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Sun-Times: Burke’s street plowed early, often: IG report says
Streets and Sanitation plows deviated from their normal course to clear a path to Ald. Ed Burke’s fortress-like house after a major winter storm last year, City Hall’s inspector general said Monday.
The report from Inspector General Joe Ferguson came nearly 18 months after theChicago Sun-Times revealed how the 14th Ward boss’ block was improperly plowed early and often in response to a 19.2-inch snowfall.
Greg Hinz: Chicago's TIF take soars nearly $90 million in just one year
Chicago’s take from tax-increment financing districts has unexpectedly gone way up, an action likely to set off a free-for-all about to do with the windfall.
According to a new report today by Cook County Clerk David Orr, city TIF receipts leapt 23.9 percent in the most recent property-tax year, 2015. That will give City Hall an extra $89 million to spend, with total receipts hitting $460.6 million, the highest since the great recession.
“This is an enormous amount of money,” said Orr, whose office administers TIF collections countywide, in a statement. He called “for a real debate during the budget approval process in the City Council this fall regarding the allocation of these funds.”
Actually, the debate won’t wait that long, not with homeowners having just been hit with a huge property-tax hike and Chicago Public Schools still short at least $200 million despite a new cash influx from Springfield.
ChicagoNow: 37 of 50 Chicago aldermen took illegal campaign cash in 2015
A recent survey of Chicago business leaders showed over 90 percentbelieved city government engages in some form of cronyism.
A July 18 report from Project Six, a new corruption watchdog headed up by former Chicago Legislative Inspector General Faisal Khan, helps to show why.
The report finds more than two-thirds of Chicago aldermen took in donations that appear to be in violation of the city’s campaign finance rules. Those rules prohibit donations over $1,500 from registered city lobbyists, vendors of the city or its sister agencies, and businesses or individuals who have certain types of legislation pending before City Council.
Sun-Times: Office formerly occupied by Faisal Khan leased for $1-a-year
The office once occupied by the City Council’s handpicked, hog-tied and now-former inspector general was unloaded Tuesday — for $1-a-year.
Faisal Khan’s Suite 300 at 740 N. Sedgwick St. will be filled by Chicago Park District’s inspector general Will Fletcher, thanks to a lease approved by the City Council’s Housing Committee that will expire in 2022.
AP: Who is funding group challenging redistricting?
A group waging an aggressive legal battle to keep a redistricting question off November’s Illinois ballot hasn’t reported a single donation or expense since it became a political committee last summer, adding to the mystery of who is funding the effort and paying its legal bills.
The People’s Map, comprised of business and community leaders who say they represent the interests of minority voters, filed a lawsuit in May against a proposed voter referendum that seeks an independent commission to take over drawing Illinois’ political lines instead of the party in power. Arguing on their behalf was a top Chicago elections lawyer who has long represented the leader of the Democratic Party of Illinois, House Speaker Michael Madigan.
But every line of quarterly disclosures The People’s Map filed with the Illinois State Board of Elections shows as zero. The People’s Map also doesn’t disclose any pro bono work or $12,000 in union donations that emerge in state filings by the unions from July to October of last year, saying they never cashed the checks.
Northwest Times: Bill allows medication-based treatment for drug court participants
Participants in drug court programs across Illinois will be allowed to use medication to combat opioid addiction under a new state law that will take effect Jan. 1.
Gov. Bruce Rauner signed a measure late last week that prevents judges from barring drug court participants from using medications such as methadone when prescribed by a doctor to treat opioid addiction. At the same time, Rauner signed another measure, also effective Jan. 1, requiring substance abuse programs licensed by the Illinois Department of Human Services to provide educational information on medication-based treatments and the use of anti-overdose drugs.
Kathie Kane-Willis, director of the Illinois Consortium on Drug Policy at Roosevelt University in Chicago, said the new laws are important steps in strengthening efforts to combat the state’s growing heroin- and opioid-addiction crisis.
The Southern: Gov. Rauner signs 'Molly's Law'
Gov. Bruce Rauner has signed a law that could help families fighting to learn the truth about the death of loved ones.
Rauner sign legislation Tuesday that strengthens Illinois’ Freedom of Information Act by increasing fines for public bodies that fail to comply with court orders to release information.
Sun-Times: Land of Lincoln just 1 in long line of ACA health co-op failures
The state’s shutdown of its three-year-old Land of Lincoln Health was no surprise, observers say, coming amidst a nationwide trail of failures of nonprofit alternative insurers set up under the Affordable Care Act.
Those insurers faced many obstacles, but most important were two financial hits: the federal government’s reneging on hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies promised under ACA, while at the same time demanding the struggling startups pony up hundreds of millions in other contributions required under that law.
Chicago Tribune: Madigan allies to get ruling today on Illinois redistricting referendum lawsuit
Cook County Circuit Court Judge Diane Larsen is expected to rule Wednesday on a challenge to a proposed state constitutional amendment aimed at removing much of the politics out of legislative redistricting.
Regardless of her decision, both sides in the case expect it will wind up before the Illinois Supreme Court because the ruling hinges on whether the proposal fits the small window for petition-driven initiatives changing the state’s primary governing document.
Crain's: Your tax bill went up? Not as much as this guy's
Cook County homeowners fuming about higher property taxes might take solace in this: No matter how much their tax bills jumped, it’s got to be less than the $53,000 hit on one Lincoln Park mansion.
Don Wilson, a trader and real estate developer who was the driving force behind the America’s Cup coming to town earlier this summer, got a $261,524 tax bill in June for his 14,000-square-foot mansion on Dickens Avenue. That’s an increase of $53,277, or 25.6 percent, from the previous year’s bill of $208,247, according to the Cook County treasurer.
Chicago Tribune: Emanuel property tax rebate plan advances to full council after adjustments
Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s tax rebate program to offset some of the pain of his massive property tax hike is poised for approval after he tweaked the plan to offer a bit more help to low-income homeowners and senior citizens.
The City Council Finance Committee passed the mayor’s ordinance Tuesday after his administration announced plans to pay for it using $20 million the city got from a firm’s recent sale of the Chicago Skyway.