With Illinois in near financial ruin, as businesses and economic refugees flee the state in search of opportunity, there is at least one industry prepared to invest $200 million or more in Illinois’ strangled economy:

Politics.

The $30,000 fee Northeastern Illinois University was going to pay former White House adviser Valerie Jarrett was just the latest in a series of big fees the financially troubled state school has paid to snag prominent graduation speakers, records show.

Despite its money troubles — a Wall Street credit agency just dropped Northeastern deeper into “junk-bond” status — the state university has handed out five-figure fees to each of the speakers at its May commencement events the past four years.

Chicago State University’s new interim president started work this week, the third leadership shift for the Far South Side school in 18 months.

Rachel W. Lindsey, a longtime former dean of Chicago State’s College of Arts and Sciences, took over the presidency Monday, about a week after the board approved her hiring. Her contract, obtained by the Tribune through a public records request, promises a $240,000 salary and stipulates she will serve as interim president at least until April 16, 2018.

With unusual speed, a federal appeals court in Chicago on Friday once again upheld former Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s corruption conviction and 14-year prison sentence just three days after holding oral argument on the case.

The terse, six-page opinion by the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals effectively slammed the door on Blagojevich’s last real chance of either winning a new trial or reducing his time behind bars.

The whole modern history of the Chicago City Council is that their toys are taken away from them because they can’t be trusted to play fair.

Patronage jobs — pretty much gone. The power to grant zoning variances — greatly curtailed. The authority to say who gets their garbage picked up first — forget about it.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Friday made it clear he has no intention of doing away with a program that allows each of the city’s 50 aldermen to decide how to spend their own $1.3 million pots of money on construction projects.

His defense of the so-called menu money came the day after Inspector General Joseph Ferguson recommended axing the program and instead letting the city Department of Transportation make those decisions.

The city contractor that allegedly “reserved jobs for individuals based on political considerations” is United Maintenance Co. Inc., according to City Hall sources and the alderman whose office blew the whistle on the firm.

Led by former Chicago cop Rick Simon, United Maintenance is nearing the end of a five-year deal that’s paid it nearly $110 million to provide janitors at O’Hare Airport.

Chicago’s inspector general has issued a subpoena to the Illinois Tollway regarding a top airport security official whom the tollway fired after a female employee accused him of sexual harassment, several sources familiar with the situation told the Tribune on Friday.

Inspector General Joe Ferguson subpoenaed the tollway, the sources said, before the Tribune reported Friday that Jeffrey Redding, a point person in the city’s investigation of the United Airlines passenger-dragging debacle, was terminated in 2015 for what tollway officials called “multiple violations of Illinois Tollway personnel policy and procedures.”

An email from an employer can be nerve-wrecking, as some Chicago teachers have been recently discovering.

Dozens of Chicago Teachers Union members have been contacted by the Chicago Public Schools Office of Internal Audit and Compliance to show proof of appropriate sick day usage, according to CTU Teacher Field Representative Joseph McDermott.

Chicago’s 7-cents-a-bag tax on paper and plastic bags is driving consumer behavior in the right direction to reduce landfill costs: Both the number of disposable bags used and the number of shoppers willing to pay for them is way down.

Before Feb. 1, Chicago shoppers used an average of 2.3 disposable bags every time they went to a major grocery store.

After five years of separation, without any contact, Symone Smith wasn’t sure what to expect from Friday’s planned reunion.

So in a dusty, gravel parking lot on the city’s Far South Side, Smith was delighted that there was still a spark — albeit with the help of a set of jumper cables.

Calumet School District 132, a 97 percent low-income district in Calumet Park, has spent more than $34,000 in the past year on conferences for board members, according to a Daily Southtown analysis of district financial records.

Between April 2016 and March 2017, the seven-member school board spent a combined $34,092.06 on registrations and workshops, travel, lodging and personal expenses for conferences in Boston, Miami, Denver and downtown Chicago, records show. Board members spent another couple of thousand dollars on in-state workshops and training — both mandatory and voluntary.

Property-tax bills will go out next Friday, said County Treasurer Dan Welch, and the average property taxpayer in the county will pay about $150 more in taxes this year than last.

This year’s average tax bill is $4,491.40, based on dividing the total tax take ($332.6 million) of taxing districts in the county by the number of tax bills (74,067) being mailed out.

Two St. Clair County school districts have moved off of the Illinois State Board of Education’s financial watch list this year, including Belleville District 201.

The state board identifies which districts are in or are moving toward financial difficulty by giving them a score every year. If they’re on the low end of the scoring range, they’re considered high risk and are put on the watch list.