Public and private sector unions in Illinois saw 27,000 workers reject union membership in 2023.

Criticizing a new bill filed in the Illinois legislature that would require high schools to observe “Workplace Readiness Week,” Mailee Smith, the Illinois Policy Institute’s senior director of Labor Policy and staff attorney, said unions, particularly government unions, will do whatever they can to ensure they maintain that foothold over power.

Even after he’d sentenced Michael Madigan’s longtime chief of staff Monday to 2 1/2 years in prison for lying to a grand jury as the federal noose tightened around his former boss, a frustrated judge told Tim Mapes, “I don’t know why you did what you did.”

It’s a question U.S. District Judge John Kness raised repeatedly as he considered what punishment to hand down to Mapes, the man who’d famously spent two decades keeping the “trains running on time” for Madigan, Illinois’ once-powerful former House speaker. Mapes had been granted immunity but still tried to thwart the feds’ aggressive investigation of Madigan with his grand jury testimony.

Former state legislator Annazette Collins was convicted Monday on four of six tax-related charges, a mixed verdict delivered after more than eight hours of deliberations.

A federal jury convicted her of filing two false tax returns and failing to file one personal tax return and a return for her lobbying firm. She was acquitted of failing to file a corporate return in 2016 and also of filing a false tax return for herself in 2018.

Chicago spent just 29% of the federal relief funds officials promised to use to strengthen the city’s tattered social safety net and provide direct aid to Chicagoans struggling to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic by the end of 2023, according to a WTTW News analysis.

In all, Chicago spent less than $160 million on a host of programs including affordable housing, mental health, violence prevention, youth job programs and help for unhoused Chicagoans through Dec. 31, according to the most recent reports filed with the U.S. Department of the Treasury as required by federal law.

Elmhurst residents can expect to see an increase in their water bills.

A committee of city aldermen has issued a lengthy report recommending Elmhurst raise water and sewer rates. Officials say the rate hikes are needed to help fund substantial repairs and upgrades to the city’s aging water and sewer infrastructure.