Chief Financial Officer Jennie Huang Bennett traced much of the savings to what she called a “nurse triage system.” When an employee calls to make a claim, a nurse walks them “through the incident” to “help determine whether a claim was needed,” she said. “This process alone [produced] a 30% reduction in incidents being converted to claims.” She openly acknowledged it’s not “sexy work,” but argued it’s “incredibly important nevertheless.”

“In Chicago, homeowners pay 90% more in property taxes than they did in 2010. Is it any wonder that the city struggles to keep residents from looking for a better bang for their tax buck in the suburbs, or maybe the Sun Belt?”

“For her part, Lightfoot says she wants a strong and independent inspector general. That’s good to hear. But she also says she wants an IG who ‘understands the importance of staying in their lane.’ The mandate for an IG to ‘stay in their lane’ sounds like a purity test to us — with the results outweighing competency when the decision is made on who gets the post.”

“You see that the one distinguishing factor happens to be that most of the students – the vast majority of the students – tracked into honors happen to be white and a disproportionate number of students tracked into the lower courses happen to be minorities?” Ralph Martire, who serves as the board secretary, asked.

While phasing in the sharp increases in assessed value could help Cook County’s commercial property owners adjust, holding down property taxes requires reducing spending through public pension reform in Illinois.

Katie Fernandez, president of Scholastic Press Association of Chicago and Illinois director of the Journalism Education Association, said the impact reaches beyond journalism students, as other students can’t use products like Adobe and teachers have to change their curriculums. “CPS is really focusing on equity. Our students are not allowed to use a program that everyone across the country is using. [It] doesn’t seem equitable me.”

“This is not a fishing expedition,” said Chicago attorney Stephen Lee, who formerly served as a senior counsel to the Chicago U.S. attorney’s health care fraud unit and who reviewed the subpoenas. “Sometimes these investigations don’t really go anywhere, but there’s something they’re looking into, and it’s something more than just what’s unethical.”

Connecticut, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Louisiana, Maryland, Puerto Rico, South Carolina, Texas, and the Virgin Islands are no longer on the advisory. California and Mississippi returned to the advisory this week.

Murder in Chicago is hardly breaking news. So far this year, the city has logged almost 700 victims of homicide. But this time a new element was added to the same sad story. This time, the CEO of a major American corporation weighed in. And what made his reaction to the deaths interesting is that he didn’t blame the usual suspects: systemic racism and rogue cops. Chris Kempczinski, the president and CEO of McDonald’s, sent a text message to Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot that recently was made public: “With both, the parents failed those kids.

“They say the North Side of Chicago, there’s too much wealth,” state Rep. Jaime Andrade said, “and so we cannot get any violence prevention funds up here.” He said there is another simple solution – just enforce the laws already on the books.

Of the city’s 72 neighborhoods, 50 are seeing either more homicides or about the same number as last year. Many struggling neighborhoods continue to bear the brunt of violence: Austin, North Lawndale, Auburn-Gresham, West Garfield Park, West Pullman, South Shore, Roseland, Near West Side, South Lawndale and Washington Heights.

Police Department employees continue to lag behind the rest of the city: Just 73.08 percent of them have reported their status, according to city data. The Fire Department is the second-least compliant agency, with 88.61 percent of its employees reporting their status.

Also at Monday’s hearing in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Judge John R. Blakey discussed the possibility of reassigning two similar lawsuits, one against the city of Chicago and another against Cook County, so all three lawsuits could be heard by Blakey.