Coronavirus Updates 8/4

This post has a collection of coronavirus updates including the trends locally, regionally, at the State and federal level. At the end is also a list of tentative school reopening news links as well.

The local and regional coronavirus news is still better than many parts of the State of Illinois and the country in general. There was an update from the Champaign-Urbana Public Health District (latest COVID information from C-UPHD here) in an interview with Elizabeth Hess on Urbana Public Television yesterday and available on YouTube here:

Illinois Newsroom had additional coverage on C-UPHD guidance last week here. Unfortunately the bad news is our local cases and hospitalizations are up recently. More details available from the News-Gazette website here and reporter Ben Zigterman's twitter feed here. Here's a snip of the chart's he posted today:

The News-Gazette had a more detailed local breakdown for the area with some recent remarks from the Governor today here.

Looking at the regions of Illinois for coronavirus data, we're still doing better than other regions by test positivity. This bug doesn't respect borders, so it depends entirely on people on whether the it moves from place to place, however. Illinois government and politics reporter Hannah Meisel has regular updates on her twitter page here:

The national numbers are disheartening after many were expecting the daily deaths to plateau at a low of roughly 500 per day, which is still pretty terrible compared to many of other Western industrialized nations at this point in their response. Unfortunately that plateau came and went and we have gone back up to roughly a thousand American deaths every day and rising. Where we go from here is completely dependent on public behavior when it comes to mitigation policies. More at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation here. This chart is from last week, so expect an updated projection later this week based on the latest numbers:

A lot of folks locally are concerned about schools reopening. The C-UPHD put out its guidance for school openings last month (Smile Politely had a brief overview and links here). More recent updates on school openings here:

• Daily Illini on UIUC summer athletic testing and infections.
• The Champaign Federation of Teachers statement opposing the Unit 4 reopening framework (available in full here).
• UIUC to require coronavirus test to enter buildings from today's News-Gazette.
• UIUC to shift most classwork to online and no return to classrooms after Thanksgiving break.
• Chambana Mom's had a recent overview of the Urbana reopening plans here.
• The News-Gazette had an overview of Parkland's reopening plan with most classes online and mask requirements here.

With rising cases and the future difficult to predict, it's hard to say how these plans will change over time, if reopenings will go on as planned or if they'll face sudden cancellations like the Major League Baseball season right out of the gate. Hopefully this post gives readers some helpful links to stay updated on the various numbers they may be interested in. As always the official County numbers are available from the C-UPHD website here and regular updates are posted on their facebook account here. 

County Updates

In addition to a followup on the July County Board meeting available here, there was some other County government related news worth checking out recently:

• Updates on the County "home rule" issue
• Court updates on electronic reminders and Judge appointments
• County Clerk dispute with Rantoul officials
• Champaign County Community Coalition meeting online

A County "home rule" referendum won't be on this year's ballot. From WCIA:

The question of giving Champaign County home rule will not be on the ballot this election.

Supporters say that’s because they couldn’t get enough support for it. They would need 500 signatures for it to be on the ballot. Today is the filing deadline. Supporter and county board candidate Emily Rodriguez say she’ll be trying again in 2022. She believes home rule is what the county needs to recover losses from covid-19.

Full blurb with video segment here. More on the home rule issue including a public presentation on the issue by the supporters on the Cheat Sheet here. The County Executive had a recent article explaining home rule in the News-Gazette here as well.

The Champaign County Court House is offering electronic reminders for court cases. From the News-Gazette last week:

Champaign County Circuit Clerk Katie Blakeman announced Thursday that people who have court cases in Champaign County may now receive text or email reminders of their next court dates by filling out a form at champaigncircuitclerk.org...

“Court-date reminders have been proven to significantly improve court-appearance rates, reducing the need to issue warrants for failure to appear,” she added. “We intend to closely monitor appearance rates following implementation and report on the success of the program.”

...

Blakeman said the idea of providing reminders to court participants was a recommendation from the Racial Justice Task Force report presented to the Champaign County Board in October 2017. She said she hopes to get money from the Illinois Supreme Court Access to Justice Commission to expand the messaging platform to include multiple languages and chat assistance for issues like parking and transportation.

Full article here. In other Court updates, another Circuit Judge has been added to the local bench. From today's News-Gazette:

[Judge Sam Limentato] has been an attorney since 1994; he’s had a robust civil practice in Champaign with Ken Torricelli for the last 20 years. He will take on the family-law docket that Judge Randy Rosenbaum has administered for the last few years.

The recent retirements of Ladd and fellow jurist Jeff Ford have meant the shuffling of judicial assignments that will need even more tweaking this fall when Tom Difanis retires from the bench after 25 years as a judge and 19 as state’s attorney before that...

Besides Ladd, there were 10 other judges from the Sixth Circuit present for Limentato’s swearing-in.

Among them was Ben Dyer, who was sworn in June 1 to fill Jeff Ford’s seat. He and Limentato were selected at the same time in May by Supreme Court Justice Rita Garman for their respective resident judgeships.

