Chamber Members: We hope you are enjoying such a nice day! Today’s update touches on the possible government shutdown, utility moratorium, and voting. Also we want to continue to push the reminders about the funding programs that are out there, with some coming to a...

Chamber Members: Welcome to the first day of FALL, believe it or not. A new season brings change and we’ve certainly seen no shortage of change over the last six months. With that said, the first topic to hit on today is not a change at all from what we’ve advocated...

Chamber Members: As we start a new week, hopefully you’ve seen enough reminders about the existing aid that is out there for your businesses. If for some reason not, we’ll start off today by quickly listing three opportunities currently open. Make sure you check them...

Chamber Members: Big news today! We were all able to lower the positivity rate for Region 7 and we are now back officially to Phase 4 here in our area. This means the return to indoor activities in bars, restaurant, banquet halls, etc. and gatherings can go back to 50...

Chamber Members: A lot of information to share today and even more on deck for tomorrow. The Business Interruption Grants were supposed to open today for applications, but at the time of this writing the link was not live yet.  Hopefully tomorrow that will change. ...

Chamber Members: We’ll hopefully have a little more information to share on yesterday’s big announcement when the second round of the Business Interruption Grant opens tomorrow. Until then, today’s update has some general information on the economy, workforce funds,...

Chamber Members: Governor Pritzker today made an announcement of Business Interruption Grant round #2 and state government cuts on the horizon. The return to work in Washington D.C. has not come quietly, as both sides seems to be digging in on how to handle the...

Chamber Members: Today begins a new week. The House is back in session as we still hold out hope that some type of an agreement can be reached for a federal aid package. Also, new clarifications were released at the end of last week on Family First Coronavirus...

Chamber Members: For a short week, this one really felt like 10 days long. A lot of moving parts this week locally on COVID numbers related to our Region. As of now, we continue to follow the same measures until further notice. A piece of good news to share on this...

Chamber Members: It’s job report day and the “skinny” proposal was voted on.  See the results of both below. Also, Governor Pritzker makes an announcement about Covid response jobs. Latest on the Unemployment Scene New weekly claims for unemployment benefits stayed...

Chamber Members: As a follow-up to our news yesterday that things are moving with concerns over the data and process being used by the state regarding Region 7 mitigation measures, we finally did receive an official response from IDPH. It is nothing really different...

Chamber Members: Hopefully, everyone was able to enjoy a long Labor Day weekend. This by no means should be a quiet week on the COVID front, both nationally and locally. First, expect a vote this week in the Senate on the “skinny” bill mentioned last week. Second,...

Chamber Members: Who’s ready for the long Labor Day weekend? Some good news today on job numbers, but not on covid cases. Interesting though that such as backlog existed since we don’t recall hearing about the possibility during all the reports of the record-breaking...

Chamber Members: Today we share once again the jobless claims over the past week. We look below at some other topics and updates. The main news is the announcement of an agreement to avert a government shutdown, but that means no coupling with coronavirus funding. We...

Chamber Members: Our region now has a partner in mitigation measures as the area east of St. Louis has matched our restrictions one week after the announcement for us here in Region 7 and after their two weeks attempt to reduce positivity below 6.5%. Also, some news...

Chamber Members: Can you believe that we are staring the month of September today? This means 29 days until a potential federal government shutdown and 63 days until the elections. We are now entering the 7th month touched by the COVID pandemic. Here is today’s update...

Chamber Members: Welcome to another week. Last week certainly was an interesting one considering it was noticeably quiet out in Washington DC, but definitely more action back home. Here is a recap from over the last few days and info about our next virtual conference....

Chamber Members: We have job numbers to report since it is Thursday, but more importantly today we are sharing a letter that has been sent to Governor Pritzker and additional elected officials regarding the Region 7 mitigations. The full letter is attached as well....

Chamber Members:   Today we’re going to keep it light and quick as we’re working through some of the backlash from yesterday’s announcement. So, most of the information below is a reminder of what is going on as far as new mitigation efforts that began today,...

Chamber Members: Governor Pritzker was in Joliet to announce the new rules for our Region due to positivity rates climbing above 8%. You will see below the final details as we jumped straight to tougher measures in comparison to what Region 4 saw last week. Press...