Lakeview Ald. Tom Tunney acknowledged Monday that he allowed diners to eat inside his restaurant in defiance of a ban imposed by Gov. J.B. Pritzker 38 days ago in an effort to stop a sustained and grave surge of the coronavirus.

Tunney, Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s handpicked choice to lead the City Council’s powerful Zoning Committee, said he allowed “on a sporadic basis” a “very limited number of our regular diners to eat inside the restaurant while observing social distancing and mask-wearing rules. This was an error in judgment and will not happen again.”

The investigation into Tunney’s defiance of the governor’s indoor dining ban will be handled “in the same manner as we have handled thousands of investigations throughout the pandemic,” said Isaac Reichman, a spokesperson for the city’s Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection.

Deadlines and demands were issued Monday with regard to the return to in-person classes for Chicago Public Schools students.

As CBS 2 Political Investigator Dana Kozlov reported, parents have until midnight Monday night to decide if they want their children to return to the classroom this winter.

Christina Hill finally got a job after 10 months of unemployment – but now, she is getting letters saying she should never have gotten unemployment money and she owes $30,000 back to the State of Illinois.

As CBS 2’s Tim McNicholas reported, this puzzling tale could be tied to yet another case of unemployment fraud.

Gov. JB Pritzker’s administration has ousted two top officials at the state-run LaSalle Veterans Home where 32 veterans have died in an explosive COVID-19 outbreak the governor said Monday “should never have been this bad.”

LaSalle administrator Angela Mehlbrech was escorted from the facility, and her firing comes amid criticism over the possible mishandling of an outbreak where 108 residents and 97 staff members have tested positive for the virus since Nov. 1.

Mehlbrech could not immediately be reached.

It was another busy weekend for Illinois’ political power players.

Developments started late Thursday with the announcement that state Sen. Don Harmon, D-Oak Park, captured a full term as Senate president. After filling in following the retirement of predecessor John Cullerton, Harmon clearly proved himself to caucus colleagues.

The National Restaurant Association continues to lobby the government for federal pandemic relief. Officials sent a letter to politicians over the weekend urging them to act, and they’ve also released results from a new state-by-state survey to further its cause.

The survey, administered from November 17 to 30 to 6,000 restaurant operators and 250 supply chain businesses, included responses from Illinois operators. Findings include 86 percent expect to see sales decrease even further, and 64 percent say total labor costs are higher than they were before the pandemic began in March. More than half of the state’s restaurant and bar owners say that without federal relief, their businesses will likely be closed in six months. That’s in line with other states like New York (54 percent) and California (43 percent). The association did not provide raw data from the survey, just an executive summary with highlights.