Gov. JB Pritzker leaves the podium in the House Chamber after delivering his Budget Address for the 2021 fiscal year Wednesday. [Hannah Meisel/The Daily Line]

Mayor Lori Lightfoot in her City Hall office. [Madison Hopkins/BGA]

Nearly 30 years ago, Chicago’s mayor and Commonwealth Edison squared off in a high-stakes battle over how the public utility would operate the city’s power grid.

Then-Mayor Richard M. Daley was under intense pressure to extract concessions from the company, including assistance for the poor and elderly and assurances Chicago wouldn’t suffer major power outages. To try to get his way, the administration even publicly debated the city taking over the utility’s infrastructure.

Jai Simpson, a member of a Chicago student environmental group called the Social Justice Institute, joined other activists in imploring Mayor Lori Lightfoot to reinstate the city’s department of environment. [Brett Chase/BGA]

More than two dozen Chicago young activists Friday called on Mayor Lori Lightfoot to reinstate a city department of environment to combat heavy pollution in black and Latino neighborhoods and increase efforts to fight climate change.

About 30 people, mostly students, rallied outside the mayor’s office on City Hall’s fifth floor. They urged Lightfoot to follow through on her campaign promise to reopen the environment department, which former Mayor Rahm Emanuel eliminated in 2012.

Illustration: Jim Siergey for BGA

By Tim Jones and Bob Secter, Better Government Association

When Illinois’ income tax rate jumped a record 67% earlier this decade, critics warned it would drive away the wealthy who invest in businesses and jobs. Instead, IRS data show, the better off flourished.

Similar arguments are now being raised by opponents of Gov. JB Pritzker’s push for a new and steeper tax hike on the wealthy. But if past is prologue, a trove of federal data on Illinois taxpayers undercuts predictions of a stampede for the exits among residents of means.