The budget, which takes effect Jan. 1, 2024, includes no new taxes, fees or service cuts, making it much easier for alderpeople to back the plan touted by Mayor Brandon Johnson as a down payment on promises to invest in working-class Chicagoans.

You may have heard Chicago has a pension problem … to the tune of more than $35 billion of debt. Pensions affect nearly everyone — even if you’re not a public employee. Taxpayers have already been footing the bill to alleviate the pension debt.

Mayor Johnson’s $16 billion budget is set for a final vote — what to expect. And Northwestern sweetens the deal to try to get approval for its Ryan Field renovations.

The $800 million proposal to revamp Ryan Field has been controversial from the very beginning. The plans call for a new state-of-the-art stadium that will be smaller in size than the nearly century-old structure it would replace, moving from a capacity of 47,000 to 35,000 for football games.

Chicago's City Council members are preparing to vote on Mayor Johnson's spending plan. The latest on a measure that would remove Chicago's sanctuary city status. And former Ald. Ed Burke's trial could finally resume this week following a COVID-19 delay.

Evanston is set to decide the fate of Northwestern’s Ryan Field renovation. A statewide push to allow terminally ill people to decide when they die. And renaming North America’s birds. 

The name of the practice is debated — “medical aid in dying” to some, and “physician-assisted suicide” to others. Either way, advocates are hoping the issue comes up in Springfield soon.

North America’s eponymous birds — those named for people — will all receive new names. The decision made by the American Ornithological Society has drawn praise from some quarters and provoked vehement opposition elsewhere.

A powerful alderperson gets stripped of plumb roles after confrontation with his colleague. And jury selection underway in the Ed Burke trial as COVID-19 sidelines proceedings for a week.

State Sen. Rob Martwick, the measure's author, praised Mayor Brandon Johnson for confronting Chicago’s pension woes. The bill ensures that all retired Chicago police officers get a 3% annual cost-of-living increase, regardless of whether they were born before or after Jan. 1, 1966.

“I felt like I was back in the South,” said Ald. Emma Mitts, who grew up in Arkansas, during the era of Jim Crow. “I felt like everything in me was shaking.”

City Council votes whether to censure one of its members. Why most paper is now banned from Cook County Jail. And former Ald. Ed Burke’s corruption trial begins.

Since the beginning of 2023, Cook County Jail administration has reported 16 deaths in custody, with five attributed to overdoses, according to Cook County Medical Examiner records. To address the uptick in overdose deaths, jail leadership took unprecedented measures, including what some called a facility-wide paper ban.