Illinois

Illinois lawmakers are being asked to decide whether nurses are dangerously overworked — and what to do about it.

Nurses want limits on how many patients they’re assigned. They argue it would improve patient outcomes and workplace safety. But opponents counter a “one size fits all” approach will not work.

Gov.-elect J.B. Pritzker takes office next week on the heels of the most decisive election victory in a generation. And he’ll be working to pass his agenda through the biggest Democratic majorities in the General Assembly since the 1960s.

That raises a question: What precisely does that agenda consist of? 

There was good news in an August letter to The Associated Press: The Illinois attorney general's public access counselor had ruled in favor of the AP's Freedom of Information Act request for records that the Department of Human Services had refused to disclose.

The bad news: The AP requested them in 2011.

The agency complied in October, handing over the names of teenagers and young adults hired for taxpayer-financed summer jobs a decade and more ago.

Access to high-speed internet stops about seven miles east of both Nippersink School District 2 and Richmond-Burton Community High School District 157, according to Tom Lind. He’s the superintendent of both districts, located near the border of Wisconsin —  about 70 miles northwest of Chicago.