McHenry County Blog

This is a good summary of what’s going on in McHenry County compared with the rest of the State of Illinois.

It comes from the 2012 McHenry County Labor Report.

A press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office:

CHICAGO MAN SENTENCED TO THREE YEARS IN FEDERAL PRISON FOR DEFRAUDING ILLINOIS DEPARTMENT OF EMPLOYMENT INSURANCE

CHICAGO — A Chicago man was sentenced today to three years in federal prison for engaging in a fraud scheme that caused the Illinois Department of Employment Insurance to pay approximately $479,571 in unemployment insurance payments to approximately 57 ineligible claimants who were not legally allowed to work in the United States.

The defendant, Roberto Cisneros, pleaded guilty to mail fraud in January and was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Harry Leinenweber in Federal Court.

Cisneros admitted that more than half of the fraudulently-obtained proceeds, approximately $261,017, was deposited into bank accounts he controlled.

Cisneros, 34, who was in the country illegally when he was arrested in June 2011, has remained in federal custody and will be subject to deportation following completion of his sentence.

He was ordered to pay restitution totaling $479,571 to IDES.

The sentence was announced by Patrick J. Fitzgerald, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, James Vanderberg, Special Agent-in-Charge of the U.S. Department of Labor, Office of Inspector General in Chicago; Gary Hartwig, Special Agent-in-Charge of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) in Chicago; and Thomas P. Brady, Inspector-in-Charge of the U.S. Postal inspection Service in Chicago.

According to court documents, between 2006 and 2009, Cisneros accepted money to assist individuals whom he knew were ineligible for unemployment insurance payments by aiding another individual’s submission of fraudulent applications for benefits to an IDES employee for processing.

Unbeknownst to Cisneros, the individual to whom he provided the false applications had later begun cooperating with law enforcement.

Cisneros knew that the claims he submitted and assisted in submitting for unemployment insurance were fraudulent because the claimants were not legally allowed to work in the United States due to their immigration status, making them ineligible to receive unemployment insurance payments.

Cisneros admitted assisting in obtaining unemployment insurance benefits on behalf of 57 individuals using social security numbers that did not match their names and/or dates of birth, numbers that were not issued by the Social Security Administration, or whose numbers matched their names but were not eligible to work in the United States.

The government was represented by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Halley B. Guren and Matthew Getter.

An email from Congressman Peter Roskam:

As Gov. Quinn gives his State of the State Address later today, it’s important to consider this past year’s record. The last year has served as a crystal clear example that tax increases did not help Illinois’ economy nor did it help our worsening fiscal crisis.

-          FLASHBACK: January 2011: Gov. Quinn Signs Record Tax Hike Into Law. Raises individual income taxes by 67 percent and corporate income taxes by 30 percent.

Since the Quinn tax hike, the state’s unemployment – previously dropping precipitously down to 9% – jumped right back up to 9.8%.

-          BY THE NUMBERS: Illinois’ unemployment rate increased the most in the entire country in 2011; Now the 7th highest unemployment rate in the U.S.

While neighboring states tackle record debt and fight to make themselves the most competitive for job growth, Illinois’ heading in the other direction. Neighboring states like Missouri, Wisconsin, and Indiana have all gained jobs this year while Illinois lost over 72,000 in the past year alone.

Illinois can do better than economic policies that take money out of its people’s pockets and jobs out of Illinois. As these charts prove, Illinois is heading in the wrong direction.

View the charts below or on Facebook where they were exclusively posted this morning.

Above is the Labor Day front page today from the Chicago Sun-Times.

The gloomy tone is pretty similar to last year’s big article in the Chicago Tribune, which you see below:

Pam Fender, the Grafton Township Administrator whom Judge Michael Caldwell cut from the payroll, is filing for unemployment compensation, according to the First Electric Newspaper.

Fender was hired by the Grafton Township Trustees, an act that was held to be improper by Judge Caldwell.

Fender is an elected Huntley Village Trustee.

She used to be a painting contractor and was apparently an insurance account representative in August while she was Township Administrator.

