With the budget stalemate in Illinois in its 21st month, public universities in the state are going beyond belt-tightening to deal with a funding drought that has no end in sight.

Campuses already have pressed pause on new construction and stopped hiring for vacant positions. Now, universities including Northeastern Illinois, Governors State and Southern Illinois are looking to fixes like hiking tuition, cutting academic programs or laying off student workers.

Cook County Commissioner Peter Silvestri, who for years moonlighted as village president of Elmwood Park, took on a different side job in 2013 as a sales agent for a video gambling firm that, months later, began installing poker and slot machines in the west suburb.

A Republican, Silvestri made thousands of dollars in commissions off the arrangement and was later aided in a second deal when his successor in Elmwood Park blocked a rival company from opening a gambling parlor in the suburb and let Silvestri’s firm install machines in the same spot.

A standing-room only crowd gathered on the South Side Saturday with hopes for the economic opportunities the Barack Obama Presidential Center library could bring to the South Side – and with some still pushing for those benefits to be promised in writing.

The Hyde Park meeting was so packed that organizers had to set up a separate area where those who couldn’t get in could view a Facebook Live feed.

McHenry County Board Chairman Jack Franks wants a committee to work with county officials to trim at least $7.93 million from the 2018 property tax levy – a 10 percent cut that could affect what services the county provides to residents.

School will be back to normal Monday after a three-day disruption that union employees hope will pressure district leaders to renegotiate their labor contract.

Bus drivers, cafeteria staff and paraprofessionals will go back to work in Rockford Public Schools after a strike that ended Friday.