Get the latest news from around Illinois.
Champaign News-Gazette: One rule for all
Legislators need to realize that school districts have only so much money.
Legislators in the Illinois House and Senate this week passed separate and different versions of legislation that sets a minimum annual teacher salary of $40,000 by the 2023-24 school year.
That minimum salary is, at least theoretically, not excessive. But legislators disserve the public when they intervene in market issues with their one-size-fits-all-102-counties-in-Illinois approach.
Chicago Sun-Times: Legal pot no pipe dream for Pritzker — hopes to pass ‘strong good bill’ in weeks
Gov. J.B. Pritzker tried marijuana himself, “a long time ago.”
But it won’t be long before Illinois residents are able to smoke it legally, if the freshman governor gets his way.
Chicago Sun-Times: City Council committee OKs Lyft bike-share deal to expand Divvy citywide by 2021
A City Council committee agreed Monday to make Lyft the exclusive operator of Chicago’s Divvy bike-sharing system over the strenuous objections of arch-rival Uber.
Mayor-elect Lori Lightfoot has expressed reservations about the agreement and the process by which retiring Mayor Rahm Emanuel negotiated a deal that “seemingly came out of nowhere without proper vetting and transparency.”
Chicago Tribune: Days after UIC graduate students end strike, professors prime for their own walkout
On the heels of a three-week strike by graduate student instructors, the University of Illinois at Chicago soon could face another walkout — this time from professors.
UIC United Faculty, the union representing 1,200 employees at the Near West Side campus, overwhelmingly voted this week to authorize a strike after months of unsuccessful contract negotiations with the administration.
Chicago Tribune: As Mayor-elect Lori Lightfoot calls for unity in Springfield, a Chicago-Downstate divide looms large
After Chicago Mayor-elect Lori Lightfoot had finished speaking to the Illinois House imploring lawmakers to show a statewide sense of unity, Republican Rep. Brad Halbrook applauded her rhetoric but said, “I don’t know that it changes anything.”
Halbrook, of rural Shelbyville in central Illinois, has his own take on Chicago. He’s the lead sponsor of a House resolution urging Congress to designate the city as its own state, separate from the rest of Illinois, because of its longstanding regional differences.
Chicago Sun-Times: Costs pile up at CPS-funded charter network over CEO who ‘acted inappropriately’
Chicago’s Noble Network of Charter Schools has spent $326,000 for costs related to the sudden retirement in November of its founder and CEO, who said he’d “acted inappropriately” with recent female graduates of the city’s largest government-funded but privately run charter school network, records obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times show.
And the bills keep coming for Noble, which runs 17 high schools and one middle school, all in Chicago, with a total of about 12,000 students, 89 percent of them from low-income families and 98 percent of them from minority groups.
Northwest Herald: McHenry City Council to consider $1 million incentive agreement for Thortons development
McHenry City Council on Monday will revisit a $1 million incentive agreement for a development that will include a retail complex and Thortons truck stop with video gaming.
Bluestone Single Tenant Properties, LLC plans to construct the $15 million development on the northwest corner of Chapel Hill Road and Route 120. City council originally approved the plan and incentive deal in 2016 but the agreement expired.
Rockford Register-Star: Winnebago County Board OKs moratorium on long-term economic subsidies
Winnebago County will take a one-year pause on awarding long-term economic development subsidies while the County Board decides how to best spend “host fee” dollars to stimulate the regional economy.
The board approved the one-year moratorium Thursday in a 12-7 decision. The county reaps more than $3 million a year from host fees it charges trash haulers who dump garbage at the privately owned Winnebago Landfill on Lindenwood Road.