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State Journal-Register: Senators OK pay increase for legislators, officeholders during Sunday evening session
State senators passed a measure raising the pay of legislators and statewide officeholders Sunday evening and planned to meet again this afternoon.
The ongoing “lame duck” session is the last chance for legislation introduced during the 102nd Illinois General Assembly to pass. Lawmakers in the 103rd General Assembly are set to be sworn in on Wednesday.
The Center Square: Chicago public schools' sex-crimes unit had 'extraordinary high case volume' in 2022
The Chicago Public Schools department charged with investigating sexual misconduct received 470 complaints in fiscal year 2022, a number described as “an extraordinary high case volume.”
The report details the findings of the 30-member Sexual Allegations Unit of the Office of Inspector General and was released this week. It details several of the allegations made in 2022. The Sexual Allegations Unit was created in October 2018 and investigates every allegation it receives, according to the report.
Chicago Sun-Times: COVID relief fraud probe includes over 50 employees in Cook County Clerk of Court Iris Martinez’s office
More than 50 employees of Cook County Clerk of Court Iris Martinez are suspected of defrauding a federal program intended to help small businesses struggling during the COVID-19 pandemic, a spokesman said Friday.
The clerk’s inspector general is working with Cook County’s inspector general’s office, which is conducting a separate investigation of employees who work for Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, according to Martinez spokesman James Murphy-Aguilú.
Chicago Tribune: The toppling of Michael Madigan: How his reign as speaker ended and Emanuel ‘Chris’ Welch’s emerged
Juggling a coffee, a briefcase and his cellphone, Rep. Emanuel “Chris” Welch was making his way through the metal detectors two years ago at the Springfield convention center where the Illinois House was conducting business when he got a call from a phone number he didn’t recognize.
It came from Springfield’s 217 area code. So Welch picked up, figuring it must be some staffer with news about work.
News-Gazette: Illinois had its own lengthy deadlock for House speaker
Perhaps the rest of the country — until now — wasn’t familiar with the delight of a lengthy, droning, intra-party battle for speaker of the House. But Illinoisans are.
In 1975, it took Democrats in the Illinois House 93 ballots — cast over a period of nearly two weeks — to settle on someone to lead the Legislature’s lower chamber. The winner was state Rep. William Redmond, an elfish, unlikely compromise candidate from then-solidly-Republican DuPage County. Redmond’s previous claim to fame was that he had pinned Joseph McCarthy, the demagogic U.S. senator from Wisconsin, in a wrestling match when both were students at Marquette University.