Voters in two precincts of the 7th Ward will find an advisory referendum on their March 19 primary ballot asking whether Ald. Greg Mitchell and Mayor Brandon Johnson should “support a Community Benefits Agreement ordinance to prevent the displacement of renters, condo and home owners in South Shore in light of the impact of the Obama Center and growing development in the area.”

WGN Investigates sent a public records request to Dolton asking for, among other things, copies of additional credit card statements and payments to Mayor Tiffany Henyard. The village did not turn over the records, as required under state law, but now a spokeswoman for Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul said in an email, “The village has 35 days after the issuance of the opinion to either comply or contest the opinion in court.”

Police said two masked men with guns came into the Ken Kee restaurant just before midnight Tuesday and demanded money from the register with patrons still inside. “Chinatown is under attack again,” said Dr. Kim Tee, a community activist who also owns a Chinatown business. “Residents of Chinatown do not feel safe at all, they cannot even celebrate the early Valentine’s Day,” he said.

“This is all part of the long, slow dance that many of us expected between the Bears and their next home,” said longtime Bears commentator David Haugh. “It’s essentially: who is going to blink first? And I believe the Bears are wanting people to think they’re prepared to wait, to wait it out.”

Stephanie Wiedeman was among a handful of residents who say they were blocked from going to the boardroom and were sent to the basement, where they were told the meeting would be held. But, it was held in another location. Before the residents knew what happened, the meeting upstairs was over in about four minutes and Henyard was gone.

Since Johnson’s inauguration in May 2023, his motorcade has accumulated eight speeding tickets and six red-light tickets. Only two have been paid, and there’s still $1,640 due on the remaining 12 citations, according to Freedom of Information Act requests to the Chicago Department of Finance.

Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration is pushing to intervene in a lawsuit filed by real estate industry groups that aims to invalidate a referendum that could raise the city’s property transfer tax. “It’s pretty clear that the city should be allowed to intervene in this case,” the attorney, Susan Jordan, said in her oral argument. The Board of Elections can’t answer industry groups’ allegations about whether the referendum does or doesn’t follow local municipal code; the Board of Elections follows the election code, she said.

It’s not a good look for the union: refusing to abide by its own rules, keeping its own members in the dark on union finances and then driving up their dues to pay for whatever the union’s leaders have been doing with the money for at least four years. And it’s certainly not good legacy-building for Davis Gates, whose first year as union president has been tainted by deficit spending, decreased spending on members, personally cheating Indiana schools out of taxes owed to them and sending her son to a private school while denying that choice to low-income families.

“The law has actually worked out fairly well,” said DuPage County State’s Attorney Bob Berlin. “It’s nowhere near as bad as the original law. There was a real concern violent criminals were not going to be able to be detained pre-trial.”

In January, among major metropolitan areas, Chicago had the second largest number of completed foreclosures at 194, ranking behind Detroit’s 609. New York City, Philadelphia and San Francisco rounded out the top five.

“If Johnson was so determined to honor his campaign promise to get rid of the controversial gunshot detection system, why did he wait until the last minute to timidly announce the decision and fail to prepare the Chicago Police Department for life after ShotSpotter? And if he was so determined to shore up his Far Left political base by delivering for the activists who view ShotSpotter as an overreaching surveillance tool, why keep it around through the summer, when violent crime typically spikes and Chicago plays host to the Democratic National Convention?”

“This is absolutely critical to the reduction of crime, as the link between the lack of a high school diploma and employable skill and crime is absolute.”

“When Rahm Emanuel ran Chicago and wanted to boast about the health of the city, the then-mayor pointed to the number of construction cranes across the skyline — 60 at the end of 2017. Almost five years after he left office, that number has dwindled to the single digits. There was just one groundbreaking on an office building last year, and zero are expected in 2024.”

The Chicago Police Department’s officer wellness program remains understaffed and unable to respond urgently to officers in need of mental health support, state officials on Tuesday told the chief judge of the U.S. District Court in Chicago. Meanwhile, CPD’s data collection and analysis policies continue to hold back the department’s efforts to improve the employee assistance program and reach compliance with a sweeping federal consent decree that is now in its sixth year.

Down from mid- and early-January peaks of nearly 15,000, the number of migrants in shelters fell below 13,000 for the first time since Nov. 28. The number in shelters has dropped by nearly 1,000 since the start of February.