Stories by Heather Cherone

Before the pandemic, Chicago finance officials projected that the city would eliminate its longstanding imbalance between revenues and expenditures and reach structural balance in 2023. In all, the pandemic cost the city $1.7 billion, complicating those efforts.

Chicago is facing an uncertain financial future as Mayor Lori Lightfoot prepares to detail how she plans to close a projected budget deficit of $733 million in 2022, budget experts told “Chicago Tonight” on Thursday.

Just over 200 people who attended the four-day music festival have tested positive during the 14 days since the event kicked off in Grant Park on July 29, said Dr. Allison Arwady, the commissioner of the city’s Department of Public Health.

Tension between Mayor Lori Lightfoot and the Chicago Police Department exposed by the fatal shooting of Officer Ella French widened Wednesday, as the mayor defended the decision by a high-ranking officer to cut short a ritual meant to honor the fallen officer.

The $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure plan that advanced Tuesday in the Senate includes $15 billion to replace the lead service lines responsible for contaminating the tap water in approximately 10 million homes across the country.

Promising that Chicago is “turning the corner” on the COVID-19 pandemic, Mayor Lori Lightfoot said Wednesday the city faces a projected $733 million budget shortfall in the 2022 fiscal year. 

The former 22nd Ward alderman appears set to plead guilty three months after being indicted on charges that he drained more than $38,000 from the bank account of the City Council’s Progressive Reform Caucus and used those funds to pay for trips, jewelry, iPhones and tickets to sporting events.

The advisory now covers 31 states — including those that border Illinois — as well as Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C. Unvaccinated visitors to Chicago from those states are urged to quarantine for 10 days or record a negative test within 72 hours of their arrival, officials said.

Everyone in Chicago, regardless of their vaccination status should wear a mask indoors, Chicago health officials recommended Friday after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention added Chicago to its list of areas experiencing “substantial” transmission of the coronavirus.

More than a year after it was formed, the City Council’s Subcommittee on Reparations has met only once, and that meeting was sidetracked by a series of speakers who demanded that aldermen ban pet stores from selling dogs, cats and rabbits at a profit to restrict the operations of breeders.

As thousands of music lovers flocked to Grant Park for the first day of Lollapalooza, a surge of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Chicago and the suburbs prompted Gov. J.B. Pritzker to reimpose a mask mandate in state facilities for everyone, regardless of their vaccination status.

The parent company of General Iron, which wants to operate a metal shredding and recycling operation on Chicago’s Southeast Side, failed to notify city officials that a vacant building collapsed on the site of the proposed facility, officials said Thursday.

Chicago hit two firms — including global snack food giant Mondelez International — with $935,000 in back pay and fines for running afoul of the city’s sick leave law, as Mayor Lori Lightfoot vowed Thursday to step up efforts to protect workers.

Lead service lines connect approximately 400,000 Chicago homes with water mains buried under city streets, and can leach a brain-damaging chemical into drinking water. 

For the first time since a damning 2019 audit was released by the city’s watchdog, police officials defended their continuing use of records that list approximately 135,000 Chicagoans as members of gangs, citing their need for the data to prevent “retaliatory violence.”

Dr. Allison Arwady, commissioner of the Chicago Department of Public Health, said safety protocols in place for the massive four-day festival are sufficient to allow it to go forward despite a surge in COVID-19 cases. “I’m certainly hopeful that we won’t see a significant problem,” she said.

More than 100,000 fans are expected to attend the massive four-day music festival that starts Thursday. “We’ve been having large-scale events all over the city since June without major problems or issues," Mayor Lori Lightfoot said.

The mayor announced Monday that negotiators had reached an eight-year deal that offers more than 11,000 Chicago police officers annual average raises of approximately 2.5% — while imposing new rules on officers suspected of misconduct.

Ushering in a new era of police oversight and reform, the board will be charged with building trust in officers and police brass and putting an end to repeated allegations of misconduct.

A “racial healing and historical reckoning project” launched by Mayor Lori Lightfoot after she removed the city’s three statues of Christopher Columbus has stalled, and the statues remain in storage a year after they were wrenched from their pedestals.

As the battle over control of business sign permits concludes, a new front in the struggle over aldermanic prerogative opened Wednesday over the future of the city’s ward superintendents. 

With just two votes to spare after a contentious debate of nearly two hours, the Chicago City Council voted 36-13 to create an elected board of Chicago residents to oversee the Chicago Police Department, enacting the most far-reaching police reform ordinance in the country.

Chicago is on the brink of enacting the most far-reaching police reform ordinance in the country after a proposal to create an elected board of city residents to oversee the Chicago Police Department cleared a key city panel late Tuesday. A final vote is scheduled for 10 a.m. Wednesday.

The site of the long-defunct hospital is poised to be transformed into a new Chicago neighborhood offering 4,800 homes, plus offices, research facilities and stores as part of a $4 billion redevelopment. “This has been a long time coming,” said Ald. Sophia King.

The more transmissible delta variant now accounts for approximately 44% of all confirmed cases of the coronavirus in Chicago, said Dr. Allison Arwady, the commissioner of the Department of Public Health.

A proposal to create an elected board of Chicagoans to oversee the Chicago Police Department is likely to pass easily, now that it has the backing of a coalition of community groups and Mayor Lori Lightfoot, several aldermen told “Chicago Tonight” on Monday.