Gov. Bruce Rauner’s administration on Thursday filed an unfair labor practice charge against the union representing 38,000 state employees, seeking a whopping $2 million in damages a day as the two sides remain at odds.

The union shot back that the filing is a “disgraceful attempt to intimidate union members from exercising their legal rights” and blamed the litigation and “the threat of a disruptive strike” on Rauner.

Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner’s Illinois turnaround project got a boost when state Democrats lost their veto-proof majority in November. Some bipartisan reform can’t come soon enough given this week’s news that taxpayers are fleeing the Land of Lincoln in record numbers.

According to the Census Bureau, Illinois now leads the nation for the steepest population decline. Between July 2015 and July 2016, Illinois lost some 114,000 people in net migration to other states, with total population decline of 37,508 (including births and deaths). For the third year in a row it was the only state to have lost population among the nine in its Great Lakes and Mid-America region.

The city of Chicago released thousands of email messages from Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s personal accounts yesterday as part of a settlement with a government watchdog organization.

Emanuel’s office said it was making public any messages pertaining to city business that were sent to and from Emanuel dating to 2011, when the former White House chief of staff took office.

Judging from his private emails, Mayor Rahm Emanuel has two major obsessions: his media image and the bloodbath on Chicago streets.

That’s the overwhelming conclusion from the massive information dump that ended Emanuel’s legal battle to keep his private emails completely concealed from public view.

In April 2014, investment banker Byron Trott sent an email to Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s personal account in which he promised to co-host a political fundraiser, before making a series of requests that included asking that the mayor provide high-level access to a new executive at Trott’s firm.

“Both Erskine and I are looking forward to hosting a fundraiser for you in June — our teams are working together on finding a date and a place for this as I write,” Trott wrote, apparently referring to former Clinton White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles, whom Emanuel served with as a top Bill Clinton presidential adviser. Bowles is an adviser to Trott’s namesake investment bank, BDT Capital Partners.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel is just as bullish on Chicago business in private emails as he is in public.

Under pressure from a pair of open records lawsuits, the mayor on Wednesday turned over about 2,700 pages of emails from his personal accounts that his attorney determined were government-related.

N’DIGO publisher Hermene Hartman took a political risk when she became an early and prominent African-American supporter of Rahm Emanuel’s first run for mayor in 2011.

So she may have felt her bold rejection of “consensus” black candidate Carol Moseley Braun gave her clout.

Powerful Chicagoans with opinions about schools used Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s private email addresses to gripe, poke and advise him — not the least of them Illinois’ current Gov. Bruce Rauner.

The trove of 2,700 emails released earlier this week as part of a court settlement also provides insights into Rauner’s stance on unions before he became governor. And they paint Rauner, when he was a businessman and leader, as being very involved with city projects and very vocal when he disagreed with an initiative.

At the height of the outcry after the release of a dashcam video showing a police officer fatally shooting 17-year-old Laquan McDonald 16 times, Mayor Rahm Emanuel sought advice from Cincinnati Mayor John Cranley, who had been lauded for reforming his city’s police department, private emails reveal.

Emanuel’s decision to consult Cranley via his private email account at the lowest point of his tenure as Chicago’s mayor was revealed Wednesday when he released 3,000 pages of emails as part of a settlement with the Better Government Association, a watchdog group.

A temporary budget to keep money flowing to universities and providers who care for the state’s vulnerable is set to expire in one week, and Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner and Democratic legislative leaders still have no plans to resume their talks.

Rauner isn’t in Illinois, but “traveling out west with his family” spokeswoman Catherine Kelly said. He “remains ready to return at a moment’s notice if Democrats are prepared to present their balanced budget proposal,” she said.

Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner, nearly two years away from Election Day 2018, deposited $50 million into his campaign account this week in what party operatives billed as a “first installment” in the effort to win a second term for the wealthy former venture capitalist.

The contribution — nearly double what Rauner spent personally on his entire 2014 campaign — is an early indication of the massive amount of money that’s expected to be spent on the 2018 election, even as it remains unclear who will emerge on the Democratic side to challenge him.

Illinois will provide almost $13 million in tax incentives to Amazon.com Inc. to support the expanding electronic retailer as it develops two fulfillment centers in Aurora, a spokesperson for Gov. Bruce Rauner (R) told Bloomberg BNA.

Rauner said the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity had reached an agreement with Amazon, permitting the company to take advantage of the Illinois Economic Development for a Growing Economy (EDGE) Tax Credit Program. The agreement will grant Amazon tax benefits totaling $12.9 million over 10 years in response to the company’s commitment to create at least 1,000 new jobs during that period.

State Sen. Pam Althoff and a Democratic lawmaker are making an attempt in the final days of session to revive the more important components of a state business tax credit program set to expire Dec. 31.

Belleville and Swansea ask for more property taxes for pensions. Belleville wants a 1 cent sales tax for the Shop Land strip mall and another for 4204’s shopping center. Belleville schools are asking for 4.24 percent more in property taxes. All schools will ask for a 1 percent sales tax on April 4 for construction and debt. St. Clair County on the same ballot will ask for another 1 percent sales tax for public safety. O’Fallon bumps the hotel tax by 4 percentage points. Illinois will surely hike state income taxes if leaders can ever agree they need a state budget. The feds will do something to the income tax system, but Vegas won’t give odds on whether yours will go up versus down.

The trouble with living in the Land of Governments, is that 6,968 sets of leaders just see their little piece of the puzzle. You get to assemble it all and it creates a picture of your wallet screaming.

A federal judge handed a year of probation Thursday to a former head of the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority who quietly pleaded guilty this year to lying to the FBI.

Leticia Peralta Davis, 58, told the FBI during a July 5, 2012, interview that she never discussed money with an unidentified public official. But Davis’ plea agreement indicates that the public official had, in fact, asked Davis for money in connection with that person’s official duties. No money changed hands, records show.

From the “tampon tax” being retired to marijuana being further decriminalized, a host of new laws are set to take effect in Illinois on Jan. 1. Here’s some of the nearly 200 laws that are set to kick in at the start of the new year.