In the battle between the Chicago Teachers Union and Mayor Rahm Emanuel, it’s clear whom we should root for: the Cubs.

Teachers are contemplating hitting the picket lines. If they do so, it will be either the second or third strike in five years, depending on how you categorize the one-day walkout that occurred this past spring.

A longtime Dixon, Illinois, company is calling for reforms to make Illinois more business-friendly and preserve manufacturing jobs.

Raynor Garage Doors has battled back from the 2008 recession and unveiled a $1-million plant upgrade on Monday, but its chairman says Illinois can still do much more to help businesses like Raynor thrive.

The downturn sliced roughly a third of the workforce from this third generation, family-owned business, said Ray Neisewander III, the company’s chairman and CEO.

It’s an overlooked add-on to our pension crisis, and it’s huge. Like pensions themselves, the problem won’t be solved until we size it correctly and understand it fully. But with OPEBs, that’s more easily said than done.

OPEBs — Other post-retirement employee benefits — are primarily healthcare benefits granted to pension system members. Once promised to state and local workers in Illinois, they are constitutionally guaranteed along with pension benefits themselves, thanks to the 2014 Kanerva decision by the Illinois Supreme Court. Healthcare obligations extend for the lifetime of the pensioner and are mostly unfunded. That is, unlike the pension itself, nothing is set aside or invested to cover the future liability.

A working paper published this month by the Center for Retirement Research attempts to identify which governments have the biggest OPEB problem. They looked at OPEBs as part of the bigger picture of pensions and debt service. They added annual OPEB obligations with pension requirements and bond payments, and then compared the total to revenue for the sponsoring unit of government. The good news, they concluded, is things appear to be under control in many jurisdictions. “However, for a handful of states, counties, and cities, those costs are an extraordinarily high percentage of own-source revenue. These jurisdictions have only unpalatable options.”

Somewhere in the city’s vast, dusty automobile maze on the Far South Side sits Symone Smith’s 2010 gray Nissan Sentra.

Smith, a registered nurse who lives in Hazel Crest, isn’t sure it’s even driveable any longer after sitting in the auto pound for 4 1/2 years.

At the razor’s edge of the midnight deadline for a threatened teachers strike, the Chicago Teachers Union announced Monday that it has come to a potential contract agreement with Chicago Public Schools.

Heading into the final hours of negotiations, the CTU revealed a “tentative agreement” has been reached, though plans for a strike are not entirely off the table.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel held a press conference after the announcement saying he was happy kids will be in school Tuesday but did not answer questions.

Part of that agreement involves additional revenue in TIF money. CPS had originally offered $32 million but now the mayor’s office confirms $175 million will be set aside with $88 million of it going to Chicago Public Schools.

About 80 percent of Illinoisans in a new poll said that they thought the state was headed in the wrong direction, and nearly 50 percent of respondents said they would like to leave Illinois, according to a new poll.