Get the latest news from around Illinois.
The Center Square: Illinois parents push to extend statewide school choice program
Parents of students from across the state involved with the state’s Invest In Kids school choice pilot program are lobbying Illinois lawmakers to make it permanent.
The program allows donors to get a 75% income tax credit toward donations to fund school choice scholarships for qualified families throughout the state. Scholarship Granting Organizations are approved to administer the program, which is set to sunset Jan. 1, 2024. As lawmakers return, parents are looking for an extension.
Chicago Tribune: Mayor Lori Lightfoot chastises security detail for parking in a bike lane while she picked up doughnuts
Following an uproar on social media, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot chastised her security detail for parking in a bike lane while she picked up doughnuts.
The controversy began on Twitter after @bikelaneuprise posted photos Nov. 9 showing Lightfoot’s security detail parked in the street outside Roeser’s Bakery on North Avenue while she was inside picking up doughnuts.
Chicago Sun-Times: Lightfoot launches lobbying campaign to win City Council approval for Red Line South TIF
Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Wednesday launched a frenzied lobbying campaign aimed at persuading a skeptical City Council to create a new transit tax increment financing district by Dec. 31 to bankroll $950 million of the $3.6 billion cost of extending the CTA’s Red Line from 95th Street to 130th Street.
WTTW: Lightfoot Pushes City Council to Use Downtown Property Taxes to Fund Far South Side Red Line Extension
Mayor Lori Lightfoot Wednesday launched a full-steam-ahead push to convince the Chicago City Council to use property tax revenue generated downtown to fund the $3.6 billion extension of the CTA’s Red Line from 95th Street to the city’s southern border near 130th Street.
Lightfoot formally introduced a proposal on Wednesday to the Chicago City Council to create a new tax-increment financing district along the southern branch of the CTA Red Line to fund the extension of the train line first envisioned by former Mayor Richard J. Daley in the 1950s.
Journal Star: Peoria should emphasize downtown and be friendly to cannabis industry, chamber CEO says
In the second part of a two-part interview with the Journal Star, Peoria Area Chamber of Commerce CEO Joshua Gunn discussed Peoria’s cannabis industry, the benefits that might come from a passenger rail line to Chicago, and the possibility that start-ups might be the future of the city’s economy.
The following has been lightly edited for length and clarity.