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PJStar: Caterpillar layoffs this week: 300 in Mossville, thousands overseas
Hundreds of mostly office employees received layoff notices at one of the largest Caterpillar Inc. facilities in the Peoria area this week, just as the company announced plans to close overseas production plants and eliminate thousands more positions.
A total of 300 support and management employees at Building AC and the Tech Center in Mossville this week received job loss notifications that included severance packages, 60 days notice and mandated Illinois Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act letters.
Sun-Times: Officials move to yank pension of key figure in Redflex scandal
Officials with Chicago’s biggest public retirement system are taking steps to pull the pension of John Bills, the ex-city of Chicago official convicted in the Redflex traffic camera corruption case.
The Municipal Employees Benefit and Annuity Fund agreed to suspend Bills’ pension payments effective Sept. 1 and notified him that a hearing to determine whether his benefits should be terminated will be held later in the month, according to a letter obtained through the Illinois Freedom of Information Act.
Sun-Times: Ill. Supreme Court sets new rules for pot decriminalization law
The Illinois Supreme Court on Thursday announced it has created new rules for the state’s cannabis decriminalization law — including setting a $120 fine for those caught with up to 10 grams of cannabis or drug paraphernalia.
The law, which Gov. Bruce Rauner signed on July 29, gave the state Supreme Court the authority to further clarify the newly defined “civil law violation” of possessing up to 10 grams of cannabis or drug paraphernalia.
Daily Herald: Picket of I-90 contractor resolved
A brief strike Thursday night at a construction site on the Jane Addams Tollway in Des Plaines orchestrated by a tollway board member has ended.
International Union of Operating Engineers Local 150 members have resolved a dispute with a tollway contractor, Stalworth Underground, that resulted in a picket on the I-90 bridge over Oakton near Des Plaines.
John Kass: Top cop calls for special legislative session to toughen gun crime sentencing
Eddie Johnson is police superintendent in a Chicago on fire, with 90 dead in August alone. He’s a decent man forced to turn to politicians for help.
Johnson wants tougher sentencing laws that target felons arrested with guns. And on Thursday he urged lawmakers to call a special session of the state legislature and take action before more lives are lost in the gang wars.
Chicago Tribune: Surge in renters making the U.S. less affordable
For decades, the U.S. has been a standout in the world as the land where people fulfilled the American Dream by owning a home.
Now, in the aftermath of the housing crash and recession, reality is moving in the opposite direction. The U.S. is still known for its large homes and white picket fences, but instead of standing out for its homeownership, it’s the renters whose portraits are emerging, and these are no Norman Rockwell images.
The Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies just dug into rental trends in the U.S., Canada and Europe and reported that Americans are now average rather than remarkable. About 33 percent of American households rent apartments or houses — placing the U.S. right in the middle of households that rent throughout the nations studied. And from that data point on, the U.S. stands out in unfavorable ways, says the report by Michael Carliner, senior research fellow. Americans are in worse shape than people in any other country when it comes to being able to afford the apartments and houses they rent.
ChicagoNow: Chicago aldermen using private emails for city business
For all the talk of email servers in the presidential race, you’d think Chicago aldermen would have learned their lesson by now: Don’t mix city business with private property.
But 19 city aldermen are using private email accounts for their public duties, according to an Aug. 31 report from Project Six, a corruption watchdog group founded by former Chicago Legislative Inspector GeneralFaisal Khan.
While the city issues all aldermen and all city employees their own government-run email addresses, which are subject to the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, many aldermen have eschewed that option in favor of less transparency and security.