Research found more than half of the mayor’s top 100 donors benefitted from city government, “receiving contracts, zoning changes, business permits, pension work, board appointments, regulatory help or some other tangible benefit.”
Despite a unanimous recommendation of approval, the Naperville City Council voted to deny Little Jimmy’s Italian Ice a permit to operate a food cart in Naperville, while allowing John’s Rib House and Joey’s Red Hots to continue to operate.
The residential-center horror stories demonstrate that corruption in government often hurts the most vulnerable among us. It also shows that exposing those injustices can lead to change.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel delivered his 2015 Chicago budget proposal to the City Council last week. He did so expressing pride that he did not increase property taxes, sales taxes or the gas tax – the big three taxes that support the city budget. That said, his budget proposal continues to nickel-and-dime Chicago taxpayers with new...
With great fanfare, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel recently announced an executive order requiring city contractors and concessionaires to pay their employees no less than $13 per hour. The move was highly touted in both the Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago Tribune, as well as a number of other publications and television news broadcasts. None of these...
At least 84 corruption-related stories have been reported from across the state of Illinois in August alone. Atop August headlines is the recent revelation that a federal grand jury subpoenaed the emails of Gov. Pat Quinn’s ex-chief of staff in relation to Quinn’s anti-violence grant program. The case, which has been referred to by some...
Should the right to open a new business be put up to a public vote? At a meeting this week in Geneva, Ill., aldermen voted to reject tattoo artist Ramiro Guillen’s plan to open a tattoo parlor on Randall road because of opposition from other business owners. And, one alderman speculated, because of stereotypes about...
There’s no right more basic than the right to earn a living to support yourself and your family. And for decades, that’s what street vendors have been trying to do. From elote-cart owners in Little Village to ice-cream carts along North Avenue Beach, entrepreneurs – who are often recent immigrants – have supported themselves by...
The bad news keeps piling up for Illinoisans. Illinois Policy’s “corruption watch” blog series hit a new high in the month of July with nearly 100 corruption-related stories. Chicago and Springfield are the two cities most synonymous with the state’s corruption woes. Unsurprisingly, both cities dominated headlines with the top two corruption stories of the...
Illinois students could soon benefit from scholarship money to help them find a tutor, attend ACT or SAT prep sessions, pay tuition, get special education services or assist with other academic needs. That will happen in Illinois only if Gov. J.B. Pritzker lets the state’s schoolchildren benefit from the Federal Scholarship Tax Credit program, established...