Get the latest news from around Illinois.
Chicago Tribune: Madigan calls off Wednesday session in Springfield; no override vote of Rauner for now
House Speaker Michael Madigan abruptly canceled plans for lawmakers to return to the Capitol on Wednesday and vote on an override of Gov. Bruce Rauner’s education funding veto, citing “progress” made during several hours of closed-door negotiations.
“I am hopeful we can finish our negotiations shortly to ensure schools around the state can receive the money needed to operate schools throughout this school year,” Madigan said in a statement late Tuesday.
Crain's Chicago Business: The data behind CPS' hemorrhaging finances
For technical reasons you don’t want to know about, I wasn’t able to post the data behind my column in the new issue of Crain’s, in which I say that while struggling Chicago Public Schools deserves more help from Springfield, whatever Gov. Bruce Rauner says, the system still faces huge financial challenges after decades of mismanagement.
The data cover an 11-year period––long enough in my view to capture underlying trends––and come from official CPS financial reports. Among categories are total revenues and expenditures by year, debt service and total debt, student enrollment, the number of employees, pension payments and pension debt.
WTTW Chicago Tonight: Civic Federation: TIFs Are Good for Chicago Public Schools
Tax increment financing has become a key front in the debate over school funding.
The governor and his allies say Chicago could solve a lot of its public school system’s financial problems by getting rid of TIF districts. They and other critics say TIFs are starving Chicago Public Schools of hundreds of millions of dollars. But the mayor and other budget watchdogs refute the notion, saying that doing away with them could actually cost public schools money.
State Journal-Register: School funding debate delays Peoria Road TIF approval process
The fight over Illinois’ school funding formula is slowing the city of Springfield’s redevelopment efforts on the city’s north side.
A Springfield School District 186 official on Tuesday asked to delay an oversight board’s vote on a tax increment financing district the city wants to establish along Peoria Road. He cited concerns over provisions in Gov. Bruce Rauner’s veto of the school funding bill that affect TIF districts.
Rockford Register-Star: Borrowing to pay state bills is OK, says rating agency
A major bond rating agency said today that Illinois should go ahead with a proposal to borrow money to pay down its bill backlog.
S&P Global Ratings said it is likely the state can borrow money at a lower interest rate than it is now paying on overdue bills. On most of the state’s overdue bills, the late interest fee comes to 12 percent a year. Comptroller Susana Mendoza said the state runs up $2 million a day in interest charges on its overdue bills.
WTTW Chicago Tonight: Toni Preckwinkle Discusses Cook County Soda Tax Pushback
Cook County President Toni Preckwinkle has a powerful ally helping convince consumers and voters that the county’s new penny-per-ounce sweetened beverage tax is good public policy. Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is personally funding a $2 million commercial campaign against soda.
However, the tax has faced enormous backlash, beginning with retailers. Implementation was scheduled to start July 1, but the Illinois Retail Merchants Association filed a lawsuit to stop it. The judge on the case ultimately ruled that the tax could start being collected about a month later.
Chicago Tribune: After 3 kids die despite DCFS involvement, it urges faster probes
They found him wrapped in a Superman T-shirt, his burned body so tiny that first responders thought he was 9 months old.
Authorities would later discover that 4-year-old Manuel Aguilar spent the last months of his life in the unheated storage room of a Southwest Side two-flat, naked and scared, pounding on the door to beg for food and water.
Chicago Tribune: Trial underway in lawsuit filed by ex-State Treasurer Rutherford aides
Former Republican state Treasurer Dan Rutherford’s ill-fated 2014 gubernatorial bid has long faded from public memory, but a civil trial this week at the Daley Center has placed a spotlight on the explosive allegations that damaged his campaign.
And taxpayers are footing the bill, with attorneys defending Rutherford in two civil cases already charging over $500,000 in legal fees before the first day of the first trial began this week, according to the legal team for the plaintiffs, citing state records.
Crain's Chicago Business: Illinoisans getting Foxconn jobs? Not likely, Walker aide says
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s top aides offered state legislators another round of assurances Tuesday that a Foxconn Technology Group plant in southeastern Wisconsin would transform the state’s economy but promised the company would lose out on state incentives if it doesn’t deliver.
Foxconn has proposed building a $10 billion facility to produce liquid-crystal display panels in Kenosha or Racine counties. The Taiwanese company has promised the factory could employ up to 13,000 people. Walker has drawn up a bill that would hand the company $3 billion in incentives, including tax credits based on jobs created and capital investment, exemptions from environmental regulations and exemptions from state and local sale taxes on construction materials.
CHicago Tribune: Jackson Park advocates voice worries about Obama center planning
Plans for the Obama Presidential Center in Jackson Park are being firmed up largely out of public view, and one watchdog group is sounding the alarm about the lack of transparency.
Decisions on the design of the center, the park’s golf course and even whether to eliminate some roads in the park are being worked out by the Obama Foundation, City Hall and the Chicago Park District.
Bloomington Pantagraph: Officials grapple with widening opioid epidemic
A forum Tuesday on the deadly effects of opioids on rural communities drew about 75 local, state, and federal stakeholders who shared their experiences and ideas for battling what the White House recently classified as a national emergency.
The discussion on heroin and opioids was sponsored by U.S. Rep. Rodney Davis, a Taylorville Republican, and included remarks from Lt. Gov. Evelyn Sanguinetti and Drug Enforcement Administration Special Agent Glenn Haas.
Belleville News-Democrat: Developers expect Hofbräuhaus to open soon but can’t say exactly when
Construction on the Hofbräuhaus German restaurant and brewery in Belleville is expected to be finished in “late fall,” but the developers do not have an exact completion date to announce, a spokesman for the developers said.
The developers have previously announced several goals to finish the project but have missed all of them, dating back to summer 2016.
Belleville News-Democrat: Oliver Hamilton says 5-year sentence is too long. Appellate court says do it all.
Former East St. Louis Township Supervisor Oliver Hamilton took from the poorest of the poor, got caught and a judge sentenced him to five years in prison.
Hamilton claimed to the U.S. Court of Appeals that his sentence was too long.
Belleville News-Democrat: Politician gets big payday, but no checks for village cops, clerks
Washington Park village government has long operated in a parallel universe.
Half the residents have fled and left behind burned-out shells on weed-choked lots. Not even Mayor Rickie Thomas wants to live there — his house is in Shiloh. Only the stripper population has increased in the bankrupt, corrupt, high-crime, poverty-ridden community.
So it comes as no surprise that this topsy-turvy land would let their employees go without a payday at the same time a village trustee was handed a $38,000 settlement.
The Southern: Tax redemption puts Grand Tower Power Plant appeal back in the spotlight
One of the largest taxpayers in Jackson County in early August redeemed tax certificates for back taxes owed on power plant properties commonly known as the Grand Tower Energy Center.
According to Jackson County Clerk and Recorder Larry W. Reinhardt, the owner of the power plant, Texas-based Rockland Capital, paid more than $5.9 million to redeem tax certificates for 2014 and 2015 held on nine separate parcels owned by the utility.