Comment: Exceptional candor from Pappas. A must-listen.

In a question-and-answer session Wednesday with The Chicago Sun-Times Editorial Board, Foxx said her office had indeed raised the bar to approving charges, noting that many of the wrongful convictions unwound by courts or her office’s Conviction Integrity Unit were the work of prosecutors and police under pressure to “do something” about crime.

“The City Council has yet to agree on a ward remap that, in theory, is supposed to hew to shifts in population and demographics shown in decennial U.S. census data. In reality, it’s been the same self-serving power grab that aldermen engage in every 10 years when ward boundaries get redrawn.”

Dubbed the Chicago Resilient Communities Pilot, the cash assistance program will be one of the largest guaranteed income pilots in the U.S., with $31.5 million total going to 5,000 families in $500 payments.

Up to 5.5% of the Police Department — could be refusing to get the vaccine without a valid accommodation in place. Those who aren’t waiting on a pending exemption could be placed on no-pay status, should the city decide to enforce its mandate by stripping their police powers as it has in the past, albeit gradually.

It is one of the biggest budget cuts in funds for core instruction since CPS started tying school budgets tightly to enrollment about nine years ago. For years, mostly Black schools, especially high schools, have been losing students as families left the city or were attracted by charter schools. But this year, the reductions are widespread

A month after police and CTA officials announced increased security on the city’s transit system, a series of attacks highlight the challenges city officials face in tackling transit crime. In just over one week, at least five attacks that put people in the hospital were reported on or near the CTA, including a fight that led to a beating and stabbing outside of the Roosevelt train station downtown and a shooting on a bus in Lawndale.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot said she “fully expects” the Columbus statue to return the Grant Park — but the city’s monuments committee recommended they not be restored.

According to evidence presented at trial, Artur Gilowski’s coconspirators stole tens of thousands of products – valued at over $20 million – from brick-and-mortar retail stores in Chicago, Franklin Park and Texas, then shipped them to Gilowski, who sold the stolen goods on e-commerce websites Amazon and eBay, generating more than $11 million in profits.

An estimated 250 million gallons of Chicago River water poured through a crack into a little-used network of tunnels under the Loop. Government and business were brought to a halt when the city’s main trading floors shut down and City Hall was left unable to function.

“She needs a large field of contenders going into February, to have any hope of making it to the April run-off between the top two vote-getters. It may not turn out that way, but to make it to the runoff, I think that’s s her best chance of survival. Her poll numbers are tanking, her political funds come from out-of-town, not from Chicago. The city has grown weary of her.”

“As a result of the pandemic and lobbying on behalf of both parents and CTU, CPS decided to jettison the NWEA MAP scores entirely as part of the admissions process to, you guessed it, ‘promote equity,’ in their words. But make no mistake: ‘Equity’ is a cover for declining standards, as the separate test would have shown the staggering decline in the academic progress of the city’s children, including the most vulnerable black and brown students.”

Cities have long focused their economic development efforts on attracting and retaining big employers. But as companies increasingly shift to remote and hybrid work models, cities are investing instead in attracting and retaining residents. Chicago is investing tens of millions of dollars, partly using federal stimulus money, on amenities that make its neighborhoods attractive to remote workers: expanding Wi-Fi access, developing co-working spaces, improving parks and helping pop-up stores fill vacant storefronts. “Whether you’re in a work-from-home recovery or we’re back to a pre-Covid situation in terms of work culture, it’s a win for the city,” says Jennie Bennett, Chicago’s

When Chicago residents spoke out, many said they were deeply concerned the proposals would snarl traffic, reduce property values, fuel crime, diminish their quality of life and trigger a wave of problematic gambling in their neighborhoods. Many seemed unconvinced that a casino was a good idea anywhere in Chicago.

Burnett went from publicly criticizing the developer — Onni Group — to berating colleagues at a 2018 zoning meeting after they tried to slow the project over tenant allegations of unfair treatment. Burnett’s accommodations to Onni coincided with an influx of cash from the developer in the form of jobs and financial support to a PAC and charity run by Burnett’s wife, Chicago Housing Authority official Darlena Williams-Burnett.

“Of course, our poor and minority communities need — and deserve — much better social services. But they also need more police officers, as residents of those communities have made clear. There’s nothing inconsistent about wanting both.”