We would like to know what Rich Daley said about a questionable investigation into the death of a young man who was killed by the former mayor’s nephew.

Daley’s written statement was read to a grand jury. What did he say he knew? What did he say he did?

The Civic Federation had a long, proud history providing an important check on state and local financial management. It sounded the alarm loudly long ago about Illinois’ problems: “Doomsday is here,” said its President, Laurence Msall, six years ago.

No more. A noticeable change occurred about three or four years ago. Since then, the alarms have softened. Critical issues are overlooked or given lip service. Limp pension reform proposals dominate. Dire implications of its own research pass without comment.

Now, it has worsened. Last week, it released a “Budget Roadmap” for the state, which can only cause one to ask, “what are they thinking?” Among its recommendations are tax increases totaling $9.4 billion per year. For some perspective, only about $5 billion would be raised if the temporary income tax that expired after 2014 was reinstated. That temporary increase raised the personal rate by 67% and the corporate rate by 45% but failed its stated purpose of reducing the states backlog of unpaid bills. The roadmap offers no reforms that would materially reduce the structural deficit and assure that its proposed tax increases wouldn’t likewise fail.

Residents living in states with the highest aggregated state tax burden are the most likely to report they would like to leave their state if they had the opportunity. Connecticut and New Jersey lead in the percentage of residents who would like to leave their state.

Tax burdens are based on Tax Foundation data. The aggregated state tax burden is based on the combined income, property and sales tax rates in each state. States are arranged into quintiles based on their 2015 state tax scores. States in the first quintile represent the 20% of states that have the lowest aggregated state tax burden, and states in the fifth quintile are the 20% of states with the highest aggregated state tax burden. A full list of the quintile assignments by state is included at the end of this article.

Approximately a quarter (26%) of residents who live in states with the lowest tax burden say they would like to leave their state. And this rate generally holds for residents in the second and third quintiles. However, there is a three-percentage-point increase to 31% among fourth-quintile states and an even greater jump to 36% among the fifth quintile. Even after controlling for various demographic characteristics including age, gender, race and ethnicity, and education, there is still a strong relationship between total state tax burden and desire to leave one’s current state of residence.

The teachers’ pension crisis clouds every aspect of the Chicago Public Schools.

The district is running enormous deficits and demanding that teachers pay more.

But teachers say they didn’t cause the problem and it’s unfair to put the burden of on them.

Airbnb and other home-sharing services would be off-limits in Chicago neighborhoods dominated by single-family homes, under a crackdown proposed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s City Council floor leader.

“People who have purchased homes in single-family zoned areas have done so without the expectation that someone would open a motel on the same block every weekend,” Ald. Pat O’Connor (40th) wrote in a text message to the Chicago Sun-Times.

O’Connor did not identify Chicago neighborhoods now plagued by that problem.

The same towing company that has handled city towing needs for the past 26 years will continue to do so. United Road Towing was the only bidder on this year’s city towing contract, the first one handled by Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration, according to the Sun-Times.

Two other companies showed interest in the contract, but didn’t go beyond that, according to a Sun-Times review of city records.

This wouldn’t be much of a story except that United Road Towing has always been, for lack of a better term, kind of shady.

For years, criminal justice reform was political suicide. Politicians, desperate to avoid being seen as “soft on crime,” advocated harsher and harsher punishments, such as mandatory prison sentences for drug convictions and multiple convictions through the 1990s. The result was that the prison population ballooned — and with it, the number of women behind bars. Between 1990 and 2000, the number of women sent to prison more than doubled, from 44,065 to nearly 100,000.

Much of this growth has been attributed to draconian drug laws and mandatory sentencing guidelines, but even in cases where mandatory minimum guidelines do not apply, prosecutors’ and judges’ eagerness to appear tough on crime has made them unwilling to consider factoring in mitigating circumstances when imposing sentences. For women who have used violence to defend themselves against domestic violence or sexual assault, this unwillingness can mean decades, if not a lifetime, in prison.

Faced with overcrowded prisons and their exorbitant expenses, many politicians have changed their tune. Calling the country’s criminal justice system “out of balance,” Hillary Clinton now advocates reducing (but not eliminating) mandatory sentences for federal drug offenses. Congress members such as Wisconsin Representative Jim Sensenbrenner are backtracking on their previous “tough on crime” stances; In the Senate, Kentucky Republican Rand Paul teamed up with Vermont Democrat Patrick Leahy to introduce a bill allowing federal judges to hand out sentences below the mandatory minimums.

A U.S. Supreme Court case that could affect Gov. Bruce Rauner’s move to do away with unions’ so-called “fair share” payments is among those thrown into question by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia.

Rauner signed an executive order last year saying state workers who don’t want to join their union don’t have to pay fees — typically less than union dues — to help with bargaining costs.