Fox News’ Jonathan Turley said Thursday, “Most judges have said we’re waiting for the Supreme Court. There was no reason for this court to issue this opinion.”
“Chicago is a city in sharp decline, albeit not necessarily an irreversible one. Still, when looking at contemporary Chicago, it would be wise for lawmakers in the Windy City to consider the fate of Detroit to fully understand how incompetent lawmakers in the Motor City mishandled the situation and led that city into receivership.”
He offered few details on the future effort, but he said more will be shared this spring, and 40 partners would be involved. The committee “will provide business leaders, organizations and key stakeholders with a direct line of communication with my office and all of the city’s departments,” Johnson said. The partners will be “experts at finding existing ideas, as well as new ideas, to improve downtown business so that it really can become even more vibrant.”
In a joint letter sent Tuesday, the Civic Federation, the Better Government Association and the League of Women Voters of Chicago urged Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Chicago’s City Council to improve transparency and public access to information regarding legislation being considered by the council. Read the full letter here.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s recent decision to investigate a contaminated Southwest Side waterway off the canal persuaded garbage hauler LRS to scrap its “sustainable barging” idea that would have loaded garbage from a point along the canal and shiped it more than 100 miles to Henry, saving money and reducing the amount of diesel pollution from trucks that normally haul garbage.
State Rep. Bob Morgan and state Senator Omar Aquino have filed bills to stop companies from charging more for junk fees, often labelled as “processing” or “service” fees. The legislation would also permit the Attorney General to go after the companies not being transparent with their pricing. A Consumer Reports analysis found an average family of four pays about $3,200 each year in fees.
State Rep. Chris Miller said Donald Trump will be on the ballot until the issue is resolved by the United States Supreme Court, which has a Trump ballot access case from Colorado under consideration. “In the early voting, people have already voted for Trump in the primary,” said Miller. “I’m not sure what they’re going to do there.”
“Our issue with that is in the Invest in Kids Act, in the literal law, it says that they are supposed to compare our low-income scholarship students to public school students of a similar socioeconomic background and they did not do that,” Empower Illinois Executive Director Bobby Sylvester said.
House Bill 4681 proposes that residents receive $100 for operable firearms they turn into Illinois State Police. But the Illinois State Police has administrative and staffing issues that will prohibit them from processing the firearms safely. As it is, the Auditor General revealed in a 2022 inventory report there were 719 missing items from the ISP worth $1.5 million. In 2021, the inventory audit reported 1,413 missing items worth nearly $2.5 million.
“The CTU’s role in demonizing police undermines the trust needed between police and the community to ensure public safety. That lack of trust has contributed to the abysmal arrest rates.”
“… (T)he new amortization schedule is, like the current pension ramp, overly backloaded, with annual payments increasing at unaffordable rates over time.”
The leaders of the Better Government Association, the Civic Federation and the League of Women Voters of Chicago called for more transparency and better public access in the body in a letter Thursday to Johnson and council Rules Committee chair Ald. Michelle Harris. The groups criticized current City Hall leaders for circumventing rules designed to publicize what aldermen are considering and chipping away at public access to meetings.
The hearing, which lasted less than 15 minutes, was the first time Austin has appeared in a federal courtroom since her indictment more than two and a half years ago on charges she took bribes from a developer and lied to FBI agents. Austin earns pension payments of more than $9,500 per month, according to records from the Municipal Employees’ Annuity and Benefit Fund of Chicago.
State Street has a record level of retail and commercial vacancies, around 30%, in 2024. Local leaders said that’s a 12% increase in empty storefronts from last year.
The number of migrants listing an address in Illinois for their immigration court cases jumped nine-fold in 2023 compared with just two years earlier; the increase was 7-fold in Colorado and five times in New York—bigger than the increases seen in Texas and Florida. The data also suggest that New York state saw the highest number of migrant arrivals in 2023 on a per capita basis: Illinois ranked eighth at 0.6.
Trump’s campaign is now requesting that the Appellate Court of Illinois for the First District reverse and vacate the judgment and “affirm and reinstate the Electoral Board Decision, which overruled and dismissed Petitioners-Appellees’ January 4, 2024 objection to the nomination of Donald J. Trump.” The court battle will likely be rendered moot thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court taking up the same question in an upcoming case.
