A crime-victims advocate told an Illinois House committee Tuesday that a powerful state senator sexually harassed her last year as they were working together on legislation, causing her so much mental anguish that she dropped 20 pounds and lost her hair.

Denise Rotheimer, who’s running for a House seat in 2018, told the Personnel and Pensions Committee that Chicago Democrat Ira Silverstein, the Senate’s Majority Caucus Chair, sent her unwanted social media messages, called her late at night, described her as “intoxicating” and told her, “I like having meetings with you, because you’re pretty to look at.” It led to such emotional distress, she said, that she considered admitting herself to a hospital.

Chicago aldermen on Wednesday will consider expanding the number of parking spaces reserved for vehicles owned by local residents and businesses near Soldier Field and Wintrust Arena on game and event days.

Now, only residential streets are restricted for local cars on event days. A proposal from Ald. Pat Dowell, 3rd, would add other arterial streets to the mix, limiting parking options for sports fans and concertgoers but keeping spaces for residents and businesses that have a program day permit. The restriction would start two hours before a game or event and end one hour after.

Two Wall Street credit rating firms brightened their outlook on Chicago Public Schools finances Tuesday, with analysts crediting a state education funding deal and district tax hikes for easing the district’s short-term financial problems.

Standard and Poor’s assigned a “stable” outlook to the district’s finances but formally maintained its “B” rating — considered highly speculative or junk bond status — on billions of dollars worth of previously issued CPS securities while applying the same rating to an impending bond sale.

Cook County Public Defender Amy Campanelli is banning her office’s employees from parts of the courthouse where they have routinely met with jailed clients — and where they have reported increasing instances of male defendants openly masturbating.

A one-page memo distributed Tuesday at Campanelli’s behest prohibits public-defender personnel from entering courtroom lockup areas at the Leighton Criminal Courts Building.

Superintendent Don White of Hinsdale-Clarendon Hills Elementary District 181 will leave at the end of the school year, two years earlier than the end date of a new contract he received less than a year ago.

The District 181 Board voted 4-2 Monday to approve a separation/settlement agreement that calls for White’s employment to end June 30.

McHenry County Board Chairman Jack Franks on Tuesday proposed a timeline that would lead to the consolidation of the Lake in the Hills Sanitary District.

Franks called to order the first meeting of the Ad Hoc Lake in the Hills Sanitary District Committee on Tuesday morning. The group was created to begin a transparent debate regarding whether the sanitary district could be eliminated and its functions folded into village government like other county municipalities that manage their own wastewater services, Franks said.

Three months after Kane County Forest Preserve District officials announced interest in expanding the Prairie Kame/Sauer Forest Preserve in Sugar Grove, county residents know the price tag.

The district this week announced the purchase of about 72 acres along the southeastern border of the preserve. The land comes under public control at a total cost of nearly $866,000, roughly $12,110 per acre. The preserve, which is accessible from Lasher Road, will grow to a little more than 230 acres.

Instead of spending the day celebrating what they think is an 8 percentage-point increase in their high school graduation rate, Rockford Public Schools leaders spent Tuesday trying to get the bottom of a discrepancy between district and state data.

State report cards for all public school districts were published Tuesday morning at 12:01 a.m. The report cards contain standardized state test scores along with demographic, financial and assessment information for each school and district, including measurements such as attendance rates and high school graduation rates.

In an email to Peoria officials, the developer of a proposed Portillo’s restaurant says East Peoria is willing to provide the company free land to build on the east side of the river.

But East Peoria officials flatly deny that such an offer was ever made.

About one of every four workers in the Illinois portion of the Greater St. Louis area crosses the Mississippi River to work. The total for our region is about 71,300 commuters to Missouri.

But you’d think those river bridges were westbound only in the morning, and eastbound only in the evening. Fewer than 19,000 Missourians come over here to work.