The inspector general for the Chicago Board of Education says his work has been obstructed and duplicated by a better-funded arm of CPS chief Forrest Claypool’s office, according to a report that lays out a political scuffle between the legally mandated watchdog and the mayoral-appointed administration.

In his report, Nicholas Schuler accuses auditors for Chicago Public Schools of “significant interference” with his investigation into the alleged theft of tens of thousands of dollars worth of CTA fare cards by a district employee.

A “parallel investigation” of that case by CPS’ Office of Internal Audit and Compliance last year “compromised a criminal investigation by prematurely alerting a main subject, and sowing fear and confusion in the minds of key witnesses,” Schuler said in his report, which was sent to Claypool and the school board.

Shortly after the latest school funding reform panel was named in July, state Sen. Andy Manar made a prediction.

The Bunker Hill Democrat, who is one of the appointees to the education funding reform commission, said it would become evident early on if the commission had a chance to succeed when untold other efforts have failed.

Although it is still early in the process, Manar said there are positive signs so far. The group meets about every other week, he said, and has heard from outside witnesses who have provided background on Illinois’ school funding system and its shortcomings.

Some 600 feet beneath the corn and soybean fields of southern Illinois, a passageway barely tall enough to walk through ends in a wall of gleaming black carbon, ready to be ground into chunks and transported to power plants half a world away.

This is a coal mine, and for more than a century caverns like it have fueled the economy of this often-depressed region. Miners risk their bodies in labyrinthine tunnels and on mineral-rich hillsides, and in exchange, they can earn $80,000 or more — wages far beyond anything else available in the area.

Chicago’s eternal struggle: Should I stay or should I go?

More than 3,000 people have been shot in Chicago this year. The City Council just approved a new tax on water and sewer bills to pay for city workers’ pensions. That’s on top of last year’s hefty property tax increase. Chicago Public Schools began the school year with a $1 billion operating deficit, and the Chicago Teachers Union might be headed for a strike next month. You can’t blame taxpayers for seeing the city’s future — and their future in the city — as bleak.

After news broke that the Gov. Bruce Rauner-backed Illinois Policy Institute was behind a new documentary about House Speaker Mike Madigan, the group has been panned for allegedly not disclosing its involvement in the project.

Rich Miller, of CapitolFax, says he was ‘duped’ — “How a journalist got wedged into a pro-Rauner film about Madigan,” by Rich Miller in Crain’s Chicago Business: “I was duped by a right-wing organization into appearing in what will probably be a propaganda movie. It’s my own fault. The producer claimed that while some people were pointing fingers at House Speaker Michael Madigan, his company was interested in doing a fair and balanced film about ‘what’s really at the center of it all.’ Two days later, I found out that the forthcoming ‘documentary’ is backed by an arm of the well-funded Illinois Policy Institute, one of Madigan’s fiercest critics and a staunch ally of Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner.”

I was duped by a right-wing organization into appearing in what will probably be a propaganda movie. It’s my own fault. The producer claimed that while some people were pointing fingers at House Speaker Michael Madigan, his company was interested in doing a fair and balanced film about “what’s really at the center of it all.”

Two days later, I found out that the forthcoming “documentary” is backed by an arm of the well-funded Illinois Policy Institute, one of Madigan’s fiercest critics and a staunch ally of Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner. The institute’s top executive is also a close Rauner adviser. I’m not exactly popular with that group, although I have strongly supported several of its small-business initiatives in Chicago. I’m not expecting to come out of the editing room looking too well.

Such is life.

Farm owners across Southern Illinois are facing higher property taxes, as a new law pushes up assessments on their land much faster than the rest of the state.

Ironically, legislators wrote the law to address runaway assessments in the first place.

For the past 30 years, there has been a 10 percent cap on the amount farmland assessments can change. During that time, Southern Illinois farmers benefited because their land wasn’t assessed as high as the rich soil north Interstate 70.

Chicago officials have decided to expand the use of police-worn body cameras throughout the city following a pilot program that began in 2015 but has raised questions about whether officers always turn on the devices.

Police Supt. Eddie Johnson is expected to announce Sunday that all 22 police districts will be equipped with body cameras for every officer on every shift. The number of cameras will rise from 2,000 now to about 7,000 by 2018. The expansion is expected to cost $8 million, paid for through city funding and grants.

The pilot program began in January 2015 in the Shakespeare District on the Northwest Side. This year, the department expanded the program to the Austin, Wentworth, Deering, Ogden, South Chicago and Gresham districts.

Generally speaking, residents in Texas, Ohio and Florida metros pay the least, while residents in California and Northeast metros pay the most.

The Chicago Housing Authority has been paying more than $34,000 a year in rent for three Section 8 voucher-holders to lease apartments from an alleged gang leader who’s been in jail the past two years awaiting trial on charges he ran a heroin-trafficking ring in West Garfield Park, records obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times and Better Government Association show.

Johnny “Goo” Herndon is accused of operating the drug ring since the early 1990s and using the profits to buy and rehab dozens of apartment buildings, including buildings where some rents are subsidized through the Section 8 program, according to court records.

A Chicago Police Department sergeant who’s facing a one-year suspension over a falsified report that cleared a nephew of former Mayor Richard M. Daley of wrongdoing in the killing of David Koschman says the city waited too long to punish him, in violation of his union’s contract, and can’t discipline him now.

Sgt. Samuel Cirone — one of six cops who faced firing or suspension over the handling of the Koschman investigation — is also asking a Cook County judge to stop the Chicago Police Board from hearing his case because an arbitrator has ruled that he has the authority to determine whether Cirone should be punished.

The city’s law department plans to proceed with the police board case, saying the arbitrator has no authority to decide Cirone’s fate. The city also says the disciplinary investigation of Cirone was, in fact, done in a timely manner and didn’t violate the sergeants union’s contract.

Illinois schools are now required to limit long-term suspensions and expulsions under a new law that also eliminates the use of zero-tolerance policies used to severely punish students for certain offenses.

The law that took effect last week is designed to reduce the number of days students are pulled from classrooms and encourage school administrators to use suspensions as a last resort.

Late last month, the Chicago Sun-Times and the Windy City’s local ABC affiliate teamed up to produce what amounts to little more than a hit piece targeting the city’s food trucks.

The joint reporting (if that’s the right term) alleges that the city’s food trucks have been ignoring rules Chicago drafted several years ago to regulate the city’s mobile-food vending businesses. The Sun-Times and an ABC 7 I-Team Investigationboth allege the trucks are parking where they shouldn’t and overstaying maximum times at parking meters.

Some of the allegations may be true. Even if they are, though, it’s the city’s downright awful rules for regulating those trucks that are to blame here. Full stop.