State employees will learn tomorrow whether a judge believes a law that reduces their pension benefits is constitutional. Sangamon County Court Judge John Belz says he’ll issue a written opinion Fri., Nov. 20 afternoon.

Belz’s decision is to be made public just 24 hours after he heard oral arguments in the case.

At issue is whether lawmakers defied the Illinois Constitution by passing a law that reduces state workers’, public school teachers’ and university employees’ retirement benefits.

Environmental groups and Will County residents called on Illinois officials Wednesday to drop plans to build the Illiana Expressway.

At a Statehouse press conference, opponents of the 47-mile toll road connecting Interstate 55 in Wilmington and Interstate 65 near Lowell, Ind., said the roadway would become a financial and environmental “boondoggle” if plans continue to move forward.

While their arguments weren’t new, they came as Illinois lawmakers returned to the Capitol for the start of the General Assembly’s fall veto session. No action on the controversial truck route is expected this fall, but they said they wanted to spread their message in anticipation of a new administration coming on board in January.

The Illinois Senate started advancing a plan Wednesday that would raise the state’s minimum wage to $11 per hour by 2017, starting with an increase from $8.25 to $10 in July.

It would apply to workers age 18 and over.

In pushing the boost, supporters pointed to a statewide advisory ballot question that voters in Illinois approved just two weeks ago. It asked if the minimum wage should be raised to $10 per hour.

Last week, it was announced that Lincoln Mall in suburban Matteson would close after the holiday season, due to its operator’s inability to keep the mall properly maintained and staffed. However, the 700,000 square foot shopping center is not alone, as it joins a growing list of dead malls in the greater Chicagoland area. Chicago photographer Katherine Hodges has been documenting so-called dead malls and other abandoned sites for several years, and has visited numerous shopping centers throughout the Midwest that have either completely shuttered, or are on the verge of closing for good.

Hodges shoots many other sites beyond malls that are on death row, however the images of humungous vacant shopping centers speak for themselves. One mall that Hodges has highlighted — The Plaza in Evergreen Park — was the first modern shopping mall in the Chicago area, having originally opened in 1952. It closed last summer. The Charlestowne Mall in St. Charles, another mall featured in Hodges’ series, is currently the focus of a major redevelopment effort that could potentially revive the shopping center.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s $7.3 billion budget — and the $62.4 million in tax increases needed to pay for it — sailed through the City Council Wednesday, setting the stage for a post-election property tax increase.

The vote was 46 to 4. No votes were cast by mayoral challenger Bob Fioretti (2nd) and three of his Progressive Caucus colleagues: Aldermen Toni Foulkes (15th), Scott Waguespack (32nd) and John Arena (45th).

“Are we trying to bring Chicago together or are we trying to further divide the haves and have-nots?” Fioretti said Wednesday in an attempt to saddle Emanuel with the “Mayor 1 Percent” label he is trying desperately to overcome by championing affordable housing and a Chicago-only increase in the minimum wage.

Last December, Bruce Rauner appeared on a WLS Radio talk show program and revealed that he planned to form a new campaign committee to counter the power of Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan.

“We’re gonna raise a PAC, we’re gonna raise a fund dedicated to the state Legislature, members of both parties who take the tough votes,” Rauner said. “We’ve gotta protect the members who take tough votes.”

“Right now,” Rauner continued, “Madigan controls the Legislature from his little pot of cash. It isn’t that much money. And he runs the whole state government out of that pot. We need a pro-business, pro-growth, pro-limited government, pro-tax reduction PAC down there in Springfield working with the Legislature for those who take tough votes.”

Voters in the midterm elections gave Republicans control of 31 governorships and 23 state legislatures, the most since 1929. A big reason for the GOP’s sudden popularity: Many states face fiscal disaster.
A new report by State Budget Solutions, a nonpartisan think tank, shows how bad things have gotten for troubled states, many of which are still struggling from the after-effects of the 2008-09 financial meltdown.

State and local pension plans are currently underfunded by $4.7 trillion, up from $4.1 trillion just last year.

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Transit ridership across the Chicago area is expected to end the year down 1.5 percent from the previous year — something that concerned the Regional Transportation Authority Wednesday.

Chicago transit ridership had the second biggest drop among nine peers, falling 2.7 percent in the first three quarters of the year alone, data presented to the RTA Wednesday indicated.

Only Philadelphia, where riders faced higher fares and a tough winter, had a larger ridership decline year-to-date — of 7.4 percent, RTA data indicated.

Two key lawmakers agreed Thursday to work on a new package of ride-sharing regulations that would require background checks of drivers and a minimum of $1 million in insurance coverage when carrying passengers.

