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“I find it interesting that Walmart announced the closure of those stores one week after Brandon Johnson became mayor-elect. From hypothesizing about reinstalling the employee head tax to other mechanisms that make Chicago not friendly for business, Brandon Johnson’s postulating has scared the business community.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Diane MacArthur told the jury during closing arguments Monday that the scheme wasn’t money in envelopes. Instead, the bribes were no-show jobs, lucrative contracts and a seat on the utility’s board of directors.
At the peak of the budget impasse, many vendors waited more than 200 days to get paid by the state. Currently, Comptroller Susana Mendoza says the oldest bill she has is just 16 days old.
“Sometimes you have to become a pest to be the best lobbyist in the state,” said Patrick attorney Cotter. “That’s politics and politics still isn’t illegal in this country.”
Johnson has proposed a tax on financial transactions of $1 or $2 per transaction. This proposal could drive the entire sector to pick up and leave, as they have threatened before. However, this tax appears to be prohibited by state law.
Funding for quality public services has suffered because of Illinois’ rampant pension growth, which crowds out funding for key services. Since 2000, pension spending is up 584% while vital services have suffered or dropped.
A republication of our Wirepoints column.
Illinois Farm Bureau’s Bill Bodine said they have discussed the issues with industry representatives and have gone from opposed to neutral to the industry-favored legislation. “Now the proposal we’ve negotiated with the industry isn’t perfect, we will admit that, but it does create protections for property rights issues associated with carbon storage that we believe will be amongst the strongest in the country.”
A new report has found that the millions of taxpayer-funded Chromebooks that flooded schools during the pandemic are being discarded because of their expiration dates. There is legislation at the Illinois Statehouse in House Bill 3601 which would give schools the tools, information and parts they need to repair their broken laptops.
Plans from 1958, 1973 and 1983 are credited for the creation of the Museum Campus, Oak Street Beach, reactivation of Navy Pier, extension of the pedway, streetscapes along major Downtown roads and more, according to city documents. The 2003 Central Area Plan had big ideas for incorporating more green space, like capping the Kennedy, an initiative that would have created a public park atop the Kennedy Expressway.
The Reason Foundation report said despite Illinois’ efforts to become a model for the nation of cannabis social equity initiatives, the market has been dominated by a handful of large companies, many of which are publicly traded. “Some licenses cost up to $850,000, and then of course you have all your regular capital expenses, so we recommend drastically reducing the license costs and capital requirements,” Managing Director Geoffrey Lawrence.
Said Kristi DeLaurentiis, executive director of the South Suburban Mayors and Managers Association, “I think we’re in line to see this pendulum swing. The valuations might very well be unprecedented.”
“When you elect a far-left union organizer to be mayor and re-elect a progressive criminal-coddling prosecutor, as Cook County did two years ago, the voters shouldn’t be astonished when law-breaking teens unleash chaos in the Loop. These teens may be poorly educated by the Chicago Teachers Union but they can understand election results and come to the logical conclusion that law and order are out the window.”
It’s been more than five years since federal regulators shut down a tiny bank in Chicago, in the process exposing deep connections to the Daley family and its political army. So far, the FDIC has recovered about $59 million from insurance companies for the bank and its auditors as well as from the sale of 135 loans and repayments of delinquent loans – but it’s still out about $81 million, and it can’t say how much more it might still be able to recover.
During the campaign, Mayor-elect Brandon Johnson called to end the city’s contract with ShotSpotter, and said he would restore real-time access to the the city’s police radio channels “as soon as possible.” But chief of staff Rich Guidice did not give a definitive answer on where he stands, and simply reiterated “officer safety is primary.”
How is it possible for an annual program to cost 94 times times what Illinoisans were told it would cost just three years ago — a program now the State of Illinois nearly a billion dollars per year and growing — money the state doesn’t have?
Lorenzo Beach, 28, said that he was asked to join the gathering by his pastor. As someone who works with young people, he felt it was important “to show the youth that people do care about them, but also that some of the things they’ve been doing as of late, we don’t stand for that.”
Last weekend, at least 35 people were shot, 8 fatally, in weekend gun violence across Chicago, police said.
State Rep. Ryan Spain, R-Peoria, said some changes he sees arising out of the trial is closing lobbying loopholes, making better disclosure on the origins of legislation, bringing reforms to how bills move out of committees, and how witness slips are managed. “We really got to take a master class in the manipulative practices of the leaders of this body of the past and the way that business is done here,” Spain told The Center Square.
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