Current Illinois law that limits how much political action committees, or PACs, can contribute to candidates, but permits political parties and their legislative leadership to contribute as much as they want, is constitutional and can remain on the books, a federal judge in Chicago ruled Wednesday.

The Illinois Liberty PAC, Republican state Sen. Kyle McCarter and PAC contributor Edgar Bachrach brought the lawsuit, arguing that letting political parties give to campaigns without limits while restricting what PACs and individuals can give violates their rights to free speech and equal protection under the U.S. Constitution.

State legislators adopted the 2009 campaign finance law amid calls for anti-corruption reforms after then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s arrest in 2008 and his subsequent impeachment. The Chicago Democrat is currently serving a 14-year prison sentence in Colorado for convictions that included trying to trade an appointment to President Barack Obama’s vacated U.S. Senate seat for campaign money.

Chicago aldermen will vote Thursday on raising water and sewer fees by 30 percent over the next several years. The stated goal is to put the money toward one of the city’s massive ailing employee pension funds. But new analysis Wednesday shows that the new taxes will just be enough to buy some time. City officials will likely have to go back into taxpayers’ pocketbooks again in the near future.

Taxpayers wary of this possible 30-percent hike in water and sewer fees, beware: it’s likely just the beginning. New numbers from the city show that it will put a dent in the massively underfunded Municipal Employees Pension Fund, the largest of the four city pension funds, but it’s only enough to cover increased costs for the next five years. After that, the city by law will have to make what’s called the “actuarial required contribution.” Starting in five years, that’ll be nearly a billion dollars a year, and the city will need to find other sources to fund that and in the years going forward, where the payments could be near $2 billion.

That has angered some aldermen who say they were sold a bill of goods. They say they were under the impression that these new fees would solve the problem, case closed, but now they’re learning it’s not the case.

The Chicago Teachers Union will hold a second strike vote in late September after its House of Delegates voted unanimously to OK the vote Wednesday night.

“A strike can be averted, and CPS will work tirelessly to make sure children’s education and progress is not interrupted,” Emily Bittner, communications director for Chicago Public Schools said in a statement after the vote. “CPS teachers do great work – especially propelling the Chicago students’ remarkable academic gains – and we want to give them a fair raise that works within our budget constraints.”

A union trying to organize the janitors, baggage handlers, security officers and other low-wage workers at O’Hare International Airport said it filed 80 wage theft complaints Wednesday with the city and state, accusing airport contractors of stiffing workers on their paychecks.

Calling the complaints “the tip of the iceberg” and wage theft at the airport “serious and widespread,” Tom Balanoff, president of Service Employees International Union Local 1, called on government agencies to investigate and for the city to follow standards when awarding contracts.

“With airline profits soaring, O’Hare could be an economic engine for the entire city,” Balanoff said at a news conference Wednesday morning at City Hall announcing the complaints. “Instead, workers are being cheated out of their wages, struggling to get by, and many rely on public assistance to make ends meet.”

Should you stay or should you go?

When asked if you would leave Chicago — based on a DNAinfo story that ran Monday — dozens ofNeighborhood Square usersprovided intriguing feedback.

Many defended their city, its amazing food, diversity, neighborhoods and culture. Others said they were glad they left Chicago — or couldn’t wait to get out — because of its crime, taxes, weather, politicians and schools.

Four years ago this week, schoolchildren were filing into Bontemps Elementary at the start of another year in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood.

Today Bontemps sits vacant and abandoned – its sign flapping in the wind; The insides have been gutted and ransacked as the building remains one of the dozens of schools that are empty shells in neighborhoods across Chicago, more than three years after Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s mass-closing of nearly 50 Chicago Public School buildings in 2013.

“It’s been completely vandalized,” says Asiaha Butler, president of the Resident Association of Greater Englewood, who was recently allowed inside to tour the Bontemps school building. “Weeks of vandals. I mean, I think that folks spent weeks in this school.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s new water and sewer tax for city worker pensions faces a key test vote on Thursday when the City Council Finance Committee takes up the plan.

Aldermen were anticipating a close vote, with many concerned that the tax won’t be enough over the long run to make sufficient contributions to the Municipal Employees’ Annuity and Benefit Fund. The city does, after all, owe the retirement fund a whopping $18.6 billion.

Whether that’s enough to derail the mayor’s latest tax hike will be determined at the meeting, which starts at 10 a.m. in City Council chambers. If aldermen recommend passage, the full council could vote on it next week.

Illinois’ Medicaid program would be able to cover housing, employment services and more intervention services under a proposal to bring $2.7 billion in new federal funds to the state for the care of people struggling with mental illness and substance abuse.

The five-year proposal from the administration of Gov. Bruce Rauner could help “change the trajectory” of many Medicaid recipients’ lives “by providing some needed resources,” said Felicia Norwood, director of the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services.

Norwood and other Rauner administration officials will attend a public hearing Thursday in Springfield as part of the state’s plans to seek federal approval for a Medicaid waiver that would capture the additional federal funds.