With questions swirling around his record as Cook County assessor, Joseph Berrioswill take the unprecedented step Tuesday of defending his office before the Cook County Board after a Chicago Tribune investigation exposed widespread inequities in the county’s property tax system.

Published in June, “The Tax Divide” showed the assessor’s office overvalued low-priced homes while undervaluing high-priced ones. These disparities in assessments — known as regressivity — led to inequities in property tax bills, giving the wealthy unsanctioned tax breaks while penalizing low-income residents.

Remember all of the drama over whether the Illinois legislature would vote to override the governor’s veto of the income tax increase?

It’s about to happen again.

The budget that House Speaker Michael Madigan pushed through the Democrat-controlled legislature contains a provision that says school districts will only get their state funding if the money is doled out to school districts with a new “evidence-based” formula. That formula happens to be spelled out in Senate Bill 1, a piece of legislation that Democrats are calling the “Evidence-Based Funding for Student Success Act.”

Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner on Monday said he plans to rewrite a Democrat-passed education funding formula bill, setting up a likely showdown with Democrats who control the General Assembly as school districts across the state remain caught in the middle.

The governor visited schools in downstate Mount Zion and Rockford, accusing Democrats of looking out for “Chicago special interests” and playing “political games” with schoolchildren. He rattled off a list of rural and suburban communities that would gain millions of dollars in school aid by removing what he calls a “bailout” for the Chicago teacher pension system.

Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner demanded that the Democratic Senate leader send him a school funding reform bill immediately — so he can immediately delete the part of it that sends some $220 million to Chicago Public Schools for teacher pensions.

The broke schools system immediately decried such an “amendatory veto” as an overstep of the governor’s power.

A new Illinois budget will give public universities funding for the 2017-18 school year.

This is the first time in two years that the state’s 12 public universities will receive funding, the Chicago Tribune reported.

Amazon is opening a Chicago-area sort center, its first Illinois hub for smaller packages, where it plans to employ 250 to 500 workers.

The newest facility, to handle parcels smaller than many it moves through distribution centers in Joliet and several other local sites, has a launch scheduled for October in southwest suburban Crest Hill. It’s the latest flag planted here since 2015 by the e-commerce monolith, whose projected local employment is heading toward around 8,000.

Gov. Bruce Rauner visited Galapagos Rockford Charter School today as part of a statewide plea for support for his education funding plan, a plan that he says more fairly distributes the state’s funds for education to all Illinois schoolchildren.

Rauner asked residents here to contact their legislators and urge them to send him the newly passed Senate Bill 1 so he can use his amendatory veto on it. The veto would divert some funds allocated to Chicago under SB 1 to schools elsewhere, including Rockford.

Last week, the East Peoria City Council traveled and met with about 100 residents of the Highland Hills subdivision on their turf — the Robein Elementary School gymnasium — to discuss possible annexation into the city. Late Tuesday afternoon, residents of Highland Hills will travel to East Peoria City Council chambers to urge the council to vote down the proposal.

“I plan on being there,” wrote Donna Browder in response to text message questions sent to her. Browder has helped organize opposition to the annexation proposal. “I’m certain there will be many of us there.”