R. L. Nave

Brenda Johnson, executive director of Helping Hands, says officials at the Springfield homeless shelter are simply “trying to control what we have control of” to adjust to a 27 percent cut in funding from the state. That’s meant relying more heavily on donations from the community, which have been plentiful, making sure to turn off […]

Pay poor tax of $15. The directive no longer applies solely to Monopoly players — it’s also happening to Illinois’ unemployed workers. Last fall, the Illinois Department of Employment Security, which pays state unemployment claims, abandoned the decades-old practice of issuing paper unemployment checks in favor of Visa debit cards. Springfield-based Illinois National Bank was […]

People who don’t like hospitals typically cite their cold, institutional feel as the reason. Officials at St. John’s Hospital clearly had this fact in mind when designing its new $8 million outpatient surgery department to be located on the hospital’s second floor. Construction of the 16,020-square-foot center, in the space formerly occupied by the hospital’s […]

Despite Springfield’s freedom from many of the rush-hour nightmares that plague other cities, traffic-paralyzing trains barreling through town at all the wrong times remain among the irritating facts of life here. One idea that’s been kicked around for decades is to consolidate the city’s Third Street and 19th Street rail traffic onto the 10th Street […]

Tamara Moore left active duty with the Navy to return to college and spend more time with her three children. One of the factors that influenced her decision to give up a good military salary to work for the Springfield school district was a state program that pays a portion of child care for people […]

The Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity (DCEO), which leads the state’s business development efforts, appears to have been poorly managed during the tenure of the agency’s former director Jack Lavin, according to reviews of DCEO operations by state and federal authorities. Despite this track record, Gov. Pat Quinn chose Lavin, appointed to head […]

With all the poverty that exists in the United States Brent De Land, who founded the local nonprofit Haitian Development Fund, sometimes doesn’t know how to ask people to give his organization money for its health clinic in Haiti. However, he reasons, where there’s a need we should fill it no matter where it is […]

After debating well past midnight Monday morning, Illinois lawmakers scurried out of Springfield leaving the state’s gaping $11.6 billion budget hole largely unfilled. In addition, Gov. Pat Quinn insists, if the state doesn’t find a way to increase revenue and shore up the deficit, education, healthcare and social services will see major cuts. Quinn had […]