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Belleville News-Democrat: Seeking a coup d’etat against the King of Illinois
You didn’t vote for the King of Illinois. You likely wouldn’t vote for him given the chance. But on Wednesday the people you elected to the Illinois House of Representatives will again vote on a speaker. Vegas odds are on Mike Madigan, again.
Madigan has been in the House since 1971 and speaker for all but two years since 1983. He is the rock in the stream that carried six governors, more than 200 state senators and more than 500 representatives past him.
State Journal-Register: Vetting the speaker of the Illinois House
Illinois residents can be forgiven for believing it would take a miracle for House Democrats to unearth some courage and elect a new speaker for their chamber.
The 100th General Assembly will be sworn in Wednesday, and like the sun rising in the east, Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, will get the nod for speaker of the House. It’s been the outcome at the start of every new session since 1983 (except in 1995), and is all but inevitable to happen again this year.
State Journal-Register: Lame duck session starts - all two days of it
The long-awaited lame duck session of the General Assembly begins Monday.
It will last all of two days. It almost makes you long for those heady days last summer and fall when Gov. BRUCE RAUNER fairly regularly talked about all the great things lawmakers could accomplish once the election was behind them and they were free to take bold votes on controversial issues.
The Southern: Lawmakers reconvene to finish term marked by impasse
Time is running out for the 99th Illinois General Assembly to do what it has failed to do so far throughout its two-year term: pass a comprehensive state budget that will earn the signature of Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner.
Lawmakers return to Springfield on Monday for a two-day lame-duck session. That’s traditionally a time when outgoing legislators can help push through controversial measures, such as a temporary income tax increase that was approved in 2011 and has since partially rolled back.
State Journal-Register: State cuts blamed for falling Springfield hotel occupancy rates
Occupancy rates for approximately 4,000 hotel rooms in the Springfield market were at a four-year low as 2016 ended, a loss hoteliers say results directly from the loss of state travel business during an extended budget deadlock.
Illinois has been without a permanent spending plan since the end of the state fiscal year on June 30, 2015.
Chicago Sun-Times: Zion’s nuclear fallout; still reeling from ’98 closing
Workers are methodically dismantling the once-mighty Zion nuclear power plant. Just up the road in the far north suburb, a different kind of dismantling is taking place.
The small Lake County city of Zion — founded at the start of the last century as the new “City of God” and once a bustling little blue-collar bedroom community — is staggering. Crushed by the loss of half its property-tax base when the power plant was closed in 1998, it faces the foreseeable future as a nuclear waste dump.
Chicago Sun-Times: As his own primary-care spin doctor, Rahm struggles to heal self
In his no-longer-private emails, we saw how much effort Mayor Rahm Emanuel puts into grooming Chicago’s image — and his personal brand — across the country and the world.
Recently released documents show the mayor often used his Gmail account to lean unabashedly on East Coast media chums developed when he was a top aide to two presidents, plaintively seeking positive press for his proudest accomplishments.