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"For (Gov. JB) Pritzker, the decision also presents a political opportunity. As he looks toward the 2028 presidential election and considers his legacy, opting into the scholarship credit could help set him apart. ... Leaving an available federal tax benefit on the table makes little sense when it could help Illinois families secure educational services their children need."
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Problem gamblers seeking to avoid the temptation to gamble can ban themselves from most of the state’s gambling offerings, from casinos to online sportsbooks to the Lottery. But the state’s voluntary self-exclusion program does not extend to Illinois’ extensive network of video gambling terminals — the largest in the world — that can be found in gas stations, bars, hair salons and hotel lobbies across the state.
This division of Hyundai makes commercial transportation equipment. The company will take over the former Caterpillar heavy equipment operations site and Lion Electric's electric bus operations site, bringing more than 3,700 new jobs to the Joliet area.
Du Quoin Mayor Josh Downs said he has serious concerns about what will happen to the facility once IDOC abandons operations there. “There are options there,” Downs said. “My concern is that, as a mayor and also as a taxpayer, don’t let the facility sit, go to waste, cave in on itself.”
The proposed rules require temporary workers who put in 720 hours over six months to be given full-time benefits or the cash equivalent. Frank Auriemma, president of the Staffing Services Association of Illinois, said about 800,000 people in Illinois work at some point during the year as a temporary employee.
State Rep. Jed Davis is considering legal action after DCFS failed to respond to Freedom of Information Act requests seeking records showing who was conducting child abuse and neglect investigations. Davis believes the numbers will show the agency is sending investigators who are not authorized by Illinois law.
ComEd expects to spend more than $3 billion to connect data centers to its electric grid in the coming years, but it has only collected about one-fourth of the costs from data center developers. Consumer advocates say that if the large-load data center projects don’t come to fruition after the utility has spent billions to connect them, Illinois households and small businesses could be left holding the bag.
Springfield Police Chief Joseph Behl said police have recovered 450 illegal guns, up from 250, since the department began using ShotSpotter.
Illinois relied on about $1.95 billion from the federal government for its Emergency Management and Office of Homeland Security, while about $27.7 million came from state taxpayer funds. In comparison, In Texas, about $63 million came directly from the state’s allocations this year, with the remaining part of the $1.74 billion budget coming from federal support.
Driverless AVs are not yet authorized in Illinois. But state Rep. Kam Buckner has called for a formal framework, through House Bill 4663, to test and deploy self-driving cars in the state. Buckner has also urged the newly founded Northern Illinois Transit Authority, or NITA, to study how autonomous vehicles could work alongside the existing public transport network.
Separately, the county faces paying back up to $4 million in lost equity to former owners after Illinois enacted a law this year to adhere to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling.
Private insurers were supposed to be ready to cover doulas Jan. 1, but the law is still missing key pieces. And only an estimated 30 percent of people with private insurance in Illinois have plans the state can regulate. For everyone else, it could be much harder to access this benefit.
The letters were sent to Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky's office in Skokie, along with Congressman Brad Schneider's office in Lincolnshire, and Mike Quigley's office in the city. Their contents are being analyzed.
"Illinois has created a system in which judges are periodically subjected to democratic accountability while the records necessary to exercise that accountability are inconveniently accessible. That is a contradiction that violates the spirit, if not the letter of freedom of information law, which ought to concern anyone who believes in transparent government, regardless of political affiliation."
To counter public mistrust in the approved CyrusOne data center, the Springfield Sangamon Growth Alliance – a public-private economic development organization – is attempting to correct some local worries. The Growth Alliance receives $500,000 annually in public funding.
A federal judge has largely rejected Apple’s push to avoid either a trial or a settlement payout in a potentially massive class action seeking damages under Illinois’ biometrics privacy law.
Jim Dey: "Uh, oh, one of those carnival barkers got loose and again is nipping at Gov. JB Pritzker’s heels. ... Too many Illinoisans don’t realize it, but financial analysts like (Truth in Accounting's Sheila) Weinberg and those from Wirepoints and the Illinois Policy Institute have been pulling back the curtain and revealing the ugly picture for years now, much to Pritzker’s dismay."
"Slotkin recently said the quiet part out loud in an interview at my alma mater, the University of Chicago, admitting she wants to deter young people from even considering supporting the Administration… if they know what is good for them. Slotkin seemed to go full Col. Walter Kurtz in the middle of the interview."
“They spent about $30 million on Choate, then they announced they're going to basically close most of it. How smart is that for the Illinois taxpayer?” state Rep. Charlie Meier said.
