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“Yes, Mayor Johnson, school closures did have a devastating impact on Chicago’s children and their families, but it was CTU driven COVID shutdowns, a series of strikes, and the constant disruptions that did the real damage.”
Mayor Brandon Johnson appointed Jen Johnson (no relation) to be deputy mayor of education, youth, and human services in May 2023. Jen Johnson formerly served as chief of staff at the Chicago Teachers Union and was a high school history teacher.
As it stands now, the next meeting — which welcomes comments from members of the public who register in advance as speakers — will take place Dec. 12. Chicagoans will vote for their district’s elected school board member in just two weeks, which will replace the mayor’s appointed board. The other half of the new 21-member board, plus the board president, will still be appointed by Mayor Brandon Johnson. The new board members will assume their positions in January.
Will County Board member Natalie Coleman said that nobody in her district has complained about the taxes since she took office following her election in 2020. “We keep talking about increasing people’s taxes, people are struggling to eat, people are struggling to go here and go there. And in four years that I’ve been on the county board, I have not
Prosecutors have alleged there are five separate schemes that will be outlined at trial and argued those schemes often occurred simultaneously, as Madigan and his longtime confidant Mike McClain were sometimes recorded on government wiretaps discussing multiple conspiracies over the course of single conversations.
“So we are now able to shift from a large scale crisis response to a more cost effective, equitable and strategic approach that addresses homelessness for all who need support,” Mayor Brandon Johnson said Monday. During questions, Johnson blamed Trump for issues around immigration. “And he has worked to pit poor brown people against poor Black people, shame on him,” Johnson said.
Gov. JB Pritzker and state lawmakers have given quantum computing companies hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks.
There’s been much ado about the $730 million shortfall facing Metra, Pace and the CTA in 2026 dubbed the “fiscal cliff.” But it’s not the first one. A 2008 transit “doomsday” resulted in state lawmakers raising the RTA sales tax, with part of the proceeds spinning off to the Collar Counties to pay for transportation projects.
He must work to close both a $223 million deficit for this year and a $982.4 million gap for 2025, caused by an underperformance of revenue, a disputed CPS pension payment and rising pension and labor costs. Next year’s gap is the second largest the city has faced since 2002.
City, state, and county officials plan to launch a new “unified” shelter system on Jan. 1, 2025, that would combine the city’s migrant shelters with its traditional homeless shelters. With the city’s existing 3,000 beds for longtime Chicagoans who are homeless nearly full already, that means hundreds of migrants could be left without available beds under the new system.
As part of the Illinois Education Association survey, researchers found the top three reasons more educators were thinking of walking away are not earning enough money, lack of respect for the profession, and increasing workload.
Minutes into the town hall, a woman accused Casten of being complicit in Israel’s war in Gaza, which started after last October’s Hamas attack in Israel. She noted Casten voted for the $8.7 billion for Israel, which she said was used “to kill people like my husband’s family.” She added, “That is our representative of the largest Palestinian community in the country,” referring to Casten.
When Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson was recently pressed on whether it makes sense to keep almost empty schools open, his response was: “So this is not about how many students should be in a school to determine how much we are going to invest in that school.” He won’t consider the number of students in a school, even if it’s nearly empty, when deciding how much to spend
Ted joined Greg Bishop of the Center Square to discuss the Pritzker administration’s continued denial of Illinois’ population losses. Ted pointed out that every piece of data from the IRS to moving vans reports is showing a massive out migration of people. The state can’t turn that around until politicians acknowledge those losses.
Electric vehicle marker Rivian is struggling to make cars and earn a profit, but it has proven adept at winning subsidy and tax credit packages from governments around the country. If the company cannot reverse its financial fortunes, it could go under before it uses all the incentives it has been offered. All its vehicles are made in Normal, Illinois.
“The number one thing is that people expect us to fail,” House Republican Leader Tony McCombie said. “I have to sell hope a lot, which is not that hard, because I still am hopeful for Illinois, but it really is a challenge to raise money in this environment.”
“I won during a time that I just felt was so important, and I was just imagining in my head that I was going to be a part of this really remarkable thing, a progressive movement,” one freshman alderman said. “Now I’m on the other end, and I’m just like, what have we done? I mean, it’s loss after loss after loss.”
In all, $1.36 billion poured into the city’s 124 TIF funds in 2023, according to the annual report from the clerk’s office posted online in July with no public notice. That accounts for approximately 42 percent of the nearly $3.24 billion in property tax revenue banked by Chicago officials. Despite the growth it is unlikely there will be enough unspent, unclaimed or left-over funds in the districts to balance the city’s cash-strapped budget or solve the financial crisis engulfing CPS.
Among them, a 15-year-old boy was among three people injured in a shooting near the United Center before a concert there Sunday evening.
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