Stories by Heather Cherone

“I must remind you that the consent decree is not optional,” Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul wrote to Mayor Brandon Johnson. “The City of Chicago must deliver on its consent decree obligations.”

Mayor Brandon Johnson used a Tuesday afternoon news conference to cast the City Council’s apparent refusal to hike property taxes by $300 million as evidence of his collaborative approach to governing in Chicago, and not a rebuke of his leadership.

“We will not bend or break,” Mayor Brandon Johnson said. “Our values will remain strong and firm. We will face likely hurdles in our work over the next four years but we will not be stopped and we will not go back.”

Ald. Michelle Harris (8th Ward) said the new system would be more equitable and end the perception among residents that city officials offered migrants more assistance than longtime Chicagoans living on the city’s streets.

Therese Boyle and Che “Rhymefest” Smith won their races for the Chicago Board of Education, according to the Associated Press.

Mayor Brandon Johnson’s spending plan for 2025 earmarks nearly $700 million for the Chicago Department of Public Health, which is charged with fighting the spread of communicable diseases, providing mental health care and ensuring the safety of food at restaurants and festivals.

The Police Board voted 5-3 in June 2023 to terminate Sgt. Alex Wolinski, finding that he committed multiple rule violations and a “failure of leadership … so serious as to be incompatible with continued service.”

Chief Financial Officer Jill Jaworski told members of the City Council’s Budget and Government Operations Committee on Wednesday that the $17.3 billion spending plan “prioritizes the city’s long-term fiscal stability.”

Darion McMillian, 23, of Harvey, faces felony counts of first-degree murder of a police officer, attempted murder of a police officer, burglary, possession of a machine gun and possession of a gun as a felon.

The results of the hard-fought and expensive races will usher in a new era for the 325,000 students who attend Chicago Public Schools — and serve as a referendum on the leadership of Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former teacher, and the Chicago Teachers Union.

Designed to stop drivers from endangering pedestrians, cyclists and transit riders by parking and stopping in lanes designated for bicyclists and buses, the new initiative is set to last two years, and would target scofflaws downtown between the lake, Ashland Avenue, Roosevelt Road and North Avenue.

Mayor Brandon Johnson said proposing the tax hike, the second largest in modern Chicago history after the $588 million property tax hike pushed through by former Mayor Rahm Emanuel in 2016, was a “difficult decision” that was the result of an "excruciating process.”

The Chicago City Council confirmed four of the five Chicagoans picked by Mayor Brandon Johnson to serve on the board of the Regional Transportation Authority, which is facing a $730 million deficit in 2026.

The Chicago City Council voted to pay $4 million to the family of a man who spent 33 years in prison after he was wrongfully convicted of murdering a woman in 1989 in Chicago’s Gold Coast neighborhood.

Angela Hurlock, the chair of the CHA Board of Commissioners, will serve as the agency’s interim CEO, while a search for a permanent leader takes place, according to a statement from the agency.

Sidi Mohamed Abdallahi, 22, has been charged with six counts of attempted first-degree murder, seven counts of aggravated discharge of a firearm toward a police officer or firefighter and one count of aggravated battery.

The endorsement of the city’s Transportation and Public Way Committee sends the nominations of Natasha Jenkins, Thomas Kotarac, Jarixon Medina, Dennis J. Mondero and Nora Cay Ryan to the full Chicago City Council for confirmation.

Between March 2021 and June 2024, Chicago spent more than $238.8 million on a host of programs including affordable housing, mental health, violence prevention, youth job programs and help for unhoused Chicagoans, according to the most recent reports filed with the U.S. Department of the Treasury as required by federal law.

The City Council will also weigh paying $325,000 to resolve a separate lawsuit filed by a man who was shot and wounded by a Chicago Police officer in March 2018 while suffering a mental health crisis.

In all, Chicago taxpayers spent $201.8 million to resolve 43 lawsuits brought by more than three dozen people wrongfully convicted based on evidence gathered by the Chicago Police Department since 2019, according to an analysis of city data by WTTW News.

A letter sent to police officials from COPA on March 27, six days after Reed’s death, shows that the agency had evidence that officers were routinely engaging in misconduct that violated Chicago Police Department rules and put Chicagoans at risk of a violent encounter with officers for at least a year. 

Rafael Yáñez, who ran unsuccessfully to represent the 15th Ward on the Chicago City Council in 2015 and 2019, is set to join the board.

The designated “landing zone” for buses from Texas at Polk and Desplaines streets in the West Loop will only operate from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. starting Tuesday and close by the end of the year, officials announced.

Demolishing the record set in each of the past three years, $1.3 billion poured into the city’s 127 TIF funds in 2022, according to a report from Cook County Clerk Karen Yarbrough.

No current or former members of the Chicago Board of Education attended Wednesday's marathon session of the City Council’s Education Committee, even after some City Council members threatened to hit them with subpoenas to require them to appear.

“A generation-long persistence in structurally imbalanced budgets, coupled with high pension and debt burdens, mean the city will face enormous budget shortfalls in the coming years,” wrote Joseph Ferguson, the head of the nonpartisan budget watchdog group and the city’s former inspector general.