A report compares Sangamon County’s proposed 0.5 percent sale tax increase to other Illinois counties that have already established 708 mental health boards: Champaign, Macon and St. Clair rely primarily on property taxes, each generating between roughly $3 million and $6.8 million annually; McHenry County, which switched to a 0.25 percent sales tax in 2024, reports nearly $15.7 million in annual revenue and funds 70 unique programs. Winnebago County, operating under a 0.5 percent sales tax, reports more than $20 million in annual revenue supporting 42 distinct programs.

These resignations come just after former mayor Shawn Conlin resigned in February amid town budget concerns, and worries over police department comp time and overtime budgets being overspent.

The costs to remove PFAS in water treatment plants can range from $5 million to $20 million based on the size of a community’s water system, engineer Andy Curry said. “You’re adding $1 per 1,000 (gallons of water) until the PFAS is gone, which I don’t know when that’s going to be,” Curry said. “That’s an operational cost that nobody is helping these communities pay for.”

They mocked his executive orders — or, as Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said, “edicts that read like proclamations from the Lollipop guild.” They blamed his tariff gambit for pushing up the prices of housing materials and household goods and condemned his administration’s aggressive crime crackdown and hard-line immigration enforcement tactics.

The case, brought by a coalition of 22 attorneys general and the governors of Kentucky and Pennsylvania, challenges President Trump’s most recent efforts to increase tariffs worldwide without congressional approval.

Senate Bill 3776, introduced by Sen. Adriane Johnson, would opt Illinois into the Federal Scholarship Tax Credit program. The program gives privately donated money to eligible K-12 students while providing a tax credit to the donors. If the state does not opt into the program, Illinois students cannot receive the money. But donors will get the tax credit anyway.

“It’s been proven that other states with low property taxes are always appealing for people that want to move and invest in a residence,” state Rep. Joe Sosnowski said. “We’ve got to do that. There’s a lot more states now starting to talk about phasing out property tax completely or limiting it in drastic ways so that it becomes less of a burden

“Today, Illinois tuition and fees are significantly higher than the national average and require 19% of the median household income, research by multiple organizations shows. For families with disproportionately low incomes, college costs pose a prohibitive barrier to access. All of this is unfolding against the backdrop of a volatile federal government whose shifting approach to student financial aid and grant funding places even greater stress on state institutions that can least afford it.”

The IEPA began to investigate issues with Michael Keebler’s work for property owners who were trying to get their leaking underground storage tanks cleaned up after a 2010 visit to a McLean County site showed no remediation had occurred. By the time federal attorneys indicted Keebler in 2013, he was accused of being the ringleader of a scheme that had gone on for 12 years and involved multiple people.