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The request for Schaumburg to join cities like Chicago and Bolingbrook in passing a cease-fire resolution was met with resistance from the village board, citing the issue as beyond their control. The board’s decision not to adopt the resolution has sparked a promise of political repercussions from the community.
Samysha Williams said that, in June 2022, she took a family leave from her job for the Village of Dolton under the Family and Medical Leave Act, then seven weeks into her 12-week leave was wrongly terminated. One mailing during her campaign for trustee accused Williams of committing theft of services from the village by forging medical documents related to a paid time-off fraud.
“People who live in other states who want to have children using IVF, come to Illinois, we’re protecting your rights in so many ways but specifically regarding IVF,” Gov. JB Pritzker said. He is welcoming members of the General Assembly who are looking for new ways to protect doctors and patients.
In the complaint for judicial misconduct filed in the Seventh Circuit by the America First Legal Foundation against U.S. District Court judges Nancy Rosenstengel, Staci Yandle and David Dugan, all of whom preside over cases in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois, based in the Metro East region, near St. Louis, America First Legal Foundation’s Gene Hamilton wrote, “A reasonable observer would lose faith in the judiciary upon discovering that a court considers a lawyer’s sex or minority status when making important decisions about how cases are adjudicated.”
“1 in 4 Black Chicago Public School students will experience homelessness at some point in their education career. We are a better city than that,” Mayor Brandon Johnson said. To boost affordable housing, the mayor is out with a plan to borrow more than a billion dollars, and he plans to hire a Chief Homeless Officer to direct the city’s effort.
Jennifer Ross, a lobbyist for the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards, said the bonuses are an attempt to get teachers in hard-to-staff schools. “Hard-to-staff schools are defined by a school that is at least 30% below income. We’re providing retention bonuses of $4,000 a year for two years.”
Gov. JB Pritzker’s budget proposal calls for a diversion of $175 million in state taxpayer money committed to fund things like bridge repair and road improvement. Those taxpayer funds will be diverted to primarily Chicago-based public transit systems.
While cases in the Northern District of Illinois are on hold while plaintiffs there ask the U.S. Supreme Court to again intervene, the case continues on the merits in the Southern District of Illinois.
A total of $10 million in taxpayer funded grant money is going to film studio infrastructure projects in Chicago, Rock Island, and Champaign through the Illinois Soundstage Program.
The union has funneled at least $200,000 to “Bring Chicago Home,” the ballot committee created to support Johnson’s real estate transfer tax proposal. The next largest contributor has given just $10,000.
The protest staged by the Coalition for Solidarity and Justice involved approximately 100 students who held signs including “Stop Funding War,” and a banner reading, “War is Death Loyola Divest.” They also allegedly chanted throughout the protest, “Board of Trustees, you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide.”
Since her election eight years ago, Kim Foxx has stood as a lightning rod for controversy, whose prosecutorial decisions and policies have helped fuel her national and local reputation for being soft on crime and often promoting the interests of those accused of crime over those of the community the state’s attorney is tasked with helping to protect. This year, two candidates have emerged to replace her: former Appellate Court Justice Eileen O’Neill Burke and former prosecutor and longtime political consultant, staffer and lobbyist Clayton Harris III.
In the weeks leading up to the death of five-year-old Jean Carlos Martinez Rivero, migrants made at least 17 grievance reports to the Office of Emergency Management and Communications, decrying spoiled food, the rationing of water and mistreatment from staff in the Pilsen shelter. At the Halsted shelter,migrants complained of freezing temperatures, unsanitary bathrooms, and outbreaks of various illnesses — including chickenpox, the flu and upper respiratory infections — spreading without sufficient medical care.
“I’m for technology that’s going to help us get to a location quicker and help us save lives,” Chicago Police Supt. Larry Snelling said. “However, there are some things that are outside of the control of the Chicago Police Department when it comes to those things but … there are great men and women in this department who work very hard and they’re going to continue to do the same.”
