Illinois
Former Illinois lawmaker gets a year in prison for cheating on her taxes
A federal judge sentenced former Illinois Sen. Annazette Collins to a year in prison Friday for cheating on her taxes in a case with ties to the same investigation that snared indicted former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan.
A jury in February convicted Collins of filing false individual tax returns for the years 2014 and 2015, failing to file one for the year 2016 and failing to file a corporate tax return for 2016.
“Her offenses were driven by greed,” U.S. District Judge Jorge Alonso said. “She doesn’t want to hear that, but it’s absolutely true.”
Prosecutors say she ultimately dodged more than $150,000 in taxes, and they asked the judge to sentence Collins to roughly two years in prison. Collins’ attorney argued she dodged closer to $30,000 in taxes and sought probation.
The feds argued that Collins refused to accept responsibility and has instead been “hiding behind vitriol and recrimination.” Even though she was indicted in 2021, prosecutors say Collins owes more than $68,000 in tax, interest and penalties for the years 2020 through 2022.
In a letter to the judge, Collins said she “let the voters down” and is “determined to never be in this situation again.”
“I am embarrassed and humiliated that my name has been tarnished and my legacy ruined,” Collins wrote.
Collins’ name has surfaced repeatedly at the Dirksen Federal Courthouse over the years, including in two 2023 corruption trials. Her own trial revealed that she was caught while working at an insurance company submitting bogus policies for people who did not apply for them or “did not exist.” The allegations did not lead to criminal charges.
Testimony Friday revealed that the alleged fraud steered more than $12,000 to Collins. None of it triggered criminal charges, though, and her attorney suggested Collins had been trying to help people without bank accounts secure life insurance.
Meanwhile, the case brought by prosecutors revolved around her work with her lobbying firm, Kourtnie Nicole Corp., following her years in the legislature. That firm wound up collecting hefty sums from politically connected firms and utilities.
They included ComEd and AT&T Illinois, both of which were caught up in the Madigan investigation and faced criminal charges.
The jury learned that ComEd paid Collins’ firm $207,000, and AT&T Illinois paid it $95,343. A firm tied to former ComEd lobbyist John Hooker — among four political insiders convicted last year of scheming to bribe Madigan — paid Collins’ firm $11,000. And the Roosevelt Group lobbying firm tied to Victor Reyes — who figured prominently in Hooker’s trial — paid $2,500.
Meanwhile, the jury also heard that Collins used money from her lobbying firm to make car, tuition and mortgage payments, and to fund a 2015 trip to Punta Cana, all while filing income tax returns that made it seem she earned paltry sums of as little as $11,000 a year after leaving public office.
During last year’s separate trial of Hooker and three others convicted of a nearly decade-long conspiracy to bribe Madigan, jurors saw a handwritten list of favored lobbyists that included the name “Annazette.”
The list appeared on stationary from the Talbott Hotel and was purportedly dubbed the “magic list” by Madigan confidant Michael McClain, who was among those convicted with Hooker.
Then, jurors in the separate trial of businessman James Weiss heard that Collins also worked as a lobbyist for Weiss’ company, Collage LLC. Weiss was convicted of bribing then-state Rep. Luis Arroyo and then-state Sen. Terry Link, and he is now serving a 66-month prison sentence.
Illinois
Massive sinkhole opens at soccer field in downstate Illinois
ALTON, Ill. – A park in Alton, Illinois, closed on Wednesday after a giant sinkhole opened up in the middle of a soccer field.
Footage captured by 618 Drone Service shows the large hole, estimated to be around 100 feet wide in the turf at Gordon Moore Park.
The sinkhole, which formed at around 10 am on Wednesday, was the result of a mine collapsing, local media reported.
“The New Frontier Materials underground mine in Alton, IL today experienced a surface subsidence and opened a sink hole at Gordon Moore City Park,” a spokesperson from the mine said.
Nobody was on the field at the time of the collapse or hurt, Alton Mayor David Goins told local media.
All scheduled events at the park were cancelled on Wednesday and Thursday as investigations continued.
Illinois
How Illinois soybean farmers deal with the effects of climate change
WATERMAN, Ill. (CBS) – Illinois is the top grower of soybeans in the U.S., most of which is used to feed the chicken and beef eaten by consumers, but climate change is affecting local farmers and may end up affecting what shoppers pay at the store.
