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In comparison, the union budgeted $152,500 for “training/workshops,” $260,000 for community events, and $1.2 million for its contract campaign. The largest amount is budgeted for salaries and health insurance.
Pat Cleary, of the Chicago firefighters union, said the city’s failure to deliver back pay checks by the Dec. 30 deadline means the city must pay 4.5 percent annual interest on payments as high as $35,000. The problem started when the city waited until mid-January — at least two weeks after the deadline — “to start cutting checks for anybody,” Cleary said. When checks were finally in the mail, the Johnson administration “realized that they screwed up and didn’t take out pension deductions.”
“The news this week that the board is terminating its contract with its search firm to identify a permanent CEO and parting ways with the Alma Advisory Group is not a ‘reset,’ nor is it a decision based on merit. It is a calculated political maneuver designed to clear the path for a candidate who will serve City Hall, not our students.”
The suspension marks the third time in just over a decade that voters will not get a chance to cast a ballot on constitutional initiative to make the drawing of Illinois’ legislative maps more independent and reduce political gerrymandering of boundary lines.
By 2 p.m. Friday, hundreds of high school and college students from across the city gathered in Federal Plaza in the Loop. From February until April, organizers from national volunteer group Dare to Struggle intends to continue mobilizing community members to continue building a movement to stop deportations.
Since launching his campaign in earnest last month, Heidner has worked to position himself as the MAGA candidate in the race. His first campaign ad even branded himself a “Trump Republican for governor.”
Change Research, a respected national polling firm for progressive causes, recently conducted a statewide survey that shows 75% of voters would vote yes on the amendment and just 10% would vote no, with the remaining voters undecided, they said.
After a year of searching, the mayor has yet to find the right people to head Chicago Public Schools, the Chicago Housing Authority and the Chicago Transit Authority. Johnson has yet to name chairs for City Council’s powerful Zoning Committee and the Ethics Board. And come April, the mayor will have to fill the vacancy created by Inspector General Deborah Witzburg’s departure.
Aurora Mayor John Laesch said he would like to see fewer protests like these; not to restrict 1st Amendment rights, but to keep students safe and in school. However, organizers are already planning more walkouts. State Senator Karina Villa was among the protesters in Aurora.
“The ordinance protects some establishments at the expense of many of our small businesses who have been following the law and deserve to have a seat at the table,” Johnson said. “Many of these businesses are Black- and brown-owned. … We cannot claim to support equitable economic development while advancing policies that concentrate the market in the hands of a few large entities.”
Employment Policies Institute Research Director Rebekah Paxton said every one-dollar increase in the minimum wage can trigger up to 5.5 percent price inflation. “When you’re talking about a proposal like a $27 an hour minimum wage, those increases could be much more drastic and much more swift, depending on how it’s implemented,” she said.
State officials have touted $482 million in “savings” for fiscal year 2026, framing them as evidence of fiscal discipline amid economic uncertainty. Most of these figures, however, reflect technical adjustments rather than policy restraint or meaningful agency cuts.
This is one of the first reported mass ICE enforcement actions this far south in Illinois under President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. ICE agents in an unmarked vehicle were conducting surveillance in Perry County on the morning of Thursday, Jan. 29, when they pulled over their truck and detained the men, according to the owner of Alstat Wood Products, where the men had been working.
On the chopping block in Illinois is a $100 million grant to the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency for electric vehicle charging stations and a $3.6 million grant to the secretary of state’s office, the White House’s Office of Management and Budget said.
The POWER Act would prohibit cost shifting, ensure data centers power their own operations and provide clean energy incentives. “The people of Illinois cannot afford to continue to bear the cost of this innovation,” state Rep. Carol Ammons said.
The controversy over State Farm’s average 27 percent rate hike last year raised attention to the fact that Illinois stands out among states for having exceptionally weak regulations over the insurance industry.
Gov. JB Pritzker recently proposed extending the buyout program at the state level for another two years. It has been extended twice since it was originally signed into law in 2018. Pritzker’s office estimates these payments have reduced the state’s unfunded pension liability by about $2.9 billion and that extending the program through fiscal year 2028 could reduce liabilities by another $1.4 billion.
A 16-year-old boy and 16-year-old girl were both arrested, after a basketball game at Dunbar Vocational Career Academy.
“Below-average population trends and deep-rooted fiscal problems such as mounting pension obligations and a shrinking tax base represent the biggest hurdles to strong economic performance,” said the analysis that Moody’s prepared for the Legislature’s Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability. “Persistent out-migration will weigh on the strength of employment and income gains.”
Chicago is seeking to sell about $1 billion in debt the city is owed from things like unpaid parking tickets even as a top finance official warns the unprecedented offering is expected to be costly with uncertain investor appetite. The sale is the first of its kind for Chicago, and has never been done at this scale and scope as far as the administration under Mayor Brandon Johnson knows.
In their statement, the elected members of the school board said they are “extremely disappointed” in Johnson and his handpicked board members whom they claim have “chosen to sabotage the process. … This dysfunction has real consequences. CPS faces tremendous immediate challenges — shifting enrollment, budget shortfalls, federal attacks on our funding and our families, and the struggle to create a more equitable system.”
U.S. District Court Judge Manish Shah issued a temporary restraining order late Thursday afternoon after Illinois, California, Colorado and Minnesota filed a lawsuit. Dollars at risk in Illinois include $86 million slated to go to the Illinois Department of Public Health for public health efforts and prevention of HIV and sexually transmitted diseases, and more than $61 million for the Chicago Department of Public Health for similar work.
The city of Aurora currently has four data centers, with five more either under construction or in the permitting process. Residents who live near the four existing data centers said their utility bills are about 30-40 percent higher over the last year, but they’re more upset about the noise.
CTA Vice President of Security Kevin Ryan would only say the expansion of the gun detection system is happening “real soon,” and comes when CTA is already seeing a decline in crime. From Jan. 1 through Feb. 8, robberies have dropped 18 percent and larceny thefts have dropped 11 percent, but criminal sexual assaults and aggravated battery are up.
The circumstances surrounding the incident were not released.
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