The move means sponsoring Rep. Mike Zalewski and Sen. Tony Munoz will not seek an override of Gov. Pat Quinn’s veto of legislation the two Democratic lawmakers passed in the spring. They have agreed to a craft statewide proposal for minimal regulations with an eye toward getting a vote in the current General Assembly before newly elected lawmakers take office in mid-January.

Both the outgoing Democratic governor and Republican Gov.-elect Bruce Rauner found rare agreement in opposing the bill. The legislation and the governor’s veto created a massive fight between the taxi industry and ride-sharing companies like Uber, Lyft and Sidecar.

The Illinois House has voted to override Gov. Pat Quinn’s veto of legislation that allows governments to charge higher fees for large public records requests.

Legislators voted 77-36 on Wednesday to override the veto. It now goes to the Illinois Senate, where it will require a three-fifths vote to override.

The legislature approved the measure during the spring session. Quinn vetoed it, saying it would reduce transparency.

The Illinois House voted Wednesday to give the attorney general the ability to go to court to stop future cases in which a pension is being paid to a convicted public official even if a retirement board had approved payments.

The bill is inspired by disgraced former Chicago police Cmdr. Jon Burge, who did not lose his $4,000-a-month pension despite costing the city tens of millions in legal costs because of police torture and abuse in the 1970s and 1980s. This measure would not affect Burge’s pension.

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Elaine Nekritz, D-Northbrook, passed the House 99-14. It now goes to the Senate.

A new plan to raise the state’s minimum wage to $11 an hour by 2017 won approval Wednesday in a Senate committee.

The bill could come to a vote Thursday before the full Senate.

Sen. Kimberly Lightford, D-Maywood, noted that an advisory referendum on the Nov. 4 ballot asking if the state’s minimum wage should be raised to $10 an hour won approval from 67 percent of those who voted on it.

Rakesh Mathur is the newly appointed CEO of a startup that markets itself as Uber without the assholes. And that means he’s having a very good week.

After the website Buzzfeed published a story saying an Uber executive had discussed the idea of investigating journalists who were critical of his ride-sharing company, Uber looks more asshole-ish than ever, and Mathur’s startup, Flywheel, is ready to reap the benefits.

Flywheel is a taxi-hailing app that works with existing taxi companies, and it has long promised to avoid not only the mudslinging and the sabotage that have characterized Uber’s climb to the top of the startup ladder, but also the surge pricing that periodically ups the cost of its rides. A recent pitch from the company’s PR firm described it as “the no-surge, non-asshole alternative to Uber and Lyft.”

We all know Illinois as both “The Land of Lincoln” and “The Land Where Four of the Past Nine Governors Have Ended Up In Prison”. There’s “HOPE”, and then there’s “HOPE… no one traces these campaign funds!”. It’s been a veritable debauchery pageant trying to narrow down the 10 most corrupt Illinois politicians who were sloppy enough to get caught (as much as we love rumor mongering) — but here they are, ranked by their overall brazenness and total prison term, because, as former Secretary of State Paul Powell once said, “There’s only one thing worse than a defeated politician, and that’s a broke politician”.

State Sen. Jim Oberweis, R-Sugar Grove, today successfully challenged a gubernatorial veto of a bill he sponsored to raise the speed limit on Illinois toll highways to 70 miles per hour, according to a news release.

The Senate today voted 44-5-1 to override Gov. Pat Quinn’s veto of Senate Bill 2015, the release states. The bill will next move to the House of Representatives for consideration.

Quinn on Aug. 26 vetoed Senate Bill 2015, citing studies from the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority that indicate motorists already are driving above the speed limit on the tollways.

According to the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, a full 56% of Americans agree with this statement: “The economic and political systems in the country are stacked against people like me.” This disillusionment index has been rising for more than a decade and coincides with an explosion in the size of the federal government.

The Journal’s Neil King notes that “alienation has built steadily since 2002, when just over a third of Americans felt the system was stacked against them.” Coincidentally, 2002 marked the first time in U.S. history in which overall federal spending topped $2 trillion. That seemed like a huge number at the time. But the feds spent $3.5 trillion in the fiscal year that ended in September and the President is hoping this year’s total can approach $4 trillion.

While federal spending as a percentage of GDP had been running below 18% for several years prior to 2002, it topped 18% that year and then surged to more than 20% by the last full fiscal year of George W. Bush ’s presidency in 2008. Spending spiked much higher during President Obama’s first year in office to more than 24% of GDP. Relative to the size of the economy, this was the most government Americans were required to buy since 1946, in the aftermath of World War II. And federal spending has been running above 20% of GDP in every year since.