The suspects in the case weren’t identified until roughly four or five years later via an ATF tip on a gun running case, but by then the statute of limitations had run out. “It really angered me because, at that time in Illinois, you could write a bad check, a single bad check for forgery, and we could chase you for 30 years. But attempted murder of a police officer, they couldn’t,” former Riverside police chief Tom Weitzel said. He teamed up with Republican state Sen. Judy

The CTA, Metra and Pace are all relying on remaining federal COVID relief dollars to plug budget holes and have projected that money will run out by 2026, a problem frequently referred to as the “looming fiscal cliff.” On Thursday, leaders of all three agencies, and the RTA, acknowledged that failure to find new funding could cripple public transit in the region.

The opening statements from the lawyers were a first volley in one of the most significant public corruption trials at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse in years. The son of a Democratic ward boss and alderman, former alderman Ed Burke, 79, served more than 50 years on the City Council and allegedly ran the Finance Committee like his own personal fiefdom before his office was dramatically raided by the FBI in November 2018.

“The city’s been operating its own methodology process, right? And it hasn’t moved fast enough,” Gov. JB Pritzker said. “I also would say that, to the extent that the city is looking for dollars and not assistance, then it needs to go to the General Assembly and make the case for that in Springfield. They have not done that. They did not do that.”

“We need the federal government to do more. The state of Illinois, they understand what our requests and what the assignment is as a sanctuary state is,” Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said.

“The governor has got to use his executive authority to really control the influx of migrants,” former Chicago mayoral candidate Paul Vallas said, also suggesting opening up National Guard bases to shelter or process migrants. “It’s time to get in the game. I think those are things the governor’s going to have to do because clearly the city, they don’t know what they’re doing.”

Johnson has pushed a narrative of being a mayor for the young people of Chicago, but those who took part in the poll show they do not support him either. “Only 30% of Black voters in the poll approve of the job he is doing, and that is the highest percentage of any race,” said Dylan Sharkey, of the Illinois Policy Institute. “Only 32% of the voters polled ages 18 to 29 approve of his job.”

“The mayor avoided putting the onus on taxpayers now, avoiding a property tax increase in this budget despite adding on new spending. But that could quickly change, as Johnson addresses a shortage of over 2,000 Chicago police officers and tries to make good on his ambitious $800 million plan to ‘invest in people.'”

“What can you do to get involved with demands for a humanitarian cease-fire?” Northeastern Illinois University Brooke Johnson asked before listing several bullet points which include “Talk with your Sociology professors about resistance movements, settler colonialism, antisemitism, racism, genocide, and sociology,” contacting members of Congress, and signing petitions she shared.

Asked if he worries that his agenda will drive businesses out of the city, Johnson replied, “The Black Leadership Council supported paid time off, the Illinois Hispanic Chamber supported this paid time off. There are a number of Black- and brown-led business leaders that believe that it’s important that people should have the ability to take a sick day or a day off to deal with life…So I don’t want us to be dismissive of the Black and brown organizations that are business leaders that support this ordinance.”

“Our elected leaders have not even put forward a plan of how they would spend the $100 million in anticipated annual revenue from the tax to address the vague term ‘homelessness.’…Sounds all too familiar: Trust politicians with a $100 million slush fund to address the unhoused…However, the city has spent only 15% of the $52 million in American Rescue Plan Act funding to help people experiencing homelessness.”

“Young men living there (Garfield Park, zip code 60624) were 3.23 times more likely to die from a bullet than U.S. service members deployed to Afghanistan. Sixty-six young men were shot dead during 2020 and 2021. Moreover, survivors of this violence bear the burden of it for the whole time they live in these neighborhoods. In contrast, the average deployment is less than 12 months.”

The Tax Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit policy group, released its annual State Business Tax Climate Index report last month. Rather than focusing strictly on how much states levy, the report aims to evaluate how well tax systems are year, Illinois received its lowest index score in the last 10 years. It dropped to No. 37 in the national rankings

It was somewhat surprising that it wasn’t passed unanimously, considering the fact that the budget holds the line on taxes and increases spending for an array of popular programs — even compared to the record-high spending made possible by federal funding that poured into Chicago during the pandemic. Before casting their dissenting votes, several naysayers argued Johnson’s first budget is “not balanced” because it earmarks only $150 million for a migrant crisis now costing

About $70 million in that fund would be set aside to provide medical care for migrants. That’s in addition to money already budgeted next year to treat this population, proposed budget documents show. About $20 million would flow to suburbs to help cover costs related to providing services for migrants, and about $10