Slightly fewer workers in agencies under Gov. Bruce Rauner collected $100,000 or more in 2015 than a year earlier, according to figures provided by Comptroller Leslie Munger’s office.

During calendar year 2015, figures from the comptroller’s office show a total of 61,571 employees in Rauner’s executive office and in state agencies under his control.

Of those, 6,842, or just over 11 percent, were reported to have collected six-figure salaries from the state during that year. The year before, figures show that 6,929 employees collected $100,000 or more.

It’s gone. A political reporter in Illinois has finally had his beard shaved after more than 13 months of growing the bushy facial hair to bring attention to the state’s budget impasse.

Chris Kaergard of the Journal Star newspaper in Peoria promised not to shave until Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner and the Democrat-dominated Legislature reached a deal.

After an entire fiscal year without a budget, Rauner signed into law last week a stopgap spending plan to keep state government operating for six months.

It was enough of a compromise for Kaergard to go under a barber’s blade Saturday.

Corner stores better known for booze and Flamin’ Hot Cheetos may be required to stock more good-for-you foods like broccoli and mangoes.

All retailers that accept federal reimbursement for food stamps, known as Link cards in Illinois, likely will have to stock healthier food soon or leave the program. Under the controversial proposed changes to the $74 billion Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, the required variety of fresh fruits and vegetables, proteins, dairy and bread stocked at participating retailers would more than double. The goal is to increase the availability of healthy food for low-income people, federal regulators say.

Protesters clogged traffic in the Loop Saturday night, gathering at Millennium Park and marching through Taste of Chicago and up the Magnificent Mile to cap a day of rallies here and elsewhere following police shootings of African-American men in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and outside St. Paul, Minnesota, and the deadly attack on police by a sniper in Dallas.

In downtown Chicago, the group, including Black Lives Matters activists, began with about 50 people outside Taste at Michigan Avenue and Van Buren Street. They were met by a dozen police officers who wouldn’t let them in the free festival with the oversized signs they carried, calling for “Justice for Alton and Philando” — Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, who were killed by police officers in in caught-on-video shootings that have rocked the nation in recent days.

Jines Martinez is going to have to dig deep to pay the tax bill that arrived at his Avondale home this week.

Martinez’s bill shot up to $3,900 from $2,673, and his increase reflects a double-whammy that hit residents in many Chicago neighborhoods after all property in the city was reassessed last year for the first time since 2013, and the city passed a $588 million tax hike.

Some of the suburbs’ largest school districts and those that have pushed hardest for changes to Illinois’ education funding will get the biggest budget bump under the plan lawmakers finally approved last week.

Algonquin-based Community Unit District 300 will get $5.9 million more this year, trailing only Chicago Public Schools and Rockford schools statewide in increased funding.