“This has been litigated again and again around the country, and when these lawsuits have been filed, they’ve been unsuccessful,” said Mark Denzler, of the Illinois Manufacturers’ Association. “Again, this is purely a political calculation to deflect from issues like the immigration concern, the crime problems, housing and education that occur in the city of Chicago.”
CTU’s foundation is listed as the owner of a West Side property worth $6.6 million, making the teachers union an example of its own distortion. The building is the Chicago Teachers Union Center, with the union’s headquarters, its foundation and leased space in a former valve factory. Under Mayor Brandon Johnson’s plan, purchasing CTU’s property would cost an extra $120,102.
Nearly 11 months after he was elected, Mayor Brandon Johnson is still assembling his cabinet. He’s made sudden dismissals that have left departments destabilized, as well as some controversial appointments. Among them, Johnson appointed Alfonzo “Randy” Conner to return to the top job at the Water Department, where he’ll oversee at least $336 million to address lead in Chicago’s water. But in 2018, during his last stint as water commissioner, Conner said Chicago did not have a lead problem, and he actively lobbied to stop Ald. Scott Waguespack from launching public hearings on the matter.
A similar question was narrowly defeated a year ago. Before that election, 11 area mayors and other elected officials circulated a letter in opposition to the new tax, saying property owners were already overtaxed and agencies other than the township were better suited to provide mental health services.
Budget documents from the governor’s office show the line item for Addiction Treatment, Prevention, and Related Services was cut from $71.5 million for fiscal year 2024 to $56.5 million for fiscal 2025. For Addiction Treatment Services, last year’s budget appropriated $107.1 million; the proposed plan for fiscal 2025 has that line item at $85 million.
The new facility will replace three aging buildings on the Peoria International Airport campus where the National Guard currently stores helicopters.
Gov. JB Pritzker announced in his budget proposal that he would like to see the state’s 1% tax on grocery sales come to an end. Peoria officials said at Tuesday night’s City Council meeting this would mean a $4 million hit to the city’s general fund.
Former Madigan Chief of Staff Timothy Mapes’s annual taxpayer-funded pension currently stands at $154,409, according to records maintained by the State Employees’ Retirement System. The state retirement board that oversees pension benefits for current and retired state workers also is asking Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul to recommend whether it should be permanently revoked.
Since 2019, Illinois has expanded its social studies standards to include LGBTQ+, Asian American, and pre-enslavement Black history. Over half of Illinois teachers surveyed say they are ready to fulfill new state history requirements, according to a University of Illinois study.
Jim Dey: “Commenters over Zoom made anti-Semitic statements, while a young man sporting sunglasses and a baseball cap bearing the logo of an organization characterized as a ‘hate’ group by the Anti-Defamation League spoke (anti-Semitic comments) in person…The confrontation set off a discussion about what public bodies can and ought to do under similar circumstances. It’s complicated because efforts by some to limit what others can say raise First Amendment free-speech issues.”
Cook County Circuit Judge Tracie Porter barred Trump from the Illinois ballot one month after the anti-Trump challenge was dismissed by the Illinois State Board of Elections. Text of Tracie’s Memorandum and Order is here.
Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas said development is the best way to increase collection percent, and that state legislators could do more to bring additional investment to the south suburbs. “The problem right now is all the dollars are going to migrants,” she said. “All the extra money, it’s going to this migrant situation which is what’s causing a lot of controversy between African Americans and Latinos. African Americans are saying ‘where’s my end?’”
The changes also come as Chicago Public Media, which owns both WBEZ and the Chicago Sun-Times, is undergoing leadership changes. The company is currently searching for a new CEO after Matt Moog, the current CEO of Chicago Public Media, announced in December he’d be stepping down. Shortly after Moog’s announcement, two more executives departed from the organization.
“Nobody knows right now how the ShotSpotter issue will be resolved, but given the principles of both inertia and fantasy-lawmaking which govern Chicago’s politics, the safe guess is that the city will find a way to avoid suddenly switching the program off unceremoniously.”
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