not act to set rules governing horizontal hydraulic fracturing the agency will not issue fracking permits “absent a court order to the contrary.”

The rules were on the agenda Tuesday of the 12-member Joint Committee on Administrative Rules, but the committee defered action until Nov. 6. The committee has until Nov. 15 to adopt the rules or the process of formulating fracking regulations would start over again.

Oil and gas drillers for the most part have held off on fracking in anticipation that regulations would pass. Meanwhile, the Illinois Department of Natural Resources has not issued permits. Read the rest of the story by Julie Wernau in the Chicago Tribune.

Chicago – NRI
“…we are trying to get the base out…” Newly-released emails confirm politics part of troubled Quinn program. On Tuesday, Oct. 7, former Quinn chief of staff Jack Lavin turned over personal emails subpoenaed by the Legislative Audit Commission that tie the 2010 election and Quinn’s campaign to the Neighborhood Recovery Initiative.

In a Sept. 5, 2010 email to Ben Nuckels, then Quinn’s campaign manager, Lavin outlined strategies to appeal to African-American voters. “If we are trying to get the base out and that’s the key to our victory, we better prioritize correctly,” Lavin wrote. “The African-American community tends to break late so we have some time. The Gov’s Neighborhood Recovery Initiative will also help on the jobs and anti-violence messages.”

House GOP members of Legislative Audit Commission
Rep. Ron Sandack, Dennis Reboletti & David Reis

After 12 full hours of testimony on Wednesday into Governor Pat Quinn’s disgraced Neighborhood Recovery Initiative (NRI), House Republicans on the Legislative Audit Commission were left with more questions than answers and continue to demand accountability for the failings of the program.
In day one of two days of testimony, members of the bipartisan and bicameral commission heard from four of seven witnesses who were subpoenaed to appear before them. While issues brought up in the Auditor General’s report into the program, such as hasty implementation, lax oversight and poor record keeping, were largely confirmed as accurate, members did not receive testimony into how the failings occurred and who was responsible.

For the first time, proof emerged that Gov. Pat Quinn’s 2010 Neighborhood Recovery Initiative factored into his election strategy that year in personal emails from the governor’s former top aide that were released Wednesday by a legislative panel investigating the program.

The emails from ex-Quinn chief of staff Jack Lavin represented a key highlight from the opening of two more days of hearings on the $54.5 million anti-violence grant program that is now under federal investigation. The former head of the now abolished agency that Quinn put in charge of implementing the program, Barbara Shaw, was at the witness table all morning. Dave McKinney has the story in the Chicago SunTimes.

A church closely connected to former top gubernatorial aide Billy Ocasio was awarded a contract for up to $100,000 from Gov. Pat Quinn's embattled Neighborhood Recovery Initiative — even though Mr. Ocasio had helped supervise NRI grant-making as Mr. Quinn's senior adviser.

New Life Covenant Church, where Mr. Ocasio's wife, Veronica Ocasio, works as chief of staff, received the contract and ultimately was paid just under $43,000 for developing a youth employment program, according to records compiled by the Illinois Auditor General's office and information obtained from state records by Crain's.

Chicago – NRI 
General Assembly panel to resume hearings on Quinn NRI scandal. The Legislative Audit Commission (LAC) will be holding hearings on Wednesday, October 8 and Thursday, October 9 in Chicago. The panel will continue its inquiries into the scandal-ridden “Neighborhood Recovery Initiative” (NRI), a $54.5 million taxpayer-funded program. Revelations since the program’s operation in 2010 indicate that money officially allocated to violence-reduction initiatives in challenged neighborhoods may actually have been expended as political walking-around money. The physical focus of the NRI program was on urban neighborhoods in the city of Chicago. The NRI program peaked during the weeks just before and after the November 2010 gubernatorial election, in which Pat Quinn won election to a full term by a margin of less than 1 percent of the statewide electorate.