“At Uplift Community High School, per student spending was nearly $53,000 in the 2022-2023 school year, despite no students reaching proficiency in reading or math. If CPS had given $53,000 to the parents, the parents could have chosen a world-class education for their student rather than an education that couldn’t produce a single student reading or adding at grade level. If the student were headed to college, $53,000 would be enough for Loyola or DePaul.”
“Pritzker’s $898 million in tax hikes bring in just enough to cover the growth (not total spending) for pensions and government worker health insurance. The total cost for these two items alone cost nearly $13 billion.”
In an Illinois House Personnel and Pensions Committee hearing, state Rep. Blaine Wilhour said in “typical Springfield fashion” the same people who negotiated Tier 2 back in 2010 want to now enhance their benefits. “There are several bills out there that are going to do it [enhance Tier 2], the chair of the Pension Committee is wanting to do that right now. The governor spoke about it in his budget address. Bottom line is: there are simple fixes to this and we don’t have to enhance benefits across the whole system.”
Neil Steinberg: “Operations at Ford’s Chicago Assembly Plant began Feb. 24, 1924 — 100 years ago last Saturday — and continue to this day, bigger than ever, a miracle in an era where factories shutter and manufacturing seems always either moving overseas or to the cheap labor South.”
The downward revision reflects budgetary pressures that have not been counterbalanced by new revenue growth, S&P said. Specifically, S&P cited rising public safety labor costs, recent legislative changes to pension contributions and the ongoing costs of migrant arrivals.
Elk Grove Village property tax bills grew 24% in 2023. Des Plaines’ jumped 29%. Northlake, 37%. And homeowners in Melrose Park experienced a near 50% increase. Residents across the Northwest suburbs were hit with the largest tax hike in 30 years – a consequence of Cook County’s revaluation of property values. Overall, Cook County homeowners were hit with a 7.2% increase in their FY 2022 taxes (paid in 2023), the biggest hike in 16 years.
Ted joined Dan and Amy to talk about Dolton Mayor Tiffany Henyard’s exorbitant spending, the tax increases included in Gov. Pritzker’s 2025 budgets, why Illinois budgets are created for politicians and not people, the fallout from Mayor Johnson’s “mansion tax” referendum being struck down by the courts, and more.
In appealing, the Chicago Elections Board will continue to assert that it should not have been the defendant in the legal action challenging the controversial ballot question, and that Judge Kathleen Burke was wrong to deny the city of Chicago and Mayor Brandon Johnson’s request to intervene in the action to defend the referendum.
Attorneys representing the treasurers and clerks in eight counties, including DuPage, Lake, Kane, Will and Winnebago counties, argue that Illinois law requires the counties tasked with collecting property taxes to maintain a so-called “indemnity fund” from which homeowners whose homes are seized and sold over delinquent property taxes can sue to recover the equity they may have lost in the tax sale.
A total of more than 36,000 migrants have arrived in Chicago from 822 busses since Aug. 2022, but only three busses have arrived from Texas since Feb. 17. According to the State of Illinois, more than 8,900 individuals — representing more than 3,300 households — have moved out of shelters using the emergency rental assistance program, with 1,784 work permits issued of 3,428 applications submitted.
In 2022, 30 percent of public school students met or exceeded standards, compared to 21 percent of scholarship recipients, according to the report from nonprofit research agency WestEd, which notes that in the following year, 35 percent of public school students met or exceeded reading standards, compared to 23 percent of Invest in Kids scholarship recipients.
The 2010 Census showed an increase of nearly 500,000 Latino residents in Illinois, up 32.5% from 2000. In 2020, Census data showed another increase of more than 300,000 Latinos in Illinois – growing the Latino share of the state’s population from 15.8% to 18.2% even as Illinois’ overall population continued to fall. And as of 2021, roughly 72% of the state’s voting-age Latinos were U.S. citizens, with the percentage of Illinois Latinos born in the U.S. increasing by nearly 29% over the previous decade, data shows.
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