AP News – ALTON, Ill. (AP) — A giant sinkhole has swallowed the center of a soccer complex that was built over an operating limestone mine in southern Illinois, taking down a large light pole and leaving a gaping chasm where squads of kids often play. But no injuries were reported after the sinkhole opened Wednesday morning.

“No one was on the field at the time and no one was hurt, and that’s the most important thing,” Alton Mayor David Goins told The (Alton) Telegraph.

Security video that captured the hole’s sudden formation shows a soccer field light pole disappearing into the ground, along with benches and artificial turf at the city’s Gordon Moore Park.

The hole is estimated to be at least 100 feet (30.5 meters) wide and up to 50 feet (15.2 meters) deep, said Michael Haynes, the city’s parks and recreation director.

So I guess that’s what happens when you build soccer fields on top of old abandoned mines? Yikes man. 

Looks like when Bane just left the stadium and Big Ben, Heinz Ward and the boys were about to kickoff. And things just went kaboom.

Thank God nobody was on the fields playing when this happened and tragedy was avoided. But I guess all that limestone we use for everything has to come from somewhere right? One of the cool parts about flying back to Chicago from down south or the west coast is flying over all the quarries outside the city and seeing how freaking far down they dug to get all that stone out. Some of them are insanely deep. Almost as deep as your mother. OHHHHH

During the last couple weeks of the spring state legislative session, Senate President Don Harmon got whacked twice by allies, including Gov. J.B. Pritzker, but still managed to keep his cool.

On May 14, the pro-choice powerhouse group Personal PAC issued a blistering press release blasting the Senate supermajority for an “unacceptable decision” to strip abortion services from the governor’s birth equity bill, which banned co-pays and other added insurance costs for most prenatal and postnatal care. Pritzker quickly chimed in, saying if the House-approved bill was indeed stripped of abortion coverage, he wouldn’t sign it.

Eleven days later — the day before the Senate took up the state budget package — an internal administration talking points memo was mistakenly sent as a blast text message by a member of Pritzker’s staff to House Democrats. The incendiary blast text was sent shortly after the Senate Democrats, in consultation with the Republicans, amended a House bill reforming the Illinois Prisoner Review Board.

The Senate’s bipartisan amendment included requirements like live-streaming Prisoner Review Board hearings, which the Pritzker administration claimed at the time would cost a fortune and, according to the mistakenly texted memo, was actually part of a plan to undermine the state’s Mandatory Supervised Release program because hearing officers would be intimidated into not releasing deserving prisoners while being video streamed.

“This is a right-wing wolf in disingenuous transparency clothing,” the administration’s text told House Dems. “It eliminates [Mandatory Supervised Release] by design. And it’s appalling that senate democrats [sic] are so eager to please their Republican friends that they would undermine justice and push to keep people incarcerated who, by measure of actual law, should be out on MSR.”

There was real fear in the building the accidental broadside could derail the budget.

Budget package stayed on track

Through it all, though, Harmon didn’t overreact. The entire budget package cleared his chamber with far more Democratic support than it received days later in the House. Things could’ve been so much different.

“It did not trouble me in a way it may have in the past,” Harmon told me last week after I asked if he had matured over the years.

The Senate, he pointed out, eventually “passed the birth equity bill, and in the form it was passed.” He later added, “I think there were some misunderstandings that could’ve been resolved by a telephone call.”

And Harmon said of the Prisoner Review Board amendment imbroglio: “We weren’t intending to pick fights. It was a bit of a surprise to me the level of engagement and the way it happened. I’d much rather work with the governor to make this work than to spin our wheels for nothing.” He said he’d be “happy” to have a conversation with the governor to “make sure all voices are heard” going forward.

“In the end, we’re judged by what we produce, not the rough drafts in between,” Harmon said. “The partnership with the governor, responsible budgeting has been a real anchor here for all of us, I think. And again, my priorities going into any session are to do the best I can to make sure the members of our caucus have the opportunity to advance legislation that’s important to them and to make sure we adopt a responsible, balanced budget. So, I try to focus on those things and not worry about the political flame-throwing that just seems to be part of our process.”

Harmon and the governor didn’t start off on the best terms. The two were old allies, but their top staffs just did not mesh well, to say the least.

But Harmon told me things started to change toward the end of the 2023 spring session. “I think the challenges we faced in passing the budget last year have solidified the relationship between the Senate staff and the governor’s staff and demonstrated our ability to work well together,” he told me.

Harmon wouldn’t specify what those “challenges” were, but it’s pretty obvious what he meant.

Last year, House Speaker Chris Welch agreed to a budget deal with the other two leaders. An announcement was made, but then Welch got heat from his caucus and needed to find more money for his members. Rather than walk away, Harmon and Pritzker and their staffs worked with Welch to find a solution.

Former House Speaker Michael Madigan wouldn’t have been nearly as accommodating, to say the least. Making accommodations and overlooking attacks just weren’t his thing. Times have indeed changed.

Rich Miller also publishes Capitol Fax, a daily political newsletter, and CapitolFax.com.

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It’s boating season for sure.

The 4th of July weekend is the time to get out on the water. I saw several trucks with boats at a coffee shop this morning, likely heading out for the week. If I could, I’d spend the whole week flopped out on a boat. We put up with a nasty January for this. Whether you’re swimming, drinking, or the one driving the boat, there are sure to be shenanigans.

I’ll be the first to admit that I get the zoomies when I drive a boat. It’s almost jetski intense. I haul all over the lake, I won’t lie. Some of us start driving boats sitting in our family’s lap holding the steering wheel. And that’s not too far from the legal boating age in Illinois.

The Minimum Age To Drive A Boat In Illinois

Illinois seems to have similar boating rules to Iowa. According to the Illinois DNR, minors (12-17) can drive a boat under one of two circumstances: they have their Boating Safety Certificate from the Illinois DNR or they have someone 18 or older with them.

It also depends on the boat the kid is in. That rule applies to boats that are over 10 horsepower.

No kid under 10 years old can operate a motorboat at all.

Also, as a good reminder for the 4th of July weekend festivities, don’t let the most blitzed person on your boat drive it. We all know they don’t need to do anything besides try not to black out.

Illinois Property Goes Viral For Being ‘Like 7 Different Universes’