After an election cycle freeze on the state’s taxes for groceries and gasoline, the two taxes, among others, are set to increase beginning July 1.

Next month, the state’s gas tax will increase by 6.2 cents to a total tax of 45.4 cents, the second increase since Jan. 1. The state’s tax on groceries will also go back into effect after Gov. J.B. Pritzker put a hold on the tax during last year’s election cycle.

With some Republican support, Illinois lawmakers approved a measure to expand and indefinitely extend a probation program for first-time offenders charged with illegally possessing a gun.

A pilot program the Democratic-controlled General Assembly passed six years ago was limited to defendants under 21 with no prior convictions for violent crimes and was set to end in January. Under the new legislation, the age limit would be dropped, the probationary period would be shortened and the program would continue indefinitely.

The FBI may have made a splash when it moved in on corrupt state Rep. Luis Arroyo late in October 2019, but its agents were also quietly circling a businessman suspected of paying bribes to the veteran lawmaker.

James T. Weiss, son-in-law of former Cook County Assessor Joseph Berrios, was driving in Maywood that month when agents pulled him over and questioned him for more than an hour near Veterans Memorial Park. He told them he was being honest and wasn’t “a rookie.”

The mayor of Arlington Heights said the Chicago Bears’ decision to begin exploring other options for a suburban stadium is “not an unexpected development,” as the team cites tax troubles for the reason behind the shift.T

“Once they closed on the property, then they did have an opportunity to talk to other potential suitors including the city of Chicago,” Hays told NBC Chicago in an interview Friday moments after an announcement was released from the team. “Everyone is looking out for their best interests.”

One Central Illinois high school is worried about a program cut from this year’s state budget.

“Looking at the list of students that are coming here, I think that there’d be a large population that just wouldn’t be able to do it,” Anthony Corapi, the chief operating officer for the High School of Saint Thomas Moore, said. “This wouldn’t be reachable for them.”

Chicago City Hall and public health officials illegally denied a permit to a company seeking to open a metal recycling center on Chicago’s South Side, essentially making up new standards on the fly and bowing to pressure from activists and Washington, D.C., bureaucrats who wished to grind down the project amid endless proceedings, an administrative law judge has ruled.

The ruling from Chicago ALJ Mitchell C. Ex came as the latest step in a years-long legal fight between Chicago City Hall and the company formerly known as General Iron over the fate of an $80 million recycling facility.

Four aldermen have paid more than $48,000 out of their taxpayer-funded expense accounts to a consulting firm run by a former top Chicago Park District official who was asked to resign for his involvement in the Park District’s sexual abuse lifeguard scandal and placed on a do-not-rehire list.

Payments to a firm owned and operated by Alonzo Williams, the Park District’s former chief programs officer, began less than five months after Williams’ resignation in late 2021 after he was repeatedly cited in an independent investigation as among several Park District executives who mishandled allegations of sexual harassment and abuse in the lifeguard program.