The attorney representing 14 local public safety pension funds challenging an Illinois state law consolidating all funds outside of Chicago into two says the law is unconstitutional.

In 2019, Gov. J.B. Pritzker enacted the measure consolidating about 650 first responder pension funds into a fund for police and a separate one for firefighters. The idea was to maximize investment returns for all funds.

With a new mayoral administration, no permanent police superintendent and a new federal judge overseeing the case, the Chicago Police Department’s consent decree is in grave danger of failing, according to the city’s former chief watchdog.

“Consent Decree implementation and monitoring is a faltering undertaking both in substantive accomplishment and in transparency. In the absence of a hard methodological and operational reset, I believe the Consent Decree is at high risk of failing to achieve its objectives,” Joe Ferguson, the city’s former inspector general, wrote in a June 5 letter made public Wednesday in a federal court filing.

Cut the 50-member City Council in half. Combine the elected jobs of city clerk and treasurer and make it a mayoral appointment. Impose annual increases in a garbage collection fee that’s been frozen at $9.50-a-month since its 2015 inception.

Those are among the proposals in the latest edition of a report the Civic Federation issues every time Chicagoans elect a new mayor, hoping to make the formidable job of confronting Chicago’s enormous financial challenges easier.

In just over two weeks, the NASCAR street race will take over downtown Chicago.

On Wednesday, members of the City Council did not only focus on how all the road closures will affect your traffic and safety – they wanted to know how secure it will be too.

As CBS 2 Political Investigator Dana Kozlov reported, the hearing Tuesday was a chance for members of the City Council Transportation Committee to ask race planners specific questions about the upcoming race.

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed a bill into law on Friday that strengthens the range of penalties that a state watchdog can mete out for health care employees who conspire to hide abuse or interfere with investigations by the state police or internal oversight bodies.

The legislation was introduced following an investigative series by Capitol News Illinois, Lee Enterprises Midwest and ProPublica into rampant abuses and cover-ups at Choate Mental Health and Developmental Center, a state-run institution in southern Illinois that houses people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and mental illnesses. The new law applies to employees at state-run institutions and at privately operated community agencies for people with developmental disabilities and mental illnesses that operate under the oversight of the Illinois Department of Human Services and its Office of the Inspector General.

Gov. JB Pritzker signed a bill into law Friday to ensure utility companies can’t shut off your power on the hottest days of the year.

This plan could help protect the state’s most vulnerable from losing their gas or electric if they can’t pay their utility bills.