News & Announcements

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...