In the months leading up to her death, Lacramioara Beldie received more than 20 calls and over 90 messages, alerting her that Constantin Beldie had violated his GPS monitoring, according to the lawsuit filed last month. But the court allegedly did nothing about these violations and, according to the suit, “intentionally disregarded the impending danger of Constantin Beldie and failed to act to prevent the attack and death of Lacramioara Beldie.”

A City Council committee on Wednesday backed a proposal to ban hemp-derived THC products in Chicago before a federal ban goes into effect in one year.

“One would think that (Mayor Brandon) Johnson might catch a hint that things are already not going well for the city’s business sector. After all, business in Chicago has now dropped for the 23rd straight month, according to the Illinois Policy Institute. But Johnson just can’t stop assuming the business sector is a fatted calf he needs to slay.”

Chicago’s Department of Planning and Development receives more than 450 applications of interest each month, while it is only able to offer about 800 parcels for sale each year.

“Obviously, it’s not for want of natural assets,” Wirepoints Executive Editor Mark Glennon said. “We’ve been blessed with things that most cities in the world would kill for: the transportation system at the center of the country, wonderful universities, all these things were handed to us by previous generations. There’s nothing wrong with Illinois or our people. It’s our government that has failed us and it’s because they have shown a total indifference to fundamental economics and simple common sense.”

Alderpeople say the mayor’s administration suffers from the same problem it had last budget season — a lack of trust — since they struggle to get basic answers on how many previously federally funded city jobs and services Johnson wants to keep. An Illinois Answers Project review found that Johnson’s budget proposes to shift 62 full-time employees previously backed by ARPA onto the city’s ledger at a cost of $7 million.

Instead of leveraging earlier bailouts to modernize services and prepare for the future, the CTA and other agencies used them to keep empty trains and buses running. The forthcoming transit fiscal cliff is a rare opportunity for customer-oriented reform. But the CTA and other systems would rather burn through more taxpayer funds to provide services that customers don’t want.

Ald. Scott Waguespack called the substitute options he helped to craft an “alternative to killing off economic growth and jobs,” by imposing the head tax. “The mayor is refusing to take recommendations and options from half the City Council. We need to put these options on the table to try and reset the conversation,” Waguespack said.

According to the report, Chicago drivers lose an average of 112 hours annually in peak traffic over the time they would have spent in normal traffic. That’s 10 more hours lost in peak traffic than drivers in New York (102 hours), which came in second in the U.S., followed by Philadelphia (101 hours), Los Angeles (87 hours) and Boston (83 hours).

Ald. Brian Hopkins said the revised curfew proposal will come with some compromises from the version that was vetoed by Mayor Brandon Johnson last summer.