It was the kind of lawsuit that seemed almost hopeless. The Winchester ammunitions plant in East Alton had laid off about a quarter of its salaried employees, and a group of these workers banded together to sue, claiming age discrimination. A similar case, filed by a single worker, had already resulted in a $850,000 judgment […]
News
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Earth first
Now that the Democrats have control of the statehouse, expect to see these environmental issues on the legislative agenda: • Thanks to a 2001 U.S. Supreme Court decision, more than 150,000 acres of isolated wetlands in Illinois no longer have any federal protection. Only three Illinois counties–DuPage, Kane, and Lake–have laws to protect wetlands, making […]
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Our radon risk
Sometimes it’s not what we put into the environment that kills us–it’s what’s already there. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, radon is the second-leading cause of lung cancer, behind only smoking tobacco, killing 15,000 to 20,000 people annually. Sangamon County has some of the highest radon readings in Illinois: More than one in […]
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The dog ate their homework
Kathy Hulcher is standards coordinator for Springfield Public School District 186, which means she’s in charge of making kids take all those achievement tests. And when Kathy Hulcher heard this yarn a couple of weeks ago, she thought it was an April Fool’s joke. It’s not. But it could make an interesting story problem. So […]
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SPD’s “Culture of Deniability”
The Springfield Police Department had no legitimate excuse for failing to correct erroneous and salacious accusations against former officer Renatta Frazier, according to the summary of a report released last Tuesday night. Furthermore, the summary says, many people in the department knew the truth and had multiple opportunities to remedy the situation. The Peoria law […]
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Splitting hares
About ten years ago, a few Christian students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign were bemoaning the commercialization of Easter. “We were talking about how all the important Christian holidays have been commercialized or their actual meaning ruined or subverted,” says Mattox Beckman, who’s completing his doctorate in computer science. Beckman wanted to turn […]
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History in the making
November 8 was cold and windy, with gray, overcast skies threatening rain, but that didn’t stop a group of archaeologists and volunteers from walking over a tilled field about 65 miles west of Springfield. They were looking for remnants of the past. The field was once part of New Philadelphia, the first American town founded […]
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The War at Home
On Sunday, March 16, George W. Bush flew home from the Azores Islands for a “last day of diplomacy” before starting his war against Iraq. The next day in Peoria, Illinois, Robert Wood faced a war of his own. “There are no jobs,” complained Wood, a 41-year-old general contractor, as he stood outside the office […]
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The right tracks
Last January, a small team of city planners from across the U.S.–known as the Regional/Urban Design Assistance Team (R/UDAT)–spent a weekend in Springfield sizing up the city. It then released a beautification scheme that included pulling up the Third Street tracks and consolidating them onto the railroad corridor that runs along 10th Street. The Third […]
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Native son
Tucked deep within Joe Williams’ wallet is a yellowed scrap of paper with seven names and seven strings of numbers scrawled in bold handwriting but faded by time. These names and numbers are all Williams has of his family history. This week Williams–who has sky blue eyes and blond hair, now white with age–talked with […]
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Going to waste
Days before the April 1 mayoral election, Tim Davlin dismissed the notion of using CWLP’s billing system to charge residents for waste hauling, a proposal supported by a city solid-waste task force, Mayor Karen Hasara’s 2020 vision plan, and The Springfield Project. Also in January Ward 4 Alderman Chuck Redpath, who backed Davlin, proposed eliminating […]
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Men on the street?
A few weeks ago, a small band of workers fanned out across Springfield with flashlights and clipboards and spent two hours looking for the very folks most of us would cross the street to avoid–the homeless. It was the first time such an extensive search had been conducted in Springfield, says Rita Tarr, supervisor of […]
