A pending ordinance would compel the city to open a public database of closed police misconduct files going back to 1994. [Colin Boyle/Block Club Chicago]

Updated Thursday 6:57 p.m. — A City Council budget referee backed up an Inspector General’s cost estimate for a police misconduct transparency ordinance, undercutting Mayor Lightfoot’s earlier opposition to the measure on the grounds that it would be too expensive.

The City Council Office of Financial Analysis circulated a report this week showing that the ordinance would cost less than $800,000 next year to implement, and costs would decline each subsequent year.

A pending ordinance would compel the city to open a public database of closed police misconduct files going back to 1994.

A version of Chicago’s new slate of labor protections for employees who seek out vaccines during work hours would be extended across Cook County under an ordinance set for introduction to the county’s Board of Commissioners on Thursday.

Ethics officials have been fielding questions “for years” over whether aldermen can serve on nonprofit boards. The answer is complicated. [Colin Boyle/ Block Club Chicago]

Chicago ethics rules don’t preclude aldermen from serving as unpaid board members for organizations based in their own wards. But they would face such onerous restrictions in the role that the side-gig may not be worth it, a city ethics arbiter pronounced this week.

A visualization of the existing street grid at the Reese site (left) and the city’s planned reconfiguration [Department of Planning and Development]

Developers and city planners will avoid dipping into millions in available tax-increment financing for a projected $60 million public infrastructure overhaul planned for the site of the “Bronzeville Lakefront” campus, city officials confirmed on Tuesday.

Leaders of the city’s Department of Planning and Development and the GRIT development team detailed their budding financial arrangement during a meeting of the Community Development Commission, which voted on Tuesday to allow the city to sell a 48-acre slice of the former Michael Reese Hospital site to GRIT.

City attorneys have been charged with collecting an overdue ethics violation fine from Ald. Carrie Austin (34). State officials will set up vaccination clinics in downtown office buildings. Mayor Lori Lightfoot cut the ribbon on a long-awaited bike infrastructure project. And Lightfoot pinned federal regulators’ concerns over a Southeast Side metal shredding in part on the lax permitting practices of “the previous administration” in Washington.

A rendering of the 48-acre parcel set for sale to a private development team for the $4 billion “Bronzeville Lakefront” project

The $4 billion “Bronzeville Lakefront” megadevelopment is set to clear a critical hurdle on Tuesday as a Chicago commission moves to sell a 48-acre swath of public land to a private development venture for $96.9 million.

The city’s Community Development Commission is set to virtually convene at 1 p.m. Tuesday to consider four sales of city-owned land, including the sale of part of the property on the city’s Near South lakefront that was occupied for decades by Michael Reese Hospital.

An architect shows a rendering of the first phase of the planned Bronzeville Lakefront mega-development

Members of the Chicago Plan Commission on Thursday heaped praise on a $6 billion, multi-decade endeavor to redevelop a 71-acre swath of the city’s Near South lakefront, calling it a model for urban planning and community involvement. They also accepted at face value the developer’s vow to sharpen its long-term hiring commitments amid pressure from a major hospitality union.

Commissioners unanimously voted to approve a planned development application (O2020-3001) for the “Bronzeville Lakefront” mega-development, the first in a long line of public approvals that will be needed to bring the endeavor to fruition before its projected 2041 completion date.

County leaders are mostly backing a bill they say would make it easier for local governments to demolish or rehab abandoned buildings. [Eric Allix Rogers on Flickr]

Cook County leaders are championing a bill in Springfield they say will prevent delinquent properties from falling into a spiral of blight. But one county office says much more is needed to fix the government’s handling of abandoned buildings, arguing that “a BAND-AID won’t cure cancer.”

Maps showing the concentration of gun and drug warrant executions on homes between 2017 and 2020 [Chicago Office of the Inspector General]

The Chicago Police Department has registered a nosedive in the number of raids it’s executed on homes during the past two years, as police leaders have repeatedly tightened department policies to rein in warrant executions. But the shift is moving so fast that the department’s existing systems can’t tell whether the new rules are having any effect, a city watchdog wrote in a report published Thursday.

The Chicago Office of the Inspector General on Friday published a memo it wrote to the Chicago Police Department with “urgent” recommendations on how to improve its warrant execution policies. [Office of the Inspector General]

Chicago Police will tighten their intelligence-gathering policies in an attempt to prevent more botched warrant executions like the February 2019 raid that targeted Anjanette Young, the city’s top police leader told a city watchdog last week.

Then-Ald. Dick Mell (33) promoting the Keep Chicago Renting Ordinance in 2013, with future 1^st Ward Ald. Daniel La Spata behind him [Erin Hegarty]

An Illinois appellate court has overturned a landmark 2013 Chicago ordinance designed to protect renters whose buildings are foreclosed upon, portending a potential wave of evictions just as pandemic-related safeguards are set to expire.