When asked why ethics reform didn’t rise to the same priority level as Chicago Bears stadium legislation or the POWER Act to regulate data centers, Gov. JB Pritzker said ethics reform ideas have been floating around for some time. Several current and recent state lawmakers have faced ethics investigations this year.
Illinois recently enacted the Transportation Network Driver Labor Relations Act, which establishes a statewide bargaining unit for rideshare drivers and creates a process through which an exclusive bargaining representative may be certified.
“Let me be clear up front: Violent criminals who are undocumented and convicted of violent crime should be deported. I do not want them in my state. I don’t think they should be in the United States,” Gov. JB Pritzker said in December 2024. Since then, Pritzker and the Democrat-controlled Illinois legislature have done nothing to tweak Illinois’ sanctuary laws.
With tight races for the Illinois General Assembly taking place across the state, some downstate races receive less attention than some of the races in the Chicagoland area – even as many downstate races may be just as close this year.
Quigley: “Putting aside the recent law we passed to sanction Russia, in 2022 we passed a law that said that we can not buy energy from Russia,“ said Quigley. “So [Trump’s] violating that law [too].”
According to the indictment filed Oct. 7, Andrea Wellington, 35, was hired by the Illinois Department of Employment Security through a subcontractor in July 2021 to work as a customer service representative to handle calls from people seeking unemployment benefits.
The Digital Asset Kiosks Act created new requirements for operators, including reporting of kiosk locations and consumer protections to address fraud and scams. This law established a transaction fee cap of 18 percent at crypto kiosks and limited daily transaction amounts for new customers to $2,500
On Oct. 2, the Illinois Policy Institute sent cease-and-desist letters to 17 school districts in Tazewell County, alleging that school boards appeared to have authorized the use of public funds to urge voter support of the referendum. Days later, Americans for Prosperity Illinois asked Attorney General Kwame Raoul and state's attorneys in Cook, DuPage, Lake and Will counties to investigate whether 24 local taxing bodies used taxpayer resources to campaign for more taxpayer money.
Top Chicago Stories
"Love looks different depending on the person giving it. Sometimes, all there is to give is a listening ear or a statement of support. But as leaders, loving people, actually loving people, must come with active investments in them, their families and their communities. It is not enough for powerbrokers to cheer at the idea of fully funded schools, reliable transit and robust mental health care, and then go silent or give excuses when they are asked to contribute to make those ideas reality."
Johnson's $17.6 billion spending proposal for 2027 is up $760 million from this year and revitalizes his corporate head tax proposal with a twist. Now named the "equitable employee tax," the $25 per-worker monthly fee for companies over 125 employees would offer a full rebate if the headquarters are located within designated areas mostly on the South, Southwest and West sides. "There is no reason to coddle or feel sorry for corporations. They are doing just fine," he said.
"... Mayor Brandon Johnson is expected to propose borrowing $480 million to pay for police-related lawsuit settlements in the budget coming Wednesday. ... If cases involving people shooting at and fleeing from police result in large settlements, that hardly is a disincentive for such behavior."
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The Market City Action Plan calls for creating administrative infrastructure to provide resources for food entrepreneurs, supporting existing farmers markets and building a network of year-round indoor public markets. The mayor also signed an executive order to establish a steering committee that would bring together city departments and community members to implement the plan.
"Johnson can keep calling his approach 'tax the rich,' but a tax should be judged by who pays it and what it costs them. His budget would make everyday purchases, running a business and employing Chicagoans more expensive."
CPS’s latest graduation rate has increased by almost 10 percentage points since 2018, with some dips in between, particularly after the pandemic. The district’s chronic absenteeism rate — when students miss more than 10 percent of school days — increased after the pandemic and has hovered around 40 percent.
In total, the city's Law Department filed litigation against 95 companies, arguing that they violated city ordinances against unloading passengers without authorization, and won $260,950 in settlements, on top of $181,000 in default judgments. The tax relief program offers up to $5,000 to homeowners in Englewood, South Shore and the Lower West Side if they are at risk of losing their homes in a tax sale due to unpaid bills from 2023 or 2024.
The proposal would charge 15 cents per shipment, regardless of how many items it contains. It would apply to certain single-use boxes, mailers and protective packaging used to deliver retail goods to Chicago addresses, including packages shipped from outside the city.
State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke is defending Cook County’s ban on assault weapons, saying it “passes constitutional muster” as the U.S. Supreme Court is set to take up a challenge to that law later this year.
The mayor accused past administrations of failing to "invest in working people," and took aim at the values of his critics. "Now we have individuals that want to coddle corporations at the expense of working people," Johnson said. "Not on my watch."
