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The Center Square: 'Pessimistic' budget projections has Pritzker looking for business 'tax adjustments'
Gov. J.B. Pritzker is seeking “tax adjustments” for businesses to bring more revenue into state coffers, following months of stay-at-home orders, continued COVID-19 mitigation and a failed progressive income tax proposal.
Friday evening, the Pritzker administration issued a five-year forecast for the state’s budget. The statutorily-required report revised the state’s budget deficit for the fiscal year that ends June 30, 2021, to $3.9 billion.
Chicago Tribune: Under Cook County budget proposal, sheriff’s office faces 4% budget cut. Activists who support less funding for law enforcement say that’s ‘not enough’
The day after her husband’s death on Easter Sunday, Cassandra Greer-Lee got up from her couch and rummaged for a piece of cardboard, she said. With a black Sharpie, she wrote, “#Justice for Nick” and headed to Cook County Jail, where her husband Nickolas Lee had been locked up before he died of COVID-19.
Greer-Lee said she had never protested before and didn’t know what slogans to chant. As she planted her feet under the shadow of the barbed fences, she came to realize the writing on her sign was too small for passing drivers to read, she said.
Chicago Tribune: Editorial: Reducing crime in Chicago: Instead of jail and a record, a second chance
Jaquan Moore has a steady job as a cargo loader at O’Hare International Airport. The 21-year-old North Lawndale man also has a loving girlfriend and a young son, Maison. In 2019, it wasn’t enough. He sold cocaine on West Side streets because, he tells us, he was “money hungry and greedy.”
He was selling in “K-Town,” a rough, gang-dominated patch of North Lawndale, when cops rolled up. Moore darted down a gangway and tossed the cocaine under a truck. The officers caught up with Moore and the drugs, and charged him with felony possession of cocaine. In a flash, he realized he had jeopardized everything — his job, his life with his family, his freedom.
Chicago Sun-Times: Lightfoot cancels 350 layoffs tied to her ‘pandemic’ budget
Buoyed by higher than expected marijuana revenues, Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Saturday canceled plans to lay off 350 city employees to help secure the 26 City Council votes she needs to pass her “pandemic budget.”
Revenues generated by the sale of recreational and medical marijuana have “gone through the roof”— topping $100 million statewide for the first time in October and $800 million in the first 10 months.
Northwest Herald: McHenry Township sends road district consolidation proposal to April ballot
he McHenry Township Board on Thursday voted, 3-2, to send a proposal to voters this April that would eliminate the township’s road district, setting up a retrial of an issue that the district’s top official said failed by a solid margin about two years ago.
The measure was added to the April ballot after voters in three other townships in the state – Ela, Elk Grove and Bloomington townships – favored eliminating their township road districts in the presidential election earlier this month, according to unofficial election results from DuPage and Cook counties.