Third party candidates in American politics are famous for injecting new ideas into the governmental arena. They usually don’t get elected, but the power party candidates pick up on them and sometimes they get enacted.

Former McHenry County College Board President Scott Summers is suggesting the aging of Illinois suggests it is time to “moth ball” universities or parts of them.

He is not so crass as to make the suggestion that I would, that is, the primary purpose of most public institutions is to provide jobs, but he’s skating close to that assertion.

The following blog post by the Libertarian Party candidate for State Treasurer stimulated the Daily Herald’s story to write a story yesterday on Summer’s suggestion that it is time to close two law schools.

Summers graduated from one of the law schools he wants to close.

These are dark days for governance in Illinois.

Shrinking revenues.  Monster deficits.  Mountains of unpaid bills.    Political paralysis.

But even in these difficult times, we must pull together and plan for our future.

For perhaps the first time since the Great Depression, we face a period of contraction — not expansion — in public services.

We must be courageous enough — and shrewd enough — to plan accordingly for our state’s governance.

Apart from our dire finances — let’s begin by considering Illinois demographics with the broadest of brushstrokes.

Our statewide population is creeping up, but not by much.

Were it not for immigration, we’d be a net outflow state.

We’re also steadily graying: young adults in particular seem to be moving away.

Accordingly, consider — as the tiniest of sketches — higher education.

If the population of traditionally college-aged young people is static or even seems likely to shrink — then can we really afford all of our public universities going forward?

In other words — has the time come to (gasp!) slim down or even (gasp! gag!) mothball one or more of our universities?

There’s a subset to this, too.

Can we continue to afford some of the programs our universities offer?

For example, we have three public law schools

• University of Illinois (U of I),
• Southern Illinois University (SIU), and
• Northern Illinois University (NIU).

And we have a glut of unemployed lawyers.

Has the time finally come to slim down to just U of I for public law?

(Full disclosure: I’m an NIU law graduate. And I remain very grateful for the tip-top legal education I received there. Personally, I’d hate to see the place close. But I’m counting beans today, not wallowing in sentiment.)

Ditto medical schools.

• U of I has four campuses and additional satellites.
• SIU has two campuses.

They do wonderful work.

They are cherished assets of their host communities. But — but — but — can we afford them all?

So how do we make these horribly difficult — and, I freely admit, politically dead-on-arrival (at least for the present) — public policy choices?

We have to develop assessment and implementation mechanisms where we carefully evaluate our public needs — and then collectively/figuratively hold hands and jump.

Remember the military base closure commissions?

The Pentagon has gone through several iterations with these.

The blue ribbon types come in and do the meticulous analysis, and then Congress goes with a straight up-or-down vote on a recommended list.

There is anguish,
there is pain,
there is inequity,
there is dysfunction,
there is dislocation,
there is wailing,
there is gnashing of teeth —
but the bases get closed in stages, and life goes on.

So back to the higher ed example.

The General Assembly establishes something akin to a base closure commission.

There’s analysis. There are hearings. A set of recommendations is presented. And ideally (ideally!) the members of the General Assembly hold hands and jump — excruciatingly painful as that surely will be.

I could go on with other examples — but you get my drift.

Yes, the time has come. Call it — “Rightsizing Illinois”.

Our political leaders — and yes, we Illinoisans — need to team up and get it done.

The Republican challenger to State Rep. Jack Franks is holding a job fair in McHenry on Wednesday. The details are below:

JOHN O’NEILL SPONSORS SECOND JOB FAIR

TO HELP THE PEOPLE OF McHENRY COUNTY

With 10% of McHenry County residents out of work, somebody has got to do something to help our friends, our neighbors, and ourselves find good jobs to support our families.

It doesn’t look like the political machine in Springfield is going to do anything to fix the economy, however John O’Neill is not waiting until he’s elected to do something about it. John has sponsored a second job fair which will feature numerous employers which are looking to hire local residents who are unemployed or under-employed.

If you or someone you care about is out-of-work or struggling to pay their bills, please plan to attend this Job Fair sponsored by the John O’Neill for State Representative campaign.

