Gov.-elect Bruce Rauner told voters over and over during his gubernatorial campaign that he’s a “business guy,” not a career politician.

Given the poor state of this state, Rauner could pretty much take his pick of business issues, and Illinois would be better off for progress on any of them. But he can’t do everything all at once.

His first order of business will be to deal with government spending in a state that has, as he put it Thursday, “stunningly bad” finances.

Making his first post-election appearance at the Capitol on Thursday, Gov.-elect Bruce Rauner said he hopes the Illinois Supreme Court eventually will provide guidance on what changes are acceptable when it comes to fixing the state’s more than $100 billion debt in the government worker pension system.

The incoming governor may get some clues as early as Friday, when a lower court judge is expected to weigh in on the legality of a sweeping overhaul lawmakers approved nearly a year ago. The ruling by Sangamon County Circuit Judge John Belz could provide an early indication of whether the pension law violates a provision in the state constitution that prevents public employee pensions from being diminished or impaired, as unions have argued.

The hospitals where my grandchildren are born will be unrecognizable to those we know today; they’ll be safer, cleaner and more efficient. And what is considered world class in 2014 will tomorrow be viewed with the same disdain we reserve for medical practice in the Dark Ages.

Global healthcare is at a pivotal moment in its history, on a par with Alexander Fleming’s discovery of penicillin and Louis Pasteur’s groundbreaking work with sterilization. As the quantity of data we generate rapidly expands and we continue to develop the computational power to store it, health authorities will be able to gather more information about their patients in a single year than has been open to them in all history.

While today we rely on the well-trained eye of the general practitioner and the steady hand of the surgeon, tomorrow’s lifesavers will be the number-crunching data scientists, individuals with only a passing understanding of first aid.

Motorists who use the Elgin-O’Hare Expressway will pay as much as $1.90 to drive the highway when it is extended and converted to a tollway in 2017, Illinois Tollway officials announced Thursday.

The tolls for the east-west portion of the Elgin-O’Hare Western Access project are based on a rate of 20 cents per mile, which will make it the most expensive passenger-car ride in the Tollway system.

An Illinois watchdog group has criticized College of DuPage officials for using taxpayers’ money on meals and drinks for themselves and employees at the college’s Waterleaf restaurant, with some outings costing thousands of dollars each.

But Trustee Dianne McGuire had a message of her own Thursday night. She called out whom she deemed the “extremist, right-wing ideologues and groups attempting to discredit this stellar institution, its administration and its elected leaders.”

“Edgar County Watchdogs, Illinois Leaks and For the Good of Illinois and their ilk, including members of the Tea Party, feed on misinformation, scurrilous inferences and outright lies,” she said at the college’s board meeting.

This week, I’ve offered a lot of data about the 50 states and the District of Columbia. I’ve shown how much variation there is in net migration rates, and that the states attracting lots of migration in 2013 aren’t always the ones you’d expect. I’ve shown differences in migration by nation of origin, socioeconomic factors, and age. But for this post, I’m going to take a different approach. This post will make a more detailed exploration of just three states’ migration records: North Dakota, Illinois, and Delaware.

For each state, I’ll provide two maps. The first will be a map of migration into and out of that state as measured by the American Community Survey, the second will be a map of migration into and out of that state as measured by the IRS’ Statistics of Income. Links to this maps will be provided at the end of each state section.

President Abraham Lincoln waged a costly civil war to prevent secession. Now, nearly 10 years after a presidential library in his honor was opened in Springfield, supporters of this nation’s 16th president are waging their own war of secession.

Fearing the eventual demise of this valuable historic and tourist resource, they want to sever the bonds of servitude from the library/museum and free it from tyranny represented by its overseer, the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency.

Preservation agency chiefs don’t see the issue in the same light. Hence, the ongoing political battle under way in the Illinois General Assembly over the library’s future.

The Illinois Supreme Court has dismissed a lawsuit challenging the legality of Chicago’s red light camera system, after two justices recused themselves from the case, and the rest couldn’t agree on a ruling.

Attorney Mike Reagan, in arguments before the high court in the spring, said the program was illegal from the start in 2003, because the state had not authorized such an enforcement program.

“Chicago did not have municipal authority to enact its red light camera program in 2003. The legislature has expressly limited by statute the authority of any municipal entity, including home-rule entities such as the city, to establish and enforce traffic laws,” he said.

Thousands of people in Missouri and Illinois would lose a total of more than $2 billion in annual health insurance subsidies if the Supreme Court rules against President Barack Obama’s administration in a case next year.

The case has garnered national attention since the high court agreed to hear it earlier this month. At issue is whether the government can award subsidies to consumers who purchase health plans in a marketplace operated by the federal government.

The court is expected hear arguments on the case in March and could issue a ruling in June. That timing means the court’s ruling likely won’t affect coverage until the 2016 enrollment cycle.

After staying neutral in the last race for Chicago mayor, Illinois House Speaker Michael J. Madigan has provided major support to Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s re-election campaign, a Chicago Sun-Times analysis of election records shows.

Dozens of soldiers in Madigan’s political army of government workers — including Patrick J. Ward, a former Metra employee at the center of the agency’s patronage scandal last year — collected signatures for nominating petitions to get Emanuel on the Feb. 24 ballot, the records show.

Madigan — the Illinois Democratic Party chairman who also runs the powerful 13th Ward Democratic Organization — didn’t endorse anyone for mayor four years ago, when Emanuel succeeded retiring Mayor Richard M. Daley. And Madigan has yet to announce an endorsement in the current mayor’s race.

Illinois Senate President John Cullerton says lawmakers are heeding Gov.-elect Bruce Rauner’s (ROW’-nurz) advice and won’t extend the state’s temporary income tax increase.

Rauner advised lawmakers not to take up any substantive issues before he’s sworn in.

Cullerton says Rauner has “a little honeymoon period” during his first weeks in office and the Legislature is “giving him his first victory.”