As hospitalizations continue to drop, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker intends Wednesday to announce a lifting of a universal indoor masking order for most public places except for schools, a source familiar with the plan confirmed Tuesday.

His immediate focus in easing COVID-19 mitigations will be in bars, restaurants, grocery stores, museums and other common indoor areas that draw traffic, which have all been under a mask mandate since August.

The Illinois Education Association, the state’s largest union, is urging schools to stick with their current COVID safety plans until after the appellate court rules on a recent court order that allows some students and staff to forgo mitigations like masks, quarantines, vaccines and test.

On Friday, Sangamon County Judge Raylene Grischow granted a temporary restraining order that exempts students involved in the complaint from having to wear masks in class and staff members from having to be vaccinated or submit to a weekly COVID test.

A new report shows the corporate tax rate in Illinois is among the highest in the country.

New analysis from the Tax Foundation, an independent tax policy nonprofit, looks at how the states stack up for 2022. Illinois’ combined corporate rate is 9.5%, which includes the base of 7% and an additional 2.5% tax known as a personal property replacement tax.

Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza is asking the credit ratings agencies to upgrade Illinois’ worst-in-the-nation status.

S&P Global has Illinois at BBB. Moody’s has the state at Baa2. That’s after upgrades from the agencies last year. Fitch has Illinois at BBB-.

Cannabis sales in Illinois for the month of January grew 32% over last year but fell sequentially by 14% from December. Last Friday, the Illinois Department of Professional and Financial Regulation released cannabis monthly sales figures and then on Monday, the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) released its latest statistics for the medical cannabis program.

So far in 2022, 2,645,046 items were sold in January. In-state residents spent over $81 million while out-of-state residents spent roughly $35 million for a total of $117 million. In January 2021, sales were $88.8 million in total, while December sales topped $137 million. The state saw a slight growth in sales between 2020’s December and 2021’s January so there was no precedent for this drop.

The Illinois Municipal League has released its annual platform that it says will ensure the long-term success of the state’s 1,296 cities, towns and villages.

The “Moving Cities Forward” platform prioritizes restoration of the Local Government Distributive Fund, which originally in 1969 dedicated 10% of the state’s total income tax revenue to municipalities, but is now closer to 6%.