Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart has been trying to unload the electronic monitoring program from his office for years. Dart has been vocal about his belief that the courts are putting violent criminals on electronic monitoring—people who should be kept in jail rather than wearing an ankle monitor for a system designed for low-level offenders.

CPS Chief Education Officer Bogdana Chkoumbova, the district’s second highest ranking leader, said the two sides remain “significantly” far apart at a time when CPS is facing a projected budget deficit of $509 million in 2026, without factoring in the cost of new agreements with the unions representing teachers and principals.

A tax on burner phones and prepaid calling cards has been shot down in Springfield. In his proposed $17.3 billion budget, Mayor Brandon Johnson had counted on that tax to bring in $40 million next year.

Of all the new revenue sources being studied to minimize or eliminate the need to raise property taxes, none has divided the City Council like raising garbage collection fees. It has been frozen at $9.50-a-month since being imposed in 2016. It raises $68.8 million, covering just 40 percent of the city’s annual refuse collection costs.

President Toni Preckwinkle’s 2025 budget soared through the Cook County Board Thursday with only minor tweaks that boost grant funding for abortion nonprofits, set aside $15 million for a future property tax relief fund, and kickstart the contentious process to shift arrestees on electronic monitoring from the sheriff to the chief judge. THe budget also dedicates nearly $30 million to climate resiliency and clean energy.

Former Illinois Property Tax Appeal Board Executive Director Mauro Glorioso is suing the newspaper over a 2020 article about an anonymous complaint that accused him of improperly pushing for a property tax break on Donald Trump’s namesake riverfront tower.

Constantin Beldie, 57, is accused of fatally stabbing his wife Tuesday in Portage Park. Beldie was already facing charges for aggravated battery and kidnapping his wife in his car last month, according to court records.

In the Fire Department’s fleet, 63 percent of the engines, 33 percent of the trucks and 20 percent of the tower ladders have been in use longer than their 15-year recommended lifespan, according to a department spokesperson. A new fire engine costs nearly $1 million, she said.

Standard and Poor’s has put Chicago on a “credit watch,” which could raise the interest rate the city pays by about one-quarter of a percentage point. And with the city planning to refinance $1.5 billion in bonds, even that slightly higher rate could cost taxpayers $4 million a year over 40 years.

“He wants to create a structure in a system where there is upheaval and chaos,” Johnson said before turning to public education. “He wants to dismantle public education, a system that was built by descendants of slaves, particularly in the south. He is a threat to everything that is sensible.”

“One of the heftiest proposals on the table is an increase in the personal property lease tax on cloud computing … which the mayor’s office says would raise $128 million annually. … This levy effectively is a city sales tax on what businesses pay to license cloud-based software, a critical tool for virtually any modern office. It turns out that this tax, which at the current 9 percent could well be the nation’s highest on this essential service, behaves like a per-employee tax on all but the smallest of businesses located in Chicago.”

Most notably, police closed 117 homicide cases this year due to what’s called “bar to prosecute.” Simply put, it means police believe they identified the killer, but prosecutors would not approve charges.