From left: Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez (25), Ald. Daniel La Spata (1), Ald. Rossana Rodriguez-Sanchez (33), Ald. Jeanette Taylor (20) and Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa (35) [Chicago Democratic Socialist Caucus]

Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa (35) welcomed an outpouring of support from some activists and organizers after he and four of his colleagues announced they were chartering the City Council’s Democratic Socialist Caucus on Saturday.

But others were confused, he said.

“Some people were like, ‘I thought you already had a caucus — what’s the big deal?’” Ramirez-Rosa said.

Jitu Brown of the education advocacy group Journey4Justice is set to testify at a City Council committee hearing on violence prevention on Tuesday [Facebook/Journey 4 Justice]

Aldermen are scheduled Tuesday to quiz city officials and nonprofit leaders on how Chicago can head off an anticipated surge in gun violence this summer without leaning on its traditional law enforcement playbook.

The City Council Committee on Public Safety and Committee on Health and Human Relations will convene at 1 p.m. for a subject matter hearing to mull strategies for tamping down gun violence, which has surged amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The city saw about a 34 percent spike in homicides between January and March this year compared to the same period one year earlier, making it the city’s deadliest year so far since 2017.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot said ComEd and its competitors “have to step up their game” if they want exclusive rights to power the city’s electric grid. [Facebook/ComEd]

Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s administration is opening the door to dumping Commonwealth Edison (ComEd) as the city’s sole electric utility provider, cranking up the pressure on the mega-firm to meet a host of the city’s environmental and equity demands.

The city’s Department of Assets, Information and Services issued a Request for Information on Friday to solicit “ideas and expressions of interest” from suitors looking to replace ComEd, whose 30-year franchise agreement with the city expired at the end of last year. “The City is currently evaluating whether to enter into a new franchise with the incumbent or to explore awarding a franchise to new franchisee(s)” with the City Council’s approval, according to the document.

Part of a report from Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas showing which Chicago properties have registered the biggest tax hikes since 2000, showing which residential properties have gone up most.

A Gold Coast condo charged with a $6,700 tax bill in 2000 was saddled with nearly $134,000 in taxes in 2019. The bill for a two-story house in Winnetka went from about $53,000 in 2000 to more than $675,000 19 years later. And an industrial building on Chicago’s Near West Side saw its tax burden multiply from $785.11 to $30,354 during the same period.

Leaders of Metra, the Pace suburban bus agency and the Regional Transportation Authority joined Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle on Monday to mark the beginning of a three-year pilot program aimed at helping south-suburban residents with a “lack of affordable options” for getting around, Preckwinkle said.

The South Cook Fair Transit program will slash fares on the Metra Electric and Rock Island train lines to $2.50 per ride, matching the CTA’s rate. It will also more than double the frequency of bus service on Pace’s busy No. 352 line, which traverses the Southland.

Ald. Patrick Daley Thompson (11) during a February 2020 City Council meeting [Colin Boyle/Block Club Chicago]

Ald. Patrick Daley Thompson (11) vowed to defend himself against a federal indictment entered on Thursday, blaming “inadvertent tax preparation errors” after prosecutors said he repeatedly and knowingly lied to federal tax collectors and banking regulators.

The 10-page indictment, published late Thursday afternoon by U.S. Attorney John Lausch, alleges that Thompson lied twice in 2018 to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) by understating the outstanding loans he had taken out from the now-insolvent Washington Federal Bank for Savings. Prosecutors additionally allege the alderman, who is also a practicing attorney, knowingly undershot his income on every annual tax return he filed between 2014 and 2018.

Cook County Circuit Court Clerk Iris Martinez

Five months into the job, Cook County Circuit Court Clerk Iris Martinez has fallen short on some key initiatives to make the sprawling record-keeping office more efficient and transparent, according to a report published by a coalition of watchdog groups on Wednesday.

A bollard-protected bike lane on Washington Street downtown [Alex Nitkin/The Daily Line]

Chicago transportation officials are hailing the first stages of their five-year, $3.7 billion infrastructure plan as a boon to the city’s long-spun efforts to build out pathways for people who don’t drive.

“These investments prioritize making it easier to get around the city as sustainably and affordably as possible,” transportation department Comm. Gia Biagi said during Monday’s news conference kicking off the “Chicago Works” plan.

Chicago Department of Transportation Comm. Gia Biagi speaks during a news conference announcing the “Chicago Works” capital plan on Monday.

Chicago will nearly double its typical roster of street makeovers and spend hundreds of millions in additional dollars on bridge replacements, building renovations and technology upgrades by the end of next year, city leaders announced Monday.

Flanked by a handful of key aldermen and agency heads, Mayor Lori Lightfoot held a news conference to detail the first steps of “Chicago Works,” the five-year infrastructure program getting underway this spring. Funded by General Obligation bonds issued by the city last year, the $3.7 billion program aims to catch the city up on decades’ worth of deferred maintenance on streets and other city-owned assets.