While Bartley apologized for her anti-police remarks, she declined to express regret for posting “From the river to the sea. Palestine will be free. Amen!” on her private account on X. Bartley called serving in City Hall an honor and said she did not plan to resign her role, which oversees the mayor’s office that handles relations with the City Council.

Asked why three journalists were arrested, CPD Supt. Larry Snelling said the journalists got in the way of Chicago Police officers doing their job.

Over the last two weeks, at least five people have been shot, four of them fatally, on or near the rail system, leaving many workers and riders alike shaken and traumatized by the thought of boarding a CTA train.

Called Affordable Illinois when signed into law by Gov. JB Pritzker in summer 2021, it allows owners of existing buildings with seven or more units anywhere in the county to secure cuts to the assessed values of their properties, which reduces the tax burden, if they provide affordable apartments and make substantial renovations.

“Ald. Burnett and I have already been talking about connecting housing and zoning and working together,” said Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez, chair of the Committee on Housing and Real Estate. “I think that we can make a good team that will continue the vision of the mayor, which is to make sure that housing is a human right and we have equitable … and fair development..”

County leaders distributed $800 million of of its $1 billion ARPA funds to 73 community programs, and spent nearly $200 million on county operations. “I don’t believe there was any gross inequity in how these funds were distributed,” Commissioner Scott Britton said. “I think it’s going to be a challenge for us to figure out where we can and cannot continue programs, because it is going to be difficult.”

The mayor has a 25 percent favorable rating, 60 percent unfavorable.

Perhaps more surprising than the increasing number of felony cases filed against people with other cases pending is this: Some of Chicago’s pretrial judges are far less likely to grant prosecutors’ detention petitions than their peers. Between July 1 and September 12, Chicago’s pretrial judges granted 66 percent of the roughly 600 detention petitions presented by prosecutors, records show.

“Wait, you might say. Aren’t property taxes supposed to fund local government? Are you telling us that government now needs to find money to help pay a substantial slice of the property taxes that are meant to … well … fund the government? The irony couldn’t be richer. But that’s where we are in Illinois …”

David Greising, of the Better Government Association: “Voters put Johnson on the fifth floor of City Hall on the strength of his progressive promises and those far-fetched plans to pay for them with someone else’s money. The billion-dollar budget gap is a measure of how short he has fallen on the second part of that pact with the public.”