The settlement was arrived at just days before a civil trial in the case that was set to start. It would have focused on a novel legal issue about whether Dennis Hastert’s verbal agreement to pay $3.5 million to buy the silence of a man he abused as a teenager amounted to a legally binding contract.
A largely unasked question is becoming glaring: Is Illinois doing all it should to use artificial intelligence to make government cost less and work better? So far, the evidence says no.