What: Job Fair to Help the People of McHenry County

Where: The Bell Tower Place at the Church of Holy Apostles

5211 W. Bull Valley Road, McHenry, IL

(Corner of Bull Valley Road and Crystal Lake Road)

When: Wednesday July 7, 2010 from 11:00 am until 1:00 pm

Contact: (847) 589-7500

Cost: $0.00

Pete Gonigam’s First Electric Newspaper reported it first, but he didn’t have the map you see below.

What you see in orange is the new area within McHenry County designated by the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Development as “Targeted Employment Area under the Alien Entrepreneur Visa Program.”

The yellow sections on the map are already so designated.

So, what does it mean?

Under the irreverently coined “buy a visa” program, foreigners with $1 million to invest in an approved job creation enterprise may obtain entry to the United States of America.

However, if the economic development occurs within a “Targeted Employment Area,” the required investment decreases to $500,000.

As you can see two townships—Riley and Chemung—previously were eligible for the smaller “entry fee.”

With the expansion of the Woodstock Greenwood Township section, whose northern edge is Ware Road (the street between the McHenry County Jail and the Administrative Building), to include the rural part of Dorr Township, Lakewood gains a potential source of investment for its part of the intersection of Routes 47 and 176. So does Woodstock as it expands southward toward Route 176.

The rural Dorr Township area was eligible because the census tract had an unemployment rate of 14.2% is 153% of the national average of 9.3%. (An area must be at least at the 150% level.)

Note that the connection is at a point. Only the edges of the census tracts touch. (See black mark on map.)

A January 6th letter from Lakewood Village President to Warren Ribley, Executive Director of the DCCA, states that “the proposed project” will employee “800 temporary and 400 permanent individuals.”

It references a January 7th letter to Village Manager Catherine Peterson from New York City attorney Stephen Yale-Loehr.

He delivers an affirmative answer as to whether the census tract can be designated a “Targeted Employment Area for EB-5 (the name of the “buy a visa” program) purposes.”

He points out his co-authorship of “Immigration Law and Procedure, the leading 20-volume immigration law treatise,” plus his teaching immigration law at Cornell Law School.

He has been a member or in a leadership position in the American Immigration Lawyers Association EB-5 Investors Committee since 1996.

And he says why this particular census tract, which contains the area proposed for the SportsPlex is eligible for a Targeted Employment Area designation.

DCCA apparently agreed with Yale-Loehr’s logic. That’s what DCCA Research Manager Edwin R. Taft’s February 16th letter indicates.

16th congressional district Green Party candidate Scott Summers has posted this on his blog, www.SummersTimes.com.

I thought you who want to follow the 16th congressional district campaign might be interested.

WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT
HIGH UNEMPLOYMENT
IN THE 16TH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT?

The numbers are in for April 2008 — and they aren’t pretty.

Unemployment is up — up sharply — in all of the counties that comprise, in whole or part, our Congressional District.

At 8.1%, Boone has the second worst rate in the state. Ogle and Winnebago are ninth and tenth worst, at 7%.

Statewide? 5.4%. Nationally? 5.0%. (See lmi.ides.state.il.us/rank.htm)

We’re falling behind, friends. And my opponents simply don’t have any good ideas about what to do — except maybe throw more of our tax dollars around, and try a few things at the margins.

The traditional top-down “solutions” — grants and tax breaks and other incentives for companies large and small — simply aren’t working. Our good jobs just keep melting away.

I say: let’s change the fundamentals.

Instead of trying to boost the economy from the top-down — let’s do it from the bottom-up.

Let’s empower our families and neighbors and friends.

Let’s raise up a whole new generation of capitalists. A whole new breed of capitalists.

I call them “microcapitalists”.

It was the hard-working, bootstrapping, decent folks of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries who, one at a time, put their hearts and their hands and their backs and their sweat into the nation’s work, and made America an economic powerhouse.

We can do it again.

I propose a program of microloans and microgrants for home-based and community-based businesses.

Let’s jump-start this with jobs and management training through our high schools and community colleges.

Add a volunteer corps of accountants and lawyers and bankers and retired executives to serve as coaches.

