Afternoon news update: June 29, 2015

Discussion over the planned Rockford Housing Authority housing project on New Towne Drive off of East State Street is going to be hot and heavy tonight. Two meetings about the project are planned. There will be another public meeting with Gorman Management Company, the project developer, at the Jane Addams Housing complex at five o’clock and the city council strategic planning committee will discuss the issue prior to tonight’s city council meeting. The last public meeting erupted in shouts and anger against the development company, the RHA, and Mayor Larry Morrissey.
This is now the second wettest June on record in Illinois, but is looking to take the top spot. June keeps climbing up the rankings thanks to all the rain lately says State Climatologist Jim Angel. Angel says with more rain in the forecast over the next couple of days, he expects this to end up as the wettest June on record. The statewide average temperature so far this month has been less than a degree above normal.
A 45-year old Rockford man will learn his fate after being convicted of using MySpace to lure a teenage boy into a sexual assault. Peter Gakuba was convicted of sexually assaulting a 14 year old boy at a Rockford motel after meeting him on MySpace in 2006. Gakuba was convicted of three counts of aggravated criminal sexual assault and faces up to 21 years in prison.
The Illinois House wants to hear from some state agencies about how they plan to operate if the state doesn't have a new budget in place by Wednesday. House Speaker Michael Madigan says lawmakers will meet Tuesday and Wednesday in Springfield to hear from agencies under the governor's control, including the ones in charge of unemployment, child protection and prisons.
Meanwhile, battling advertising campaigns make the budget issue look more like a political campaign. The union for thousands of child and home health care workers in Illinois has starting running television ads criticizing Governor Bruce Rauner's spending proposals. Rauner is running his own TV spots blasting Democratic lawmakers for not doing enough to come up with a sound budget.
Gas prices in the Rockford region fall over the past seven days. Average retail gasoline dropped more than 2 cents a gallon in the past week, averaging $2.79 per gallon. That's about on par with the national average. Just in time for the the July Fourth weekend.
One proposal to support state and federal programs is to increase taxes on higher incomes. One Illinois congressman says he’s OK with that. U.S. Rep. Bill Foster (D-Naperville), who was a success in the stage and theater lighting business before he went into physics and then politics, was asked about the vilification of self-made millionaires. He says they all depended on something funded by taxes, whether it was schools for themselves or transportation systems for their business. “I don’t believe in vilification, but I also have trouble with people who have made it themselves and ignore all of the infrastructure on which their success has depended, and are unwilling to contribute a healthy fraction of their success back to giving a hand up to others,” he said. He also says there’s a divide in this country over how much economic security society owes to those whose lives don’t turn out well; he falls on the side of a certain level of dignity, especially for the elderly.

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