Bars and restaurants in Springfield and the rest of Sangamon County will be able to serve more customers indoors after a Monday decision by state officials that loosens restrictions designed to contain the COVID-19 pandemic.

Springfield Mayor Jim Langfelder said he planned to meet with county health department officials Tuesday afternoon to determine exactly what bars, restaurants and other businesses and entities can and can’t do after the Illinois Department of Public Health moved the region including Sangamon County from Tier 3 to Phase 4 restrictions.

Illinois’ coronavirus infection numbers took another step in the right direction Tuesday, including in Chicago, where Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s health team could clear the table for bars and restaurants to resume limited indoor service within a few days.

City health officials also suggested the bulk of residents could start getting COVID-19 vaccinations by the end of May.

Of the more than 500,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines that have been administered in Illinois, about 340 people have self-reported adverse reactions – that’s about 0.07 percent of the people who have received at least one dose of the vaccine, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

At least two deaths have been reported in relation to the COVID-19 vaccine in Illinois, according to data, which the CDC notes is unverified.

fter 50 years in the Illinois House of Representatives, Representative Michael Madigan, long thought to be untouchable, has been replaced as the body’s speaker. With his historic 36-year reign in that position now over, how can Illinoisans dismantle the system that has made their state government synonymous with corruption?

Key to the task will be reconfiguring the machine, rather than just its operators. But to do that, we must first understand how things went so very wrong in Madigan’s Illinois.

Some organizers in Illinois recall getting “laughed out of the room” for supporting the abolition of money bail five years ago. But on January 13, Robert Peters, a longtime advocate for ending cash bail and now a state senator from Chicago, saw his legislative proposal to end money bail pass the General Assembly, along with a comprehensive package of criminal justice reforms written by the state’s Black Caucus. Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker has strongly indicated that he will sign the bill, which will make Illinois the first state in the country to end a detention system that is demonstrably racist and classist.

Labor groups, abolitionists, and local nonprofits formed a coalition to end money bail shortly after powerful state players derided activists who argued against money bail in court and led organizing drives throughout the state. Their four-year campaign, which brought pressure against the state and gifted them a close alliance with the Black Caucus, made sweeping reforms thinkable. It was the movement for Black lives and the 2020 uprising that made them inevitable.

The Illinois General Assembly last week pushed through legislation to allow victims in all personal injury and wrongful death cases to collect interest on money they were awarded by a court starting from the moment the alleged injury or death took place.

House Bill 3360 is meant to deter companies or individuals who are sued from intentionally stalling or delaying cases that would be successful at trial, according to the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association — a major lobbying force behind the bill.

The city of Chicago will pay $115,000 to two Chicago men who alleged they were subjected to excessive force during the protests sparked by the death of George Floyd in late May, marking the first of what could be a costly wave of lawsuit settlements.

To settle the first of the two lawsuits, the city paid Ian Andrew Bowman $75,000, city records show.

Fifty years ago this month, Michael J. Madigan was sworn in for his first term in the Illinois House of Representatives. Except for two years in the 1990s under a Republican majority, Madigan served as speaker of the House for the last 38 years. By the time Rep. Chris Welch was elected the new speaker last week, Madigan was the longest-serving state legislative leader in U.S. history.

Madigan is the last of a breed, those long-serving state legislative leaders who dominated their chambers for decades. Think Willie Brown of California, John Martin of Maine, and Vern Riffe of Ohio. Like Madigan, these leaders were titans in their states, influencing politics and policy on a range of fronts, successfully battling governors and opposition party leaders. Also like Madigan, they were masters at the two jobs of legislative leadership.

Chicago firefighters who lied to make it appear they had been trained on sophisticated rescue rigs at O’Hare and Midway Airports when they had not, potentially endangering passengers.

An inspector assigned to nursing homes during a pandemic that has raged through those homes who claimed to have made site visits, when none had taken place.

The Illinois Department of Public Health has loosened COVID-19 restrictions for McHenry and Lake counties as well as several other regions after the launch of a new statewide staffing program aimed at helping hospitals manage surges in patient volumes.

The move by the IDPH Monday afternoon is a relief to business owners in McHenry County who have been looking for signs of progress, McHenry County Economic Development Corporation President Jim McConoughey said Monday.

Restaurants can resume limited indoor dining across a nine-county area that includes the Rockford region as a spike in positive coronavirus tests eases, Mayor Tom McNamara said on Monday.

Winnebago County’s seven-day rolling average test positivity rate has fallen to 8.2%, a decline of more than three percentage points over 10 days.

Businesses operating in Pekin may need to obtain licenses, or at least register with the city, in the near future.

During a recent meeting, the Pekin City Council discussed a proposed ordinance creating a general business license for the city. According to City Manager Mark Rothert, the ordinance will help the city identify businesses operating in the community, provide an avenue for offering local businesses incentives or grants, and keep businesses informed about city issues or projects.