The City of Springfield will pay $1 million more next year for firefighter and police pensions. That boosts the total the city pays in pensions to more than $21 million.

The first question we can answer is why are pension costs going up $1 million. City employees’ pensions are paid from three places: a portion of their salary, investments in retirement funds and the city.

Springfield had projected the return on retirement fund investments at 7.25%, but now that’s 7%.

Governor Bruce Rauner laid off 29 employees at the Illinois Department of Transportation Thursday, all hired under the Quinn and Blagojevich administrations.

“Our administration has put an end to the illegal patronage hiring that started under Blagojevich and continued under Quinn,” Rauner said in a statement. “Since taking office, we have worked for taxpayers to ensure proper hiring at all of our state agencies. This is an additional step to restore citizens’ faith in state government so it works for them and not the political insiders.”

The former parking executive who sold a $22 million contract for Chicago’s parking meters to a Florida businessman for a $90,000 bribe says the businessman probably could have landed the contract without paying one dirty dime.

But Felipe “Phil” Oropesa took the bribe anyway when it was offered to him by George Levey of Cale Parking Systems USA Inc. And as a result, Oropesa says he has been “publicly shamed,” lost his job and has few prospects to help him support his wife and three children. In short, Oropesa said he’s become “a pariah.”

An associate of the convicted one-time political power broker Tony Rezko was sentenced to 57 months in prison Thursday for dodging more than $1 million in income taxes.

Alber Najjar, also known as Alber Yakoub, pleaded guilty in April to two counts of filing a false tax return. A federal grand jury indicted the former Winnetka resident in 2004. But shortly before that, Najjar fled to Lebanon and spent more than 11 years as a fugitive, prosecutors say. He was arrested in Cyprus last November and extradited to the United States.

Keeping with its strategy of providing the fastest delivery times by locating fulfillment centers close to customers, Amazon plans to open another facility in the Chicago suburbs.

The new fulfillment center in Monee, Illinois will employ “hundreds” of workers packing and shipping books and other small consumer goods to Amazon customers, according to ChicagoInno.

Joint reports published last week by the Sun-Times and ABC7 take a critical, investigative look at traffic violations committed by food trucks and “lax” city enforcement thereof. Food-proprietors quickly offered up a defense. They reiterated that two of the city’s key food-truck rules are “unjust”; and the city’s brand of enforcement is a rather sensible workaround to such unfair restrictions. But Mayor Rahm Emanuel, it now appears, favors the side of stricter enforcement.

Rules prohibit food trucks from parking within 200 ft. of brick-and-mortar competition and parking longer than two hours in a single location. The time limit “makes it virtually impossible to prepare fresh food and have enough time to serve enough customers and be profitable,” according to a statement released by the Illinois Food Truck Owners Association.

The reports uncovered instances in which multiple food trucks set up on the same block, which is a violation. But Gabriel Wiesen, owner of Beavers Donuts food truck and interim head of the IFTOA, said this is necessary for business, a point that is also given voice in the Sun-Times piece from other food-truck owners. “There’s a reason we all go to two or three areas each day,” he told Chicagoist. “Most of the designated areas don’t have enough foot traffic to support business.”