Get the latest news from around Illinois.
Chicago Tribune: Illinois lawmakers to investigate wealthy families using loophole in state guardianship law to qualify children for more financial aid
Illinois lawmakers will investigate a recently exposed trend of wealthy Chicago-area families using a loophole in state guardianship law that qualifies their children for college financial aid primarily intended for low- and middle-income students.
Members of the Illinois House Higher Education Committee and House Appropriations-Higher Education Committee scheduled a meeting Aug. 8 in Chicago, following reports from ProPublica Illinois and the Wall Street Journal. The publications revealed this week that dozens of families in suburban Lake County gave up custody of their teenage children in their junior or senior year of high school, then transferred guardianship to a family friend or relative.
Chicago Tribune: State extends film tax credits to keep ‘Chicago Fire’ and other productions in Illinois; Gov. J.B. Pritzker says it could also give a boost to South Works movie studio plan
Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Thursday signed legislation extending state tax credits for film production through 2026, a move he said will attract more industry jobs and spending and could give a boost to Chicago rapper and actor Common’s pitch to build a massive movie studio on the former U.S. Steel South Works site.
“Whenever anybody’s looking at a new site, a new opportunity in this industry, it’s incumbent upon us to do everything we can to work with them to help them develop their opportunity because … for me it’s all about creating jobs and opportunity for the people of Illinois,” Pritzker said at a bill-signing event Thursday at the Thompson Center in the Loop.
Champaign News-Gazette: Fiscal face-plant
Illinois’ public-pension buyout plan seemed to some like a good idea. They were wrong.
Every time Illinois’ elected officials take action to address this state’s serious pension problem, they fall on their faces.
Their first serious effort involved legislation that sought to slow the growth in future retirement benefits earned by members of the state’s five public pension programs.
Crain's Chicago Business: Rivers Casino owner plans another location—and will expand in Des Plaines
Churchill Downs, which controls 61 percent of Rivers and owns Arlington International Racecourse, said it would also seek a license to provide betting here on sporting events, paying $10 million early next year for the rights, company executives told analysts today in an earnings call.
Daily Herald: State fair features new-look Coliseum, many new vendors
The 162nd Illinois State Fair is set to open Thursday, Aug. 8, in Springfield, and fair officials said they expect this to be one of the best iterations in years.
The 366 acres the event spans have never looked better; buildings, some over 100 years old, have been remodeled; and 50 new vendors have been added, state officials said.
Chicago Sun-Times: ‘Take a water hose and clean out’ Department of Water Management, mayor is urged
Mayor Lori Lightfoot was urged Thursday to “take a water hose and clean out” Chicago’s Department of Water Management where, former employees contend, discrimination persists two years after a white commissioner was replaced by an African American.
Katherine Ealy was promoted to chief operating engineer at the Eugene Sawyer Water Purification Plant shortly after a 2017 housecleaning triggered by racist, sexist and homophobic emails; gone were Water Management Commissioner Barrett Murphy and his top deputies and supervisors.
Chicago Sun-Times: Lightfoot vows changes in targeted ‘high-priority commercial corridors’ will be ‘transformative — not transactional’
Last month, Mayor Lori Lightfoot wrapped up a listening tour of Chicago neighborhoods by promising “transformative” investments in long-neglected South and West Side neighborhoods.
She reiterated that promise earlier this week after a ceremony marking the 100th anniversary of the 1919 Chicago race riots, a “bitter and shameful chapter” that, she claimed, represents not only Chicago’s past, but its present.