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Both the ordinance and the rules go into effect on July 1, 2024, and will require employers to annually provide up to 40 hours of Paid Leave and up to 40 hours of Paid Sick Leave to covered Chicago employees.
The Pretrial Success Act offers grant opportunities to organizations that provide mental health, substance abuse disorder assessment, case management, and treatment, and will also make transportation and child care funding available so that a suspect is able to appear in court.
The measure in question, which was set to expire at the end of 2024, smoothed the way for small cell transmission equipment to be placed throughout Illinois. Amended onto a bill originally titled “Campground Hot Tubs,” the extension to 2030 was approved 58-0 Sunday in the state Senate and now goes to Gov. JB Pritzker, who previously signed an extension of the law in 2021.
“Critics point to the example of Douglass High School in Austin on the West Side. That high school currently serves a total of 35 — no, that’s not a typo — students. Under the new budget, Douglass is adding nine positions next year to bring its staff to 32 from 23, according to Chalkbeat. If the student population doesn’t increase next year, there will be nearly as many workers as students in that school.”
“On the issue of birds alone, a stadium of this scale and design would have dire implications for the Chicago stretch of one of the world’s major migratory flyways, where countless birds die each year because of the glass facade at McCormick Place East to the south,” conservation organization Openlands said.
Gov. JB Pritzker put blame on the legislature for not reauthorizing Invest in Kids, but criticized the original measure. “If you’re going to have a tax credit like that, we ought to let the federal government cover much of the cost of it which we weren’t doing,” Pritzker said.
The mayor said Chicago’s migrant operation, centered around people’s humanity, is working, and he disagreed with the idea that he makes unilateral decisions without broad community discussion. “It’s not like Meigs Field. It’s not like raiding pensions. It’s not like closing public housing, closing schools, selling off the Skyway, selling off the parking meters,” Johnson said.
State Rep. Bill Hauter, a doctor, wasn’t on the floor Saturday night to vote “no” on Senate Bill 3268, but he later drew attention to a provision within the passed bill that allows pharmacists to test and treat patients for HIV, flu, strep throat and several other ailments. The bill stipulates that testing and treatment would be covered by the Illinois Medicaid Program at a gross cost to taxpayers of $103.57 million for fiscal year 2025.
Polling showed 70 percent of voters supported eliminating the grocery tax. Illinoisans saved an estimated $360 million from a one-year suspension of the statewide grocery tax during fiscal year 2022.
“If Pritzker has a disadvantage, says a local consultant who asked not to be named, it’s that he’s a rich white man in a party that sees itself as a champion of the underdog.”
Residential property values in west Chicago jumped by 21 percent, commercial property values by 25 percent, and industrial property values by a staggering 71 percent. The assessor’s office calculated values based on factors like property use, income estimates, vacancies and expenses.
Chicago is among the five metro areas nationwide with the largest net loss of college-educated residents, according a recent study by moving resource website Hire A Helper and using U.S. Census Bureau data.
State Rep. Dennis Tipsward said, “The Governor again kept his promise to raise taxes by $1 billion to fund the illegal immigrant crisis he created, and worked with Democrat legislative leaders behind closed doors on a plan that forces you to pay more for their spending priorities… It’s shameful.”
The Climate and Equitable Jobs Act (CEJA) designated the Illinois Finance Authority as the Illinois Climate Bank. The law directed the new Climate Bank “to aid in all respects with providing financial assistance, programs, and products to finance and otherwise develop and implement equitable clean energy opportunities in the State to mitigate or adapt to the negative consequences of climate change in an equitable manner will further the clean energy policy of the State.”
The company was given 24 months under a contract with the city that approved $13.5 million in subsidies to rehab six stores. More than halfway in, all of the six stores are closed and none have been renovated.
Noticeably missing from the budget is funding to support local school districts that have seen an increase in the number of students who recently migrated to the United States.
The Chicago Department of Public Health is training city workers and residents who live in neighborhoods with the highest suicide rates on how to spot the signs of suicide risk, including Mount Greenwood, Calumet Heights and Norwood Park. Some of these areas are home to high numbers of city workers, including police officers and other frontline workers who are exposed to repeated trauma, said Chicago Public Health Commissioner Dr. Simbo Ige.
The raise will bring the base salary for lawmakers to more than $93,000 a year.
Department of Children and Family Services records show, for the 2022-2023 school year, there were 12 indicated reports of abuse or neglect for the Springfield, Decatur and Champaign school districts combined. But even in cases where DCFS finds a staff member did abuse or neglect a child, that doesn’t mean they will necessarily face any discipline or lose their job.
Because the tax directly benefits local communities, the budget plan allows any municipality to create its own grocery tax up to 1 percent without state oversight.
“Lots of crime, few arrests, and here’s a third similarity: Mayor Johnson’s Austin neighborhood is Ground Zero for both crime categories. Johnson’s neighbors suffered 1,203 assaults in the first four months of the year. They had 345 of their vehicles taken during that period, often at gunpoint. Both stats were the highest for a Chicago neighborhood. If Johnson can’t wrap his head around helping curb Chicago crime in general, how about helping the people he grew up with? How can he ignore his own neighbors being attacked?”
Despite $1.1 billion in tax hikes and record spending, the 2025 budget continues Illinois’ long-standing tradition of failing to make an actuarially sufficient pension payment. Appropriations to the five statewide pension funds will fall $4.5 billion below what the plans’ own actuaries have determined is required to actually begin paying off the state’s pension debt.
A venture led by Delray Beach, Fla-based investor Peter Patel paid $16.4 million last week for the Holiday Inn Express Chicago Magnificent Mile at 640 N. Wabash Ave.
Home price growth in Chicago has lagged behind other major metros, with cities like San Francisco and Phoenix crossing the 200 threshold for the first time in 2005. Nationwide, home prices are up threefold since 2000. Indices in San Francisco, San Diego, Los Angeles and Miami have topped 400.
Cofco International Ltd., the trading arm of China’s largest food company, will relocate its downtown Chicago office to the suburbs in part due to persistent crime, according to people familiar with the matter.
Chalkbeat recently reported that the number of migrant children in CPS this year, depending on how migrants are defined, is somewhere between 8,900 to 17,000. At an operating cost of $24,132 per student, the additional taxpayer costs of educating those students range from $215 million to $410 million.
Mark joined Dan and Amy to talk about the $8 million incoming to retiring New Trier Superintendent Paul Sally, the broken nature of Illinois’ pension funds, the record $53 billion budget passed by the legislature this week, more details on the crime problems in Chicago, and more.
Chief Justice Dick Durbin is at it again. The Senate Judiciary Chairman, who fancies himself hall monitor of the Supreme Court, has summoned Chief Justice John Roberts for a meeting to discuss judicial ethics. The real Chief should tell the fake chief to stay in his constitutional lane.
House Republican leader Tony McCombie issued a statement blasting the budget as a “negligent political document” that she said was filled with “bloated political projects, taxpayer-funded benefits for noncitizens, and politician pay raises, which come at the expense of the state’s most vulnerable residents.”
“We all grieve together,” Mayor Brandon Johnson said. “You know, look, there’s a lot of work to be done still, no one is going to deny that. What I can say though is homicides and shootings are down, they are.”
“In many situations, police have been called in to shut down encampments, leading to arrests and sometimes beatings. But in other cases, including at Northwestern and Harvard, protests have led to negotiations and compromise that protect free speech, ensure student safety and foster dialogue on difficult issues.”
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