Get the latest news from around Illinois.
Crain's Chicago Business: Illinois taxpayers give $36 million to private school scholarships
Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner says taxpayers pledged more than $36 million for private school scholarships on the first day donors became eligible for a new state tax credit.
Lawmakers approved the controversial $75 million tax credit program last year as part of a school funding overhaul.
Belleville News-Democrat: No thinking required with more than 200 new Illinois laws
Our friends in the Illinois General Assembly must be virtuosos by now, with all the fiddlin’they’ve been doing.
We start 2018 with more than 200 shiny new state laws. State lawmakers are fiddlin’ with letting drivers younger than 18 donate their organs, with getting stickers off car windows before new owners drive away from the dealership, with pet custody during divorce, with beauty salon and dry cleaner pricing, with military personnel canceling their cable TV contracts and getting a service dog for depression, with scattering a loved one’s ashes in a state park, with prohibiting elephant acts in circuses, with protecting your right to make negative online reviews, with finding homes for former research animals, with preventing expulsions from preschool, and with designating Aug. 4 as Barack Obama Day.
Chicago Tribune: Girl dies of Krabbe disease after Illinois delayed newborn screening program
Another Illinois child has died of Krabbe disease, a condition that could have been treated if public health officials had followed through on a state law and screened her for it at birth.
Lana Katherine Shelton, of North Riverside, was 18 months old when she died Monday.
Chicago Tribune: 'Tough decisions' needed to confront issues facing CPS, incoming CEO says
ncoming Chicago Public Schools CEO Janice Jackson hasn’t yet finished moving into her corner office, but she is beginning to lay out her agenda to confront ongoing challenges that include declining enrollment, troubled finances and a state inquiry into the district’s special education program.
Repeating a refrain of her predecessors, Jackson said in an interview Wednesday that CPS needs more money from the state, even after state lawmakers last summer overhauled Illinois’ education funding model and provided the district with hundreds of millions of new dollars. The district also needs to continue to cut costs to satisfy lenders, and deal with underenrolled buildings that have been starved of resources as a moratorium on school closings expires, she said.
Chicago Tribune: Judge says CPD violated state labor laws in body cam expansion
An administrative law judge says the Chicago Police Department violated state labor law when it failed to negotiate expansion of its body camera program with the city’s largest police union, according to court documents.
Administrative Law Judge Anna Hamburg-Gal found the city failed to bargain with the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police when it expanded use of body-worn cameras to 14 police districts in 2017. In a recommendation order handed down this week, Hamburg-Gal advised the city to begin a dialogue, as required by state law, on safety and disciplinary matters surrounding the 2017 body camera expansion.
WTTW Chicago Tonight: Dorothy Brown’s Office Granted More Time to Modernize
Carbon paper, manila folders and stacks and stacks of paper.
In the age of cloud computing the notion that one of Cook County’s most important offices is still using systems that Charles Dickens would recognize would seem to be a problem.
Daily Herald: Elgin mayor blasts councilman for spending $6,000 to attend Harvard program
The mayor of Elgin blasted a councilman’s decision to attend a program offered by Harvard University that cost the city $6,015.
Councilman Rich Dunne took part in June in the program on senior executives in state and local government by the John F. Kennedy School of Government, which cost $5,700 — plus $315 for airfare — according to information obtained by the Daily Herald.
Daily Herald: Lombard residents push for new vote on tax hike for library
In a move that could scuttle plans for a new Lombard library, a group of residents wants to put a question on the November ballot asking if a tax rate increase approved more than a year ago should be reduced.
Voters supported the property tax increase in November 2016 after Helen M. Plum Memorial Library officials promised to tear down and replace their existing building at 110 W. Maple St. But the project has been stalled because the library hasn’t been able to get permission from the park district to build more than one story on land that used to be part of Lilacia Park.
Daily Herald: Medical contract for jail will eat up Kane County's 2018 budget cushion
Kane County officials would lose one-third of their 2018 budgetary wiggle room in a pending vote on medical services for the jail. The financial blow comes in the second month of the 2018 fiscal year.
The situation stems from a $343,000 cost overrun in the medical services contract. Though the current contract was to expire at the end of November, Sheriff Don Kramer said he was unaware of the expense increase in the new contract when he submitted his 2018 budget. The law requires the county to have medical services at the jail. The pending new contract contains a bid from the current provider that is about $500,000 less than any other quote.
Fox Illinois: Sangamon County's population declines by 2,500 in five years
A report released by a moving company finds residents are moving out of Illinois faster than they’re moving in and county officials said a similar trend is being seen in Sangamon County.
“In the last four or five years, we’ve lost about 2,500 residents in Sangamon County,” Sangamon County Administrator Brian McFadden said. “That represents about $70 million in wealth that’s walked out of the county.”