About an hour west of Chicago, the pace is a little slower in DeKalb County, where Ryan Frieders, a seventh-generation farmer, and his family grow crops on about 2,400 acres, an area about 10 times the size of Millennium Park.
“We have some of the best soils in the world,” Frieders said.
And no one watches the weather more closely than a farmer.
“Honestly, I think I have five different weather apps on my phone, and I probably check them over a dozen times a day,” he said.
The land has been in the Frieders’ family for 60 years, and Ryan’s father, Ronald, lives just a few miles down the road.
“I graduated in 1970 and basically walked out of high school and started farming with my folks,” said Ronald Frieders.
The elder Frieders said that weather has “always been a challenge,” but it seems that challenge is getting more extreme.
“Everything’s changing it seems like, the temperatures are getting hotter than normal, the water levels are lower than normal,” Ronald said.
Ryan added they’re faced with longer periods of a lack of rain, or what might be called a “flash drought.” Sometimes, they’re faced with more rain than usual, which could delay the planting of their crops.
“It affects our entire year of the farm,” Ryan said.
The changes are all consistent with the Fifth National Climate Assessment’s expectations for Midwest agriculture in a warming world, which include:
- “Excessive spring rain delaying planting.”
- “Rapid transitions between flood and drought.”
- “Warmer temperatures stressing crops.”
Ronald said 2021 was the most difficult harvest that he’s ever experienced.
“Our crops were flattened,” he said.
That came about due to worsening thunderstorm wind damage, which is also linked to climate change in a new study. Ryan said the changes in weather patterns and their effect on crops also has an affect on the farm’s income.
Michael Langemeier, a professor of agriculture economics at Purdue University, said the weather changes are something farmers are discussing more and more.
“I don’t know if it’s directly impacting what the consumers pay to a large degree, yet,” Langemeier said.
He and his team have surveyed 400 farmers nationwide. He asked farmers about how worried they were about the changing weather patterns, and about 25% said they were either “very worried” or “fairly worried.”
“I thought that was a relatively high percent,” Langemeier said.
He added the farmers didn’t talk much about what those changes might be attributed to, “They just talk about it as different, and we’ve got to think about how we’re going to respond to these changes.”
Ryan said it might be difficult to understand how glaciers melting at the earth’s poles affect their farm, “but then you see things happening that aren’t the same as they used to be, and you tend to wonder if the things are more related than you ever thought they were.”
The Frieders farm installed solar panels to lower their carbon footprint and has made changes to their operation in response to the changes in the weather.
Data from the Illinois Soybean Association show that crop yield has not changed significantly over the last decade.
Illinois
New York Times names Ava, Illinois, pizza place as one of the best in the country
AVA, Ill. – According to the New York Times, one of the best pizza spots in the country is right in our viewing area.
Located in a town of 545 people, Scratch Brewing sits just miles away from Shawnee National Forest.
“It was incredibly gratifying to be included on the list. Most people know us for our beer, but our kitchen follows the same ethos, sourcing everything as locally as possible,” owner Marika Josephson said.
The brewery features a handmade brick oven for wood-fired pizza on weekends. All their pizzas are nearly entirely locally sourced from local farmers, mills, or right on their property.
“Like our beer, we think our pizza is a special representation of the land around us. We grow all the tomatoes and basil we put on our pizza; we grind and season our own sausage. When possible, we’ll also harvest an extra helping of the wild ingredients we put into our beer—like nettle—and make a topping with them, like pesto,” Josephson explained. “It’s a place-based approach to food that mirrors our place-based approach to beer.”
Types of pizzas include fennel pesto with goat cheese, margherita, sliced potato with rosemary and sausage, and bloomsdale cheese with hearth bread.
“Our pizzas change all the time—much like our beer—but in the middle of the summer, it’s hard to beat a classic margherita made with our own tomatoes harvested directly from the garden outside. They’re so fresh and so flavorful,” Josephson said.
The location also has an ever-changing line of drinks; from elderberry and ginger to hickory, lavender, and more, there is a variety for customers’ tastes.
“It would be an understatement to call Scratch a product of its environment,” the article from the NYT said. “To say this place is worth its own road trip is another understatement.”
Ava is located an hour and a half southeast of St. Louis. For more information on Scratch, click here.
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