The fallout has begun in Illinois from the expired Invest in Kids school choice scholarship program as schools are announcing they will close.

The Archdiocese of Chicago announced this week the closing of two west suburban Catholic schools at the end of the school year. St. Frances of Rome in Cicero had 104 students on scholarship and St. Odilo in Berwyn had 60 students on scholarship.

Chicago developer Related Midwest envisions using a new White Sox stadium as a catalyst for a multibillion-dollar development on vacant South Loop land known as The 78 that will breathe new life into the downtown core.

Sources familiar with the plan fleshed out the developer’s vision for the 62-acre tract, which would include 5,000 residential units, 1,000 of them affordable, an office building, a hotel and dozens of restaurants and bars along a reinvigorated south riverfront.

An ordinance that would fight climate change by effectively banning the use of natural gas in most new buildings is headed to the Chicago City Council.

The Clean and Affordable Buildings Ordinance will be introduced Wednesday, according to Ald. Maria Hadden, a sponsor of the measure.

For the first time in at least a decade, annual liquor tax revenue in Illinois declined.

The modest 0.3% drop from $318.9 million in fiscal year 2022 to $318.1 million in fiscal year 2023 also ends a five-year run where the state saw annual off-premise liquor tax collections increase by at least $2 million a year.

With limited Illinois tax dollars, state officials are laying out their priorities amid ongoing budget pressures such as the hundreds of millions of dollars for migrant care.

Promoting the taxpayer-funded $250 million Smart Start early childhood education initiative, Gov. J.B. Pritzker said the state will have to balance such future spending with other pressures.

Towns throughout Central Illinois are trying to balance the benefits of gambling with some of the risks. In 2023, one of those places was in Vermilion County: home to the top gaming center in the area.

Mach 1 in Tilton made over $2 million on gaming last year, but that’s not the only place in town feeling the impact. The village has nine places to gamble. Since 2016, Tilton has seen a major jump in tax revenue from it.

The Illinois Supreme Court on Friday unanimously upheld a 2019 law that consolidated nearly 650 municipal police and firefighter pension funds, rejecting arguments from pension fund members that their voting power was diluted unconstitutionally.

The law, which Gov. JB Pritzker signed soon after it passed with overwhelming bipartisan majorities in the General Assembly, combined 649 individual pension funds into just two: one to manage investments and payouts for retired police officers and the other that does the same for retired firefighters.