Editor’s Note

 That Gov. Bruce Rauner has a limitless capacity for audacity is well known. Yet his Tuesday evening plea for bipartisan “unity” while he is bankrolling ads attacking Democrats for supporting a tax plan similar to his own reached a new low. The governor calls for compromise, but so far he has been unwilling to compromise. […]

 With school out and summer heating up, bored kids get into trouble, sometimes with guns. After a signal from Mayor Jim Langfelder that  the way to address teen violence is with activities and summer jobs, activists in several meetings I’ve been in recently discuss ways to help. As the discussion turns to the difficulty finding […]

I’m pleased to announce that Michelle Ownbey was recently promoted to publisher of Illinois Times and Springfield Business Journal. She was associate publisher of Springfield Business Journal since January 2014, when it was acquired by Illinois Times. Earlier in her career, Michelle had been advertising manager of the Springfield Business Journal from 2001 to 2006, […]

 If you are like me and Trump and Rauner are about to get you down, it’s time to dig in the dirt and put some seeds in the ground. “When the world wearies and ceases to satisfy, there is always the garden,” is the quotation I have on my wall. It’s a little late for […]

It doesn’t help much for Illinois editorialists to get angry, bang the table and shout “Unacceptable” about the Statehouse budget impasse, or “Enough,” as they did a year ago. The neutral, blaming-everybody approach lets everybody – legislators and the governor – off the hook so they can escape responsibility as long as they appear to […]

It was the largest commencement in University of Illinois Springfield history, with 1,270 graduates walking across the stage. Their poetic names – Indian, African, Middle Eastern, Chicagoan – reflect the global diversity that UIS has come to represent. Near the front of the procession of academics, just ahead of Chancellor Susan Koch and Timothy Killeen, […]

 At the Better Government Association’s Monday evening forum on “The Future of News: Covering the Capitol,” more than one of the journalists and editors on the panel agreed the news business will never get back to the staffing levels of 15 years ago when some 40 reporters covered the Statehouse. Some thought that’s not all […]

 A year ago, Mayor Jim Langfelder in his state of the city address talked about streamlining the city’s approach to requests for public records. Now, the city is saying that drafts of an environmental study on Hunter Lake (rhymes with “money sinkhole”) required by the Army Corps of Engineers won’t be shared with the public […]

As the U. S. Senate heads to the White House to hear the administration’s assessment of North Korea’s nuclear capability, and as President Trump continues his threat to use preemptive military strikes, what seems strange is that there is no sense of alarm here, nothing like the dread felt during the Cuban missile crisis. The […]

As our Chris Britt says in his inimitable way on p. 4, nobody is excited about the current crop of Democratic candidates for governor. Long gone are the days when a powerful political machine could put forward a progressive gubernatorial candidate like Adlai Stevenson and win on the benefit of ideas and integrity. Now Democrats, […]

Every Good Friday for the past 30 years or so a small group of Christians and other compassionate activists follow someone carrying a big wooden cross around downtown, stopping occasionally to sing and pray. This is the Way of the Cross walk for peace and justice which begins, again this year, in front of the […]

 If you haven’t yet been to the Springfield and Central Illinois African American History Museum, get there. The new location, a building leased from the city just outside the Monument Avenue entrance to Oak Ridge Cemetery, is ideal. The board and volunteers are energized, continually offering new exhibits and programs. The museum plays a key […]