Cook County leaders will face ramifications from two major bills passed by state lawmakers on Monday.

A bill approved by state lawmakers on Monday will likely stretch the timeline for Cook County’s decennial remap, relieving pressure on commissioners to approve new district boundaries while census data remains in flux. But an overhaul of the state’s ethics rules, also approved Monday, cast new doubt on a long-baked effort to updated the county’s ethics code.

Downtown Oak Park. The Cook County Board of review granted nearly $56 million in tax assessment breaks to Oak Park commercial landlords this year. [David Wilson/Flickr]

The Cook County Board of Review this year has already scrubbed more than $1.6 billion in taxable value from retail, office, apartment and industrial properties across the county, once again shielding commercial property owners from the bulk of assessment hikes that would have otherwise been handed down by Assessor Fritz Kaegi.

Existing boundaries (left) for the Cook County Board of Review’s three districts, and a new map approved by state lawmakers [Cook County; Frank Calabrese]

Illinois Democrats will take advantage of shifting political winds in Chicago’s suburbs to effectively lock Republicans out of power in the three-member Cook County Board of Review under a new map approved by Illinois General Assembly on Friday.

Existing boundaries (left) for the Cook County Board of Review’s three districts, and a new map approved by state lawmakers [Cook County; Frank Calabrese]

Illinois Democrats will take advantage of shifting political winds in Chicago’s suburbs to effectively lock Republicans out of power in the three-member Cook County Board of Review under a new map approved by Illinois General Assembly on Friday.

Ald. Anthony Napolitano (41) and a rendering of a 2017 proposal by Glenstar to build nearly 300 apartments near the Cumberland CTA Blue Line station [DNAinfo/Heather Cherone; Glenstar O’Hare]

A suburban developer is resurfacing its 4-year-old bid to build nearly 300 apartments near the Cumberland CTA station, opening a new front in an intensifying City Council battle over aldermanic prerogative.

Ald. David Moore (17) speaks to reporters after his long-stalled proposal to rename Lake Shore Drive was stymied by a parliamentary delay tactic on Wednesday

The moment after a pair of aldermen maneuvered to sabotage Ald. David Moore (17)’s years-in-the-making push to rename Lake Shore Drive, Moore threatened to use a similar tactic to delay “everything” that came up through the City Council as long as his proposal was held in purgatory.

He wasn’t bluffing.

Attorney Steve Friedland showcases a plan to rehab a vacant McKinkley Park building into a 120-unit affordable housing complex.

Aldermen voted on Tuesday to advance a plan to create 120 affordable apartments at the edge of McKinley Park, overruling a faction of their colleagues who said it could be dangerous to locate the homes several hundred feet from a polluting asphalt plant.

Ald. Leslie Hairston (5) ripped Ald. Scott Waguespack (32) and city attorneys for “watering down” legislation to launch a database of historic police misconduct.

An attempt to legislate a city-managed database of historic police misconduct complaints fizzled for the second time in two months on Monday, as aldermen failed to reconcile an impasse between the measure’s supporters and the agency that would be charged with putting it into practice.

A rendering of a building planned at 920 S Wells as part of the “North Union” campus planned next to the Moody Bible Institute.

Aldermen are scheduled on Tuesday to give a zoning nod to JDL Development’s plan to spend the next decade building multiple towers with apartments and commercial space interspersed with parks on a 12-acre swath of the Near North Side.

In 1969, an idealistic young lawyer named Michael Shakman filed a lawsuit with the goal of breaking the stranglehold that the Democratic Organization of Cook County — the political “machine” run by Mayor Richard J. Daley — held on Chicago’s government and elections. More than a half-century later, Shakman isn’t finished yet. The Daily Line’s Alex Nitkin talked to Shakman about the history of the “Shakman decree,” how it’s transformed the way governments work in Illinois, why it’s so hard to root out Chicago’s decades-old legacy of patronage — and what it will take to end the 52-year-old federal legal case.

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Cook County Clerk Karen Yarbrough has been a “reluctant participant” in court-appointed hiring reforms, attorney Michael Shakman said.

Cook County Clerk Karen Yarbrough has been a “reluctant participant” in a federally mandated effort to insulate her office from clout-based hiring practices, according to veteran anti-patronage attorney Michael Shakman. Shakman also doubled down against Gov. JB Pritzker’s attempts to free the governor's office from a federal anti-patronage probe, saying his administration is “not there yet” on a series of mandated reforms.

The Urban Forestry Advisory Board would be responsible for recommending policies to reverse the decline of the city’s tree canopy. [Facebook/Chicago Region Trees Initiative]

Aldermen are set on Monday to weigh a long-stalled proposal to establish an all-volunteer board that would advise Chicago leaders on how to reverse the decline of the city’s tree canopy.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot during an April 15 news conference and Inspector General Joseph Ferguson during a committee meeting the next day.

A months-long legislative battle over police transparency is set to come to a head Monday afternoon as aldermen vote whether to compile two decades’ worth of police misconduct complaints into a public database.

Chicago Department of Buildings Comm. Matthew Beaudet and Chicago Journeymen Plumbers Local Union 130 president Jim Majerowicz came down on opposite sides of a debate over plumbing regulations on Thursday.

A procession of city buildings officials, developers and engineers championed a push on Thursday to relax Chicago’s plumbing regulations, saying a widely-used form of plastic piping can dramatically cut construction costs across the city. But an influential plumbers’ union is resisting the plan, saying the flammable material could “jeopardize safety” in the case of fires.

Cook County leaders will use preliminary census data to draw their 17 new district boundaries by the end of summer. Chicago will hire a full-time adviser on water policy thanks to new private grants. And a potential overhaul to the city’s plumbing code will be the topic of a zoning committee hearing Thursday afternoon.

A revised ordinance would compel the city to open a public database of closed police misconduct files going back to 2000. [Colin Boyle/Block Club Chicago]

Updated May 19, 6:18 p.m.— Leaders of a Chicago watchdog agency on Wednesday tore into a curtailed version of a police transparency ordinance held up as a compromise between Mayor Lori Lightfoot's administration and a pair of key aldermen. The series of substantial edits to the measure would "profoundly limit its transparency value," a spokesperson for Inspector General Joseph Ferguson wrote in a statement.

Ald. Roberto Maldonado (26) expressed frustration during a Tuesday committee hearing on the lengthy regulatory process required to sell city-owned lots.

Aldermen called on Tuesday for city planning and real estate officials to chart out their progress on reviewing applications for city-owned land, blaming legally required environmental checks for a backlog of vacant lots in their wards.

Volunteers with the group Growing Home tend the Honore Street Farm in Englewood [Neighborspace]

Aldermen are scheduled Tuesday to take a step toward replenishing the city’s support for a nonprofit dedicated to transforming vacant lots into community gardens.

Officials are weighing whether to establish a permanent e-scooter program in Chicago. [Hannah Alani/Block Club Chicago]

City-logged complaints about e-scooters fell sharply last year, and people who do not ride the devices are less resistant to a permanent citywide scooter program than they may have been before, according to a report released by city transportation officials on Friday.

Cook County States’ Attorney Kim Foxx speaks during a budget hearing in October 2019. [Alex Nitkin/The Daily Line]

County commissioners are set to tighten their authority over Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx’s office while extending new scrutiny to attorneys hired by the office.

An ordinance (21-3130) introduced to the county’s Board of Commissioners on Thursday by Comm. Peter Silvestri (R-9) requires the state’s attorney’s office to score approval from the board’s Finance Subcommittee on Litigation before approving large settlements, pursuing some appeals or bringing matters to trial. Silvestri chairs the subcommittee.