Stories by Heather Cherone

Nearly two years after an audit by the city’s watchdog found significant problems with allowing Chicago police officers to patrol schools, aldermen will hold a hearing on the program at the center of the debate over defunding the police department.

Chicago voters are on track to break the record for vote-by-mail applications set in March, elections officials said Tuesday.

An effort designed to keep teens who commit minor crimes out of jail is so broken that the city’s social service agency will no longer work with Chicago police to administer the program, officials told aldermen Tuesday.

Nearly half of the more than 8,700 verbal orders issued by Chicago police to enforce stay-at-home orders designed to slow the spread of COVID-19 took place on the West Side, according to data from the Chicago Police Department.

Small businesses struggling to stay afloat during the coronavirus pandemic and recover from unrest touched off by police brutality protests can apply for grants starting Saturday, city officials announced.

Aldermen who want Chicago to cut ties with Commonwealth Edison and form its own electric utility acknowledged this week that the pandemic and the economic crisis it triggered has dimmed the effort’s chances of success.

City officials confirmed Friday afternoon that Hilco Global is now allowed to move forward with construction.

Chicago bars and restaurants will be allowed to serve a limited number of indoor diners for the first time in three months starting June 26, city officials announced Friday.

New rules requiring nonprofit organizations to register as lobbyists will not take effect until Jan. 1, 2021 amid an outcry about the impact of the new regulations and delays caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

As she celebrated the planned reopening next week of the lakefront trail and the 606, Mayor Lori Lightfoot called on Gov. J.B. Pritzker to allow restaurants to reopen to indoor diners “sooner rather later.”

The 5-4 decision means that nearly 20,000 young people in Illinois who have legal status thanks to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program launched by former President Barack Obama will not face the threat of deportation.

The Chicago City Council on Wednesday recognized Juneteenth, which commemorates the end of slavery in the United States, but stopped short of making June 19 an official city holiday.

Aldermen signed off on Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s plan to spend $1.13 billion in federal funds designed to help the city cover the cost of responding to the coronavirus pandemic.

An ordinance that would terminate the $33 million contract between Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Police Department failed to advance Wednesday, but supporters of the measure vowed to continue their campaign.

Scooters will soon return to Chicago streets as part of a second pilot program despite the coronavirus pandemic and an initial run that ended with “mixed results,” city officials announced.

A new Illinois law is designed to considerably expand the number of voters who cast their ballot in the 2020 presidential election by mail. Gov. J.B. Pritzker called it perhaps “the safest method to cast a ballot in November.”

Chicago’s most famous empty hole is set to get new life, in the latest massive development that will alter Chicago’s skyline in the midst of a global pandemic.

Chicagoans who lost their jobs or found their paychecks scaled back because of the coronavirus pandemic would be protected from evictions for an additional two months after the state’s ban ends under a proposal from Mayor Lori Lightfoot.

Companies that win multimillion-dollar tax incentives to bring industrial jobs to Chicago could be stripped of those benefits if they “betray the public’s trust” under a plan set to be considered Wednesday by the Chicago City Council.

The family of a 55-year-old Chicago man who died five hours after paramedics were called to his West Garfield Park home but left without treating him should be paid $200,000, city lawyers recommended.

Chicago will not create a commission to study whether — and how — the city should pay reparations to Chicagoans who are the descendants of enslaved African Americans after Mayor Lori Lightfoot objected to the long-in-the-works effort.

The Chicago City Council violated the Open Meetings Act by holding an online conference call with Mayor Lori Lightfoot in the wake of unrest that swept the city following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody, according to a lawsuit filed Friday.

Nine days after Chicago began reopening — and after days of massive protests against police brutality and unrest — the rate of confirmed cases of the coronavirus is still dropping, city health officials said Friday.

A plan to fast-track applications from restaurants and cafes to serve customers outdoors cleared a key city panel Thursday, as city officials vowed to do everything possible to help restaurants stay afloat amid the pandemic.

More than a dozen officers lounged, slept and snacked in the burglarized South Side office of U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush in the early hours of June 1 as unrest swept the city, Mayor Lori Lightfoot said Thursday.

The final cost to hire 100 private security guards to patrol the South and West sides to protect businesses from a second weekend of looting and damage that never materialized was $400,000, Chicago officials said.