Both men will have to run in 2022 in Champaign County only for their seats. Limentato plans to run as a Republican and Dyer as a Democrat.

Full article available at the News-Gazette eEdition here (subscription).

The Champaign County Clerk is still demanding an apology for accusations made by Rantoul officials, blaming him for something that appears to have been their responsibility. The Clerk believes that the reasons for blaming him include the fact that he is an African-American in the position. This may be one of the issues that led to County Board member Stan Harper's self-described rant at the July Board meeting (more on that here). More on the dust up between the County Clerk and Rantoul officials from the News-Gazette:

The county clerk said Ramage made “grossly false” comments about him and his office regarding whether Rantoul’s Tax Increment Financing District 1 would come off the tax rolls this year or next year. Because Rantoul City Schools and Rantoul Township High officials thought it wouldn’t come off until next year, they did not levy for the additional money.

The two districts lost the opportunity to levy against nearly $700,000 in equalized assessed value. They will not be able to levy for that amount in years to come, either.

Ammons said it is neither his nor his office’s responsibility to oversee such matters. But officials from both districts said the county clerk’s office had provided such information in the past.

The state’s attorney’s office advised Ammons that he should “in no way advise, guide or track TIFs for any district,” he said. “My office was being blamed for not doing a job we’re not responsible for doing.”

Full article with additional information here.

And finally, a reminder that the Champaign County Community Coalition is continuing to hold meetings online with updates from local efforts against gun violence, police chiefs reports and other presentations for opportunities to get involved in local criminal justice reforms and social services. July's meeting is available here at their facebook page (also on their website with agenda and power points here). More information available on their website here. including on their next meeting coming up August 12th at 3:30pm (streamed live on facebook and Zoom and available afterward as well).

County Board Updates

There are some County government committee meetings coming up this week (more information on those on the weekly calendar here).

Following up on a previous post previewing the July County Board meeting here, the July meeting (agenda here, video here). There was an economic presentation by the Champaign County Economic Development Corporation that delved into some the current outlooks and challenges, including with the coronavirus pandemic ongoing (direct video link here, slide presentation here). There was a handout from the Champaign County Chamber of Commerce with local business owners and operators and the frustrations they have had with the coronavirus, government response, and the chaos both have caused. Many go into heartrending detail about the hurdles they've faced as the livelihoods and economic survival of themselves and their employees teeters over an uncertain future.

The meeting was perhaps more notable for the frustration on display between Board members than any items on the agenda itself. Many of the items were passed in omnibus and bipartisan votes, including authorizing the intergovernmental agreement on the Douglas County Enterprise Zone that would help that county navigate some tax and Enterprise Zone technicalities for a solar project there (presentation at the January Committee of the Whole available here). Also approved was the contract to Tyler Technologies for the new County government server/software replacement, frequently referred to in meetings as the ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) System.

Another issue everyone appeared to agree on was rejecting the proposed 6-year Workforce Plan (available on page 72 of the agenda packet, page 75 of the PDF file). Complaints ranged from board members who felt like they or their committees should have been consulted prior to the plan being presented to the board to wanting more input from the workforce itself in developing the plan. Deputy Director of Administration Isak Griffiths defended the process and the plan, but to no avail.

There was some silent protests and angry swearing peppered throughout the meeting as well. County Board member Jon Rector's business logo has often been visible in the background of his Zoom video feed, which has raised concerns about using the County Board for advertising among a couple Democrats on the board. To highlight the issue they changed their Zoom video alternate backgrounds to Rector's business logo:

County Board member Stan Harper took a moment in the middle of the meeting to announce he was going to go on his "semiannual rant and rave about stuff" where he began swearing about how tired he was of people like him being called Nazis and racists. It appeared that the County Executive muted him for violation of the County Board rules. That in turn caused a bipartisan push back about muting board members by the County Executive without some protocol being established by the County Board first. The Executive pushed the meeting along on the grounds that the discussion was off topic on the items being discussed (federal CARES Act election funding which was approved). 

As the meeting was going into closed session, member McGuire complained about the lack of an auditor's report earlier in the meeting. The Executive pointed to the previous auditor items on the agenda as the time to bring it up. County Auditor Danos was on the Zoom call and jumped in and exclaimed that the report is on the County website, "It's done! It's Done!" An argument ensued over the agenda structure and criticisms. There was no Committee of the Whole in July which usually covers reports like this as opposed to the regular meeting.

A handful of board members then struggled to navigate the Zoom setup for the closed meeting live on the County Board meeting feed, sharing phone numbers and codes and a moment where the Chairman of the County Board dropped the f-bomb in frustration for the public to hear (the video is still on the facebook version of the meeting video here).

From the presence requested for the closed meeting, including the Treasurer, Deputy Treasurer, Director of IT, and others it sounded like it may have been related to legal and technical problems with the Treasurer's property tax system. But that's just a guess on my part from the context and the vague closed meeting description in the agenda: "to consider litigation which is pending against or on behalf of Champaign County, and litigation that is probable or imminent against Champaign County."