Offer reduced rents in “business incubators” — shared office or shop floor space, with pooled administrative staff and office equipment.

The microcapitalist program will be rigorous. And it will not be for everybody: not all of us are cut out to be business owners and managers.

But it’s a bright new way of reinvigorating our communities, and creating new jobs.

The coaching teams will help develop business plans as a requirement for receiving microloan and microgrant consideration. And the coaches will guide the microcapitalists, and help them succeed.

These businesses can be anything that demonstrably serves a community need: a bed and breakfast, a beauty salon, a bakery, or a bicycle business. A software startup. Community agriculture. Specialty manufactured items that fill niches, shipped to the nation and even the world.

Let’s create work. Let’s create businesses and jobs. Let’s give one another the dignity of work.

And let’s do it together, at the grass roots — in our neighborhoods and in our communities and on our farms.

Do you know what else?

Home-grown jobs, and home-grown businesses, are ours to keep. They won’t be outsourced.

Friends, this is how I will perform as your Congressman.

I offer hearts-and-hands solutions.

Here is my heart. Give me your hands.

Most truly yours,

Scott

Summers is running against Republican incumbent Don Manzullo and Democratic Party challenger Robert Abboud.

16th congressional district Green Party candidate Scott Summers has posted this on his blog, www.SummersTimes.com.

I thought you who want to follow the 16th congressional district campaign might be interested.

WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT
HIGH UNEMPLOYMENT
IN THE 16TH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT?

The numbers are in for April 2008 — and they aren’t pretty.

Unemployment is up — up sharply — in all of the counties that comprise, in whole or part, our Congressional District.

At 8.1%, Boone has the second worst rate in the state. Ogle and Winnebago are ninth and tenth worst, at 7%.

Statewide? 5.4%. Nationally? 5.0%. (See lmi.ides.state.il.us/rank.htm)

We’re falling behind, friends. And my opponents simply don’t have any good ideas about what to do — except maybe throw more of our tax dollars around, and try a few things at the margins.

The traditional top-down “solutions” — grants and tax breaks and other incentives for companies large and small — simply aren’t working. Our good jobs just keep melting away.

I say: let’s change the fundamentals.

Instead of trying to boost the economy from the top-down — let’s do it from the bottom-up.

Let’s empower our families and neighbors and friends.

Let’s raise up a whole new generation of capitalists. A whole new breed of capitalists.

I call them “microcapitalists”.

It was the hard-working, bootstrapping, decent folks of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries who, one at a time, put their hearts and their hands and their backs and their sweat into the nation’s work, and made America an economic powerhouse.

We can do it again.

I propose a program of microloans and microgrants for home-based and community-based businesses.

Let’s jump-start this with jobs and management training through our high schools and community colleges.

Add a volunteer corps of accountants and lawyers and bankers and retired executives to serve as coaches.

Offer reduced rents in “business incubators” — shared office or shop floor space, with pooled administrative staff and office equipment.

The microcapitalist program will be rigorous. And it will not be for everybody: not all of us are cut out to be business owners and managers.

But it’s a bright new way of reinvigorating our communities, and creating new jobs.

The coaching teams will help develop business plans as a requirement for receiving microloan and microgrant consideration. And the coaches will guide the microcapitalists, and help them succeed.

These businesses can be anything that demonstrably serves a community need: a bed and breakfast, a beauty salon, a bakery, or a bicycle business. A software startup. Community agriculture. Specialty manufactured items that fill niches, shipped to the nation and even the world.

Let’s create work. Let’s create businesses and jobs. Let’s give one another the dignity of work.

And let’s do it together, at the grass roots — in our neighborhoods and in our communities and on our farms.

Do you know what else?

Home-grown jobs, and home-grown businesses, are ours to keep. They won’t be outsourced.

Friends, this is how I will perform as your Congressman.

I offer hearts-and-hands solutions.

Here is my heart. Give me your hands.

Most truly yours,

Scott

Summers is running against Republican incumbent Don Manzullo and Democratic Party challenger Robert Abboud.