Stories by Heather Cherone

“I want to say this clearly,” Mayor Brandon Johnson said. “There were other options. We did not need to cede to big money interests and fall back on the tired practice of balancing budgets on the backs of working people.”

Chicago Park District rules prohibit parks from being renamed for anyone who has not yet been dead a year. The rules also prohibit parks from being named for anyone endorsing “a specific religious affiliation.”

The City Council’s Ethics and Government Oversight Committee’s endorsement sends the nonbinding resolution calling for the resignation of the top federal prosector in Chicago to the full City Council for a final vote on July 15.

The City Council’s Ethics and Government Oversight Committee voted unanimously to advance a measure that would amend the city’s Governmental Ethics Ordinance to ban employees from using insider information to bet on prediction markets.

The Chicago Police Department has overspent its budget five years in a row, according to Chicago’s annual financial reports.

Chicago’s pension debt has grown by nearly 11% since 2020, adding approximately $3.5 billion to the city’s debt, records show.

The city’s 2026 budget set aside just $82.5 million for police misconduct settlements, and authorized officials to borrow an additional $283.3 million to cover the soaring cost of lawsuits alleging wrongdoing by police officers, records show.

Approximately 7,000 unpermitted sweepstakes machines operate in all kinds of businesses across the city — including in bars, restaurants, gas stations, laundromats and convenience stores — but are concentrated on the South and West sides.

Marcel Brown's lawsuit was resolved with the largest payment Chicago taxpayers have ever made to compensate someone wrongfully convicted based on evidence developed by Chicago police, according to a WTTW News analysis.

It is not clear how — or why — Benchmark Analytics was selected by officials in the Johnson administration in the fall of 2024 to create the system required by the federal court order known as the consent decree.

The new law will close a “loophole” that contributed to children, teens and young adults ingesting misleading or poorly labeled products, Gov. JB Pritzker said.

If Mayor Brandon Johnson and his allies on the Chicago City Council have their way, those bars and restaurants will never get to plug in video poker and slot machines.

David Jones’ federal lawsuit accuses four Chicago police officers, including convicted former Officer David Salgado, of conspiring to frame him in March 2015 for selling drugs in Lawndale.

Since January 2025, Chicago taxpayers spent at least $103.1 million to resolve 14 lawsuits brought by people who were injured or on behalf of those killed during police pursuits, according to an analysis of city data by WTTW News.

Second installment property tax bills are typically released in early July and due in early August, but those bills have been repeatedly delayed by an overhaul of the county’s property tax system plagued with problems.

The $56 billion spending plan awaiting Gov. JB Pritzker’s signature explicitly prohibits the City Council from imposing a version of the tax that would send new revenue into the city’s cash-strapped coffers.

Mayor Brandon Johnson took a victory lap Monday, hours after the General Assembly passed a $56 billion budget that authorizes the Chicago City Council to impose a tax on digital advertisements seen by Chicagoans.

Instead, Officer Michael Bryant should be suspended for 25 days, Chicago Police Supt. Larry Snelling determined, objecting to the recommendation from the Civilian Office of Police Accountability that Bryant be fired.

The federal lawsuit was filed on what would have been Adam Toledo’s 19th birthday, attorneys for his parents said.

The lawsuit is the second to be resolved that alleged police officers beat Black Chicagoans attempting to flee the Northwest Side’s Brickyard Mall as looters began to ransack the mall after the police murder of George Floyd in 2020.

There is no evidence that Mayor Brandon Johnson’s decision to turn off the microphones that sent an alert to police officers every time the system picked up suspected gunfire slowed police response times and drove up violent crime, as many warned, according to a new analysis.

Chicago taxpayers paid $27,500 to a Chicago native who was stopped by the same tactical team of officers who would days later pull over Dexter Reed and fatally shoot him in a barrage of gunfire after he fired at officers, records show.

The so-called “megaproject” bill would mean tax breaks for the Chicago Bears of more than $1.5 billion during the 40-year term of the agreement, according to the analysis.

The Civilian Office of Police Accountability determined that four tactical team officers assigned to patrol the Near North (18th) Police District violated the civil rights of three people when the officers improperly searched a car shortly after 8 p.m. on Aug. 11, 2024, records show.

Taste of Chicago will feature a total of 84 food vendors and 20 food trucks, officials said. Approximately 38% of the vendors are making their first appearance at the Taste of Chicago.

“One proposal is not a silver bullet,” Ald. Matt Martin (47th Ward) said. “But we should do what we can, when we can.”