Mayor Lori Lightfoot said she was done negotiating her 2020 budget and that criticism from some grassroots groups about her spending and taxing priorities were “untethered” from the city’s fiscal reality.

Members of United Working Families, Grassroots Collaborative, ONE Northside and the Brighton Park Neighborhood Council held a press conference before today’s abbreviated City Council meeting to ask aldermen to vote next week against Lightfoot’s proposal to fill the $838 million projected budget gap for 2020.

A former vice chancellor at the City Colleges of Chicago, along with his wife and other former City Colleges employees, were indicted in federal court for engaging in a $350,000 kickback scheme that awarded contracts to companies tied to the former official, his wife and other City Colleges employees.

Sherod Gordon, 45, of Oak Park, is charged with 16 counts of wire fraud. Gordon served as associate vice chancellor of community relations and student recruitment before serving as vice chancellor of legislative and community affairs until 2017. The alleged scheme took place between 2013 and 2017.

The clout-heavy law firm where Mayor Lori Lightfoot once served as partner is expected to receive $107,500 in legal fees as part of the $1.5 billion debt refinancing that will help balance the mayor’s 2020 budget.

Lightfoot plans to generate $210 million in savings by using general obligation and sales tax securitization bonds to refinance existing debt at reduced interest rates.

State officials are under pressure to implement federal work requirements for nearly 50,000 food stamp recipients in Cook County, starting in January 2020.

It’s the first time any individuals who receive the public benefits in Illinois’s most populous county will have to comply with the requirements since they became federal law in 1996. Poverty experts and state officials called it a major change, both for food stamp recipients and for state agencies.

The Illinois State Board of Education on Wednesday announced an emergency action to stop the use of isolated seclusion in Illinois schools.

The move comes one day after a joint investigation by the Chicago Tribune and ProPublica Illinoisrevealed tens of thousands of cases in which schools put students into seclusion, often without any safety reason for doing so.

Rules designed to protect a potential tenant or homeowner from being discriminated against based on criminal history narrowly passed a Cook County committee Wednesday, offering what one commissioner dubbed a “a tremendous opportunity to correct age-long wrongs” but prompting another to question whether it was “the most reasonable way to implement the ordinance.”

After months of wrangling, the county’s Rules and Administration Committee voted 5-4 to approve the rules for the “Just Housing” Ordinance, which is an amendment to a county housing ordinance that passed in April.

Rockford Park District commissioners approved a $24.25 million tax levy for 2019 on Tuesday, marking the sixth consecutive year the district’s operating fund tax levy request has not increased.

Holding the line on the levy has saved taxpayers more than $3.5 million since 2012, Park Board President Ian Linnabary said.

Metro East cities that want to allow cannabis-related businesses are starting to decide where these establishments can set up shop in their communities.

The Edwardsville City Council made its decision Tuesday night when the city council voted 7-0 to establish new zoning rules and other restrictions for cannabis businesses that may come to the city.