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Chicago Tribune: Gov. Bruce Rauner won't attend GOP convention or endorse Trump for president
Gov. Bruce Rauner won’t attend the Republican National Convention or formally endorse Donald Trump for president as fallout from the controversial presumptive nominee reverberates throughout the Illinois GOP.
Aides to the first-term Republican governor said Rauner, who declined to back a candidate in what was once a crowded GOP presidential field, would remain focused on Illinois’ troubled finances.
Rauner joins U.S. Sen. Mark Kirk in bypassing the July convention in Cleveland as Illinois’ two highest-ranking Republicans seek to avoid the political minefield created by Trump, the real estate mogul and former reality TV show star.
WBEZ: Police Data Cast Doubt On Chicago-Style Stop-And-Frisk
The one chance for Chicago City Council members to question Eddie Johnson before approving him as police superintendent was an April 12 council hearing.
The city’s murder numbers were way up. But the police department was still staggering from the fallout of a video that showed an officer fatally shooting 17-year-old Laquan McDonald.
The number of police stops had fallen off a cliff.
The Southern: Illinois GOP lawmakers want auditor spending answers
A group of Republican lawmakers attempted to turn up the election-year heat Thursday on the state’s chief fiscal monitor, demanding that Auditor General Frank Mautino answer questions about his campaign spending as a legislator.
First-term Rep. Grant Wehrli of Naperville, who faces a Democratic challenger in November, said at a state Capitol news conference that he and 19 colleagues sought answers Thursday in their third recent letter to Mautino that read, “The people of Illinois are tired of the many corruption scandals they’ve had to endure in recent years.”
Mautino was a Democratic deputy majority leader in the House for 24 years before the Legislature, controlled by Democrats, appointed him to a 10-year term last fall as auditor general. The Spring Valley politician replaced the retiring William Holland to examine state government spending and compliance with rules and regulations.
Chicago Tribune: Bruce Rauner's mistakes
In politics and governance, deference is often appropriate. Trustworthiness is indispensable. Discretion is essential.
Failing to practice any of the above can be a deal-breaker toward progress, no matter the circumstances. Freshman Gov. Bruce Rauner has slipped up on all three.
Lessons from the past 16 months can be useful in getting Rauner and Democratic leaders to strike a budget deal, this year and for the next two.
Chicago Tribune: FDA regulation could spell doom for Chicago vape stores
Pitching their products as a healthier alternative to smoking, e-cigarette manufacturers and retailers that sell vaping products have cashed in on a largely unregulated industry.
But the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s move Thursday to begin regulating e-cigarette products, coming on top of a Chicago city tax on e-cigarettes that took effect earlier this year, threatens to vaporize what’s left of the industry’s profits, local retailers say.
Long feared by the e-cigarette industry, new rules unveiled by the FDA Thursday require all e-cigarette products — including those already on the market — to gain federal approval before they can be sold. Many vaping products — particularly the nicotine-containing “vape juices” that are produced independently and used to fill e-cigarettes — come in flavors that appeal to children, which was of particular concern to the FDA.
Sun-Times: Alvarez flip-flops, asks for special prosecutor in McDonald case
In a stunning reversal, Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez on Thursday recused herself from prosecuting Chicago Police Officer Jason Van Dyke and asked a Cook County judge to appoint a special prosecutor to handle the high-profile murder of teenager Laquan McDonald.
Alvarez held firm in her motion filed Thursday that her office did not have a conflict of interest in the case as critics have charged. But she noted that she would still recuse herself and ask for a special prosecutor “to obtain justice for Laquan McDonald, and to ensure continuity in the handling of this important and complicated case . . . ”
During the Democratic primary election, Alvarez repeatedly rejected calls for a special prosecutor in the Van Dyke case, a key issue during the campaign that ended in her getting trounced.
Sun-Times: Mayor won’t consider CTU’s ideas to raise school money locally
Unwilling to let the General Assembly “off the hook” for school funding, Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Thursday refused to entertain any of the $500 million in revenue ideas served up by the Chicago Teachers Union.
“The solution is not about more taxes. It’s about more fairness. . . . If you look at the taxpayers of Chicago — they pay twice already for teacher pensions. And I’m not gonna let the state of Illinois get off the hook,” the mayor said.
Sun-Times: Lawmakers call school funding bill a Chicago ‘bailout’
A downstate Democrat’s plan to change the school funding formula hit a major snag on Wednesday after Gov. Bruce Rauner’s administration released figures ahead of an Illinois Senate vote that showed Chicago Public Schools would be receiving millions more than other school districts.
State Sen. Andy Manar’s proposal to shift money from wealthier districts to poorer ones faces an uphill battle as the state figures added fuel to a fire over what has been a contentious school funding formula battle.