In what could determine the fate of the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago, a federal judge will hear final arguments Tuesday in a lawsuit brought by environmentalists against the city that challenges whether the sprawling campus can be built in a public park.

“I’m all in favor of this investment on the South Side,” said Herbert Caplan, president of Protect Our Parks, the group that filed the lawsuit seeking to stop the center from being located in Jackson Park. “I’ve argued that the South Side would be better served if the OPC were built in another community like Woodlawn and South Shore.”

There’s not as much real infrastructure spending in the state’s new infrastructure spending plan as its architects would have the public believe.

News reports still are barely scratching the surface of the $45 billion capital improvements bill passed in haste and secrecy by the Illinois General Assembly.

But enough details have come out to know that all the talk about needed spending to repair Illinois’ “crumbling” roads and bridges was an exaggeration designed to disguise the usual porkfest these massive spending programs represent.

Now three weeks into her new role, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot hasn’t had much time to warm her seat as City Council’s top boss, but there’s been no shortage of agenda items to tackle, chief among them: ethics reforms, aldermanic privilege and the persistent problem of gun violence in the city.

It’s a process that has historically been born out in backrooms with handshake deals among competing factions. The decennial redrawing of Chicago’s 50 ward boundaries is messy and anything but transparent. Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Monday said she will push for an independent citizens’ commission to draw the next city ward map after the 2020 census, effectively taking the job away from aldermen. She calls the current map an obvious case of gerrymandering, and says it’s bad for Chicago residents.

“I live in the 35th Ward, and the ward has no relationship to neighborhood boundaries,” Lightfoot said during a one-on-one interview with WTTW News. “We can’t afford to keep carving up communities that isn’t fair to them or doesn’t give them fair representation.”

Two weeks after winning the first test of her legislative muscle by a voice vote on her committee chairmen, there were signs Monday that Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s relationship with the City Council may be headed for some early turbulence.

Lightfoot’s plan to cut the budgets of four of the council’s 18 committees ran into trouble from an unexpected source. One of the mayor’s handpicked committee chairmen accused the new administration of reneging on an agreement to give her more money.

If you thought the corruption case against Ald. Edward Burke, 14th sent quakes through the Chicago mayoral race, you might want to keep an eye on that seismic scale. The aftershocks are vibrating deep into the 2020 election cycle, including an Illinois Supreme Court race that might be the first in decades to unfold free of Burke’s dainty fingertips.

With Burke no longer serving as the Cook County Democratic Party’s judicial slating sultan, and with more ward and township committeemen emboldened to break free of machine-style politics, the smoke-filled room and political donation-driven candidate slating process could get a bath. The party might actually slate judicial candidates, starting later this month, based on their qualifications, not their connections.

McHenry County municipalities are mulling the impacts of the likely legalization of recreational marijuana.

An alderwoman is proposing using tax revenue from recreational cannabis to replenish the city’s underfunded pension funds and other long-term obligations.

In a letter to her colleagues, Maryalice Wu said she wants the council to focus on the city’s future by diverting all potential cannabis taxes to both the Vehicle and Equipment Replacement Fund and pension funds.

Unionized workers at the Sangamon County Department of Public Health have planned an informational picket before Tuesday’s County Board meeting after voting a week ago to authorize a potential strike in a contract dispute centering on privacy protections, pay and paid sick time.

The approximately 30 health department workers, who provide health care, clerical and custodial services as well as restaurant inspections, want county board members to stop “dragging their feet and settle a fair contract now,” according to a news release from Council 31 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.