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April 20, 2015 • $1.00
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Duffy makes push for bill
CRYSTAL LAKE RESIDENT NAMED TO ‘30 CLINICIANS MAKING A DIFFERENCE’ LIST
Open Meetings Act legislation inspired by Oakwood Hills By KEVIN P. CRAVER kcraver@shawmedia.com State Sen. Dan Duffy is fighting to move forward a bill to reform the Illinois Open Meetings Act in the wake of a closed-session debacle over a now-scuttled proposal for a power plant in Oakwood Hills. House Bill 175 seeks to create a two-year statute of limitations on the ability by the public to report potential violations of the act within 60 days of their discovery. The bill, filed by state Rep. David McSweeney, R-Lake Barrington, passed the House a month ago on a 110-0 vote, and has now moved to the Senate ExecuState Sen. tive Committee. Dan Duffy Duffy, R-Lake R-Lake Barrington, said he has been pressuring Barrington senators to advance the bill for a vote On the Net before the end of session May 31. You can read “We’re kind of the text of in a holding pattern House Bill 175 as of right now, but at www.ilga. I’m looking forward gov. to moving this bill,” Duffy said last week. Under current law, people have 60 days from the date a meeting occurred to report an Open Meetings Act violation, which is often inadequate, which was the case in Oakwood Hills. McSweeney filed the legislation in response to what was potentially an illegal July 2013 meeting by the Oakwood Hills Village Board in which it discussed in closed session the monetary windfall that would come from the building of a 430-megawatt, $450-million power plant in the small town. The Open Meetings Act, which among other things limits what governments can debate behind closed doors, does not have an exemption that covers such a conversation.
Matthew Apgar – mapgar@shawmedia.com
Elizabeth Rios tends to her 8-week-old son Emmanuel while helping her son Daniel, 4, with puzzles April 13 at her home in Crystal Lake. Rios is on maternity leave from her job as a nurse practitioner at the Harvard Area Community Health Center and recently has been featured in Migrant Clinician Network’s “30 Clinicians Making A Difference.”
Nurse honored for efforts with migrant workers Voice your opinion
By KATIE DAHLSTROM kdahlstrom@shawmedia.com HARVARD – The first treatment that Elizabeth Rios administered at the Harvard Area Community Health Center didn’t come in a bottle, but in a sentence. Rios, a family nurse practitioner, discovered when she talked to her patients, many of them migrant workers who primarily – or only – spoke Spanish, hearing familiar speech was often the first defense against some of their ailments. “Little by little they come back and they trust you more,” Rios said. “They explode with all this information and all the conditions they’ve been suffering with for years.” Rios, 39, has spent the past four years making similar connec-
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tions with migrant and seasonal workers in McHenry County. It’s a dream job, she said, because she serves a population that might otherwise go unheard or misunderstood. Rios started at the Community Health Partnership of Illinois in 2011 as a bilingual staff nurse. Her time spent there while she was doing clinical work for her master’s degree drew her attention to the population and never let it go. “That’s what I wanted to do; work at the clinic like that,” Rios said. “Most of them were Hispan-
ic, Latino, Mexican, immigrant workers. They need to have a provider who spoke the language. I understand many of their cultural needs.” She was promoted to a nurse practitioner in 2012, and stayed with the clinic once it moved from Woodstock to Harvard in 2013. Up to 50 patients walk into her office weekly, she said. During their visits, she often warns them about the harmful chemicals and pesticides they’re exposed to and against wearing their work clothes home. Sometimes the visits are about educating patients about drinking water instead of soda and eating healthy foods to avoid diseases such as diabetes and high blood pressure – diseases with a powerful grip on the Hispanic community. Hispanics are almost twice as
likely as whites to be diagnosed with diabetes and they are 50 percent more likely than whites to die from diabetes, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service’s Office of Minority Health. Poverty, language and cultural roadblocks might confound diabetes and other diseases among migrant workers, the Migrant Clinician Network contends. The Texas-based agency that advocates and supports care for migrants, recently honored Rios by naming her one of its “30 Clinicians Making a Difference.” It’s an honor that’s well deserved, said Kimberlee Greif, the clinical director at the Harvard office. Greif said the migrant population, which makes up about
See HONOR, page A6 See LEGISLATION, page A6
Hopes dim for school funding formula overhaul’s passage By KERRY LESTER The Associated Press SPRINGFIELD – Despite a revamp to ease partisan and regional opposition, Illinois lawmakers now see little chance of passing legislation this session that would overhaul the state’s outdated school funding formula for the first time in two decades. The intent of the original bill was to increase state support for poor downstate schools, but sponsors revised it to reduce corresponding losses for wealthier school districts in Chicago and its suburbs. The revision would mean about $60 million less for downstate schools than in
“I think there’s no question we’re not going to have significant new resources going into public education this year. Without additional resources, this whole exercise is one in which you create paupers of [certain] school districts.” State House Majority Leader Barbara Flynn Currie, Chicago Democrat the original bill, with Chicago and its collar counties losing substantially less than first proposed, according to an Illinois State Board of Education analysis. But the change has not significantly softened opposition to the bill, which lies chiefly among Re-
publican lawmakers in the Chicago area. What’s more, legislators from both parties say the timing causes a problem because their priority this spring is dealing with a roughly $6 billion hole in the state’s general finances in the coming year. “My sense is we don’t see an edu-
cation bill [come for a vote] this session,” said House Republican Leader Jim Durkin, who represents western Chicago suburbs. “How it fits in with this budget ... I don’t think it’s something anybody’s going to be contemplating soon.” Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan has established a special committee to consider the issue. But a top member of his leadership team, House Majority Leader Barbara Flynn Currie, agreed that prospects for it were dimming. “I think there’s no question we’re not going to have significant new resources going into public education this year,” said Flynn Currie, a Chicago Democrat who said she
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spoke with one suburban district that warned it couldn’t handle a loss of funds. “Without additional resources, this whole exercise is one in which you create paupers of [certain] school districts.” Few disagree the state’s funding formula needs an update. A study released last month by The Education Trust, a nonpartisan advocacy group, found Illinois has the most unfair school funding system in the nation, with poor students receiving about 20 percent fewer state dollars than their wealthier peers. Since the state’s funding distribution formula was last overhauled in
See FUNDING, page A6
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