Opinion

Recently I had the opportunity to observe citizen engagement with members of Congress – the kind not typically seen on television. My husband, Randy Witter, and I were in Washington, D.C., for the University of Illinois System advocacy day. Teams representing all three University of Illinois campuses met with members of the Illinois congressional delegation. […]

Illinois abolished traditional parole in 1978, one of 16 states to have abolished or severely restricted discretionary parole. Of the 1.4 million people currently held in U.S. prisons, one in seven have life sentences. In states with parole, incarcerated individuals can present their cases to a parole board for release after serving minimum sentences. This […]

This past week marked the one-year anniversary of the premiere for No Title for Tracey, the documentary about my sister, Tracey Meares, and her being denied the title of valedictorian of her senior class at Springfield High School in 1984. Many have asked what has been the most impactful moment since the documentary was first […]

Competency, courage and integrity of leadership are quickly apparent in the treatment of the urban core. A tone is set every day for those who live there and visitors considering Springfield as their new home. Springfield deserves leadership that has the courage to reinvest in historically neglected areas, the wisdom to treat one another with […]

Why every 15 years since the 1980s savings and loan collapse has there been a financial crisis? Martin Wolf of the Financial Times states, “We have created a banking sector that is in theory private, but in practice a ward of the state.” Let’s take a look at the failure of the Silicon Valley Bank, […]

Gov. JB Pritzker has announced he wants to provide $70 million per year for the next three years to address the teacher shortage. Hats off to him, as there is no denying that hundreds of classrooms are lacking qualified, certified teachers. The issues of lack of teachers and low pay are real. These issues have […]

“Nuclear war” has broken out in Illinois – one that could result in the devastation of our economy and sabotaging of the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act (CEJA) goals of 100% renewable energy by 2050. Driven largely by billions of federal dollars from the Infrastructure Act and the Inflation Reduction Act and Department of Energy […]

When the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum and Library was in the design stage, a visiting team from the American Institute of Architects completed a rapid-paced downtown urban design profile called a Regional/Urban Design Assessment Team, or R/UDAT. The R/UDAT program was sought out by the city to create a framework for downtown to coincide with […]

I am an avid hiker and believe that there may be room for more U.S. national parks. However, in the story (Illinois Times Feb. 2) on a proposed Shawnee National Park, I noticed some points that need clarifying. The area now in Shawnee was not all a pristine, untouched area in the 1920-30s. Intensive farming […]

While the future of cash bail is pending before the Illinois Supreme Court, we’re running a community-based program to help people break the cycle of arrest and jail. And we’re exploring ways to expand our work across the state. We believe in community support so much that we invested $2.9 million last year to connect […]