The yearlong pilot program costs about $9.6 million. Some specialists will focus on crisis intervention, connecting people with housing, mental health and substance abuse services. Others will work on de-escalation and building relationships with young people.
"Continuing this quixotic hunt for the socialistic holy grail is not acceptable, even in an election year. It's irresponsible. Whatever your politics."
The new agreement sets a minimum hourly pay of $21. Under the previous contract, a first-year lunchroom attendant would earn about $4 less. than that figure. Lunchroom staff will also get a 4 percent cost-of-living adjustment next summer, followed by a 2.5 percent raise in 2028. But an analysis of the 2026-27 budget shows a 3.5 percent cut in lunchroom funds.
The Sports Betting Alliance, which represents DraftKings, FanDuel and other sportsbooks, is also lining up to oppose the mayor’s plan to nearly double the Chicago tax on sports betting. 
Though this growing movement has yet to implement its most extreme policies, its influence threatens further decline for America’s onetime “Second City” through fiscal irresponsibility, support for substandard education, and contempt for the rule of law.
Mayoral critics believe Johnson has proposed insufficient cuts while adding new expenditures and taxes. Ald. Nicole Lee noted that the city last year ratified a budget that froze the PPLT/cloud computing tax at 15 percent until 2028 and that the mayor's proposal to boost it to 20 percent would violate that.
Special education students at Prescott Elementary School in Lincoln Park are being taught in offices, hallways, storage rooms, stairwells and in classrooms with asbestos, some parents say. They learned in June of this year that special education students would be losing some of their spaces in the basement to make way for a music room and a dance room.
Johnson again plans to declare a large surplus from the city’s tax increment financing districts. He’s proposed declaring a surplus of $522 million across the city’s TIF funds, which would net the city $118 million in revenue. A large portion of the surplus — more than $286 million — would go to Chicago Public Schools, while the remainder would be distributed to other local governments.
From 2019 to 2026, pension fund contributions made up the largest spending increase, growing by over $1.54 billion, or 113.4 percent. Over that period, Chicago more than doubled its pension contributions to address a severe pension crisis caused by years of overpromising benefits without having the money on hand to pay them. The increased contributions are nowhere near enough to get Chicago’s pension plans to a more secure financial footing.
"I want people to see this film because it names something that has genuinely hurt my community. The politics of white guilt have taught a generation of young people in Woodlawn that they are permanent victims of an irredeemable system. That story robs them of agency. It tells them that nothing they do matters as much as the color of their skin and the history attached to it."
County Commissioner Alma Anaya said the amendment includes a private right of action against companies that violate it.
The ballot question does not say where a permanent space would be, how much it would cost or who would pay for it. It also does not spell out which events would move there.
“There’s greater evidence of working people being pushed out of the city of Chicago than any sort of claim of the possibility of a business leaving Chicago. Working people are being forced out of cities across America. Corporations are not,” Johnson said.
Republicans have slowly seen their representation trickle away in the city’s outskirts over the past decade amid gerrymandered maps and President Donald Trump’s unpopularity. While Democrats outnumber Republicans 78-40 in the House and 40-19 in the Senate, they’re targeting several legislative districts currently held by Republicans to expand those margins.
He plans to lean on funds allocated to the groundbreaking and controversial social media tax, which collects 50 cents per Chicago user after the first 100,000 users. The city has collected more funds than anticipated from social media companies, and it’s on pace to collect $49.2 million by the end of the year. But those funds are being held in escrow pending litigation on the tax.
Mayor Brandon Johnson has faith alderpeople will sign off on his plan after a majority supported his $40 million investment last year to improve seven shelters for people experiencing homelessness, mostly on the South and West sides. With local governments being asked to step up more in the wake of federal funding cuts, Johnson is “demanding that there’s a fair share of responsibility, that there’s a fair share of equitable distribution of those resources."
"I again encourage courts considering this issue to take care that due deference to state police powers does not eclipse constitutional rights,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote.
U.S. District Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer noted the requirement "involves not only the consent decree, but plain language of state law."
Wirepoints Research and Commentary
Among the consequences of economic growth that badly lags national averages are billions of lost revenue every year. Yet denial reigns in Illinois, fueling the vicious cycle of demand for higher taxes. SIGN UP HERE FOR FREE WIREPOINTS DAILY NEWSLETTER
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To top it off, Stratton is funded mostly by Gov. JB Pritzker, who has long purported to be a rock solid supporter of Israel's right to exist. El-Sayed is anything but. 
What Pritzker doesn't tell you that it cost taxpayers billions, not millions, in higher taxes to get those upgrades, vastly exceeding the savings. 
Wirepoints will be complementing their mission however we can.
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