Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx speaks at an April 2022 news conference. [Colin Boyle/Block Club Chicago]

Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx hasn’t properly set up her sprawling office to withstand the barrage of high-profile resignations that have left prosecutors reeling, a senior Cook County commissioner said Friday.

North-suburban Comm. Larry Suffredin (D-13), who ran unsuccessfully for State’s Attorney in 2008, called the mass exodus from Foxx’s office a symptom of the “great resignation” that has stretched payrolls thin across Cook County offices and in workplaces across the country.

Chicago Department of Public Health Comm. Allison Arwady speaks at a news conference at City Hall on Thursday.

Demand for Monkeypox vaccinations and testing services still far outweigh supply as the Northalsted neighborhood prepares to host the Market Days festival this weekend — but more help is on the way, Chicago Department of Public Health Comm. Allison Arwady said during a news conference on Thursday.

The City Council voted last month to grant a property tax incentive to an office building at 2017 N. Mendell St. over the objection of officials in Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s administration, who said the benefit was unnecessary. [Baker Development Corporation]

Chicago’s intricate web of tax incentives designed to spur private investment and development sapped more than $92 million in property tax revenues that would have otherwise flowed into the city’s coffers last year, an annual financial audit shows.

The figure is almost enough to eclipse the approximately $94 million hike in the city’s property tax levy that Mayor Lori Lightfoot squeezed through the City Council for the 2021 budget year.

The cost of the city’s tax breaks was one takeaway from the Annual Comprehensive Financial Report for the year 2021, which also showed the city beat its projections on both revenues and spending while making meager progress on shoring up its anemic pension funds.

Maps show the areas in dark-gray where property tax increment will be used to pay for the 5.6-mile Red Line Extension, shown on the dotted red line. [CTA/SB Friedman Advisors]

Chicago and CTA planning officials leapt forward last week in their long-promised mission to extend the city’s most used transit line by releasing a detailed funding plan that relies in part on culling future tax revenues from some downtown and Near South Side residents.

The controversial new financing mechanism promises to raise up to $950 million for the herculean rail project — not by hiking or imposing any new taxes, but by diverting natural property tax growth from chunks of the Loop, South Loop, Armour Square, Bridgeport, Chinatown and Douglas neighborhoods into a special construction fund for the next 35 years.

Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle (top right) speaks on a virtual panel on local American Rescue Plan Act spending hosted by government think tank Results for America.

As Chicago and Cook County leaders ramp up their reelection campaigns and prepare for fall budget hearings, they’re benefitting daily from a combined nearly $3 billion bonanza of federal money earmarked for a range of new programming from violence prevention and mental health to neighborhood development and cultural grants — most of which has either yet to be spent or has only just hit the streets.

But with a likely economic slowdown on the horizon, fiscal watchdogs are still waiting to hear how city and county officials plan to keep the bottom from falling out from hundreds of millions of dollars in new programming after the last dollar of American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) is required to be spent in 2026.

City arts officials unveiled nearly 300 winners of cultural grants stemming from an expanded public arts funding program. And Cook County leaders touted a step forward in their push to bring landlords into compliance with new tenant protection rules.

A rendering of the 36-story apartment tower proposed for 301 S. Green St. in the 27th Ward [

A 36-story apartment tower is the largest of more than a dozen new planned development applications introduced to the City Council last month, promising to toss more than 350 new homes into the West Loop’s gushing development pipeline.

The proposal by Golub & Company is one of five new developments proposed to the council last month that would combine for more than 600 units, joining plans for a more than 427,000-square-foot data center in Bronzeville, a 120,000-square-foot medical building in Kenwood, a brewery in Back of the Yards and a cannabis dispensary in the South Loop.

Fred Tsao of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights speaks during a Cook County Board of Commissioners Legislation and Intergovernmental Relations Committee hearing on Wednesday.

A decade-old firewall designed to prevent the U.S. Office of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from getting ahold of Cook County data hasn’t stopped the federal agency from trying anyway, and county officials are straining to reinforce confidence that some data won’t slip through the cracks.

In Fiscal Year 2020, ICE issued more than 1,000 detainer requests to Cook County, which Cook County law enforcement agencies rejected due to the county’s sanctuary policies. The Cook County Board of Commissioners’ Legislation and Intergovernmental Relations Committee met for a hearing Wednesday to investigate whether ICE is bypassing the county’s sanctuary protections through the use of data brokers.

A speed camera warning on Archer Avenue. [Casey Cora/DNAinfo]

The same day City Council shot down Ald. Anthony Beale’s (9) proposal to raise the speeding threshold for drivers to be issued tickets by speed cameras, Ald. Brendan Reilly (42) introduced a proposal to lobby Springfield to allow Chicago to put the speed camera revenue toward pension payments.

Reilly’s proposal came amid a flurry of newly introduced legislation before the City Council’s August break. Other proposed measures would create a program to publicly fund elections, establish a pilot program that would allow robots to deliver food and to examine a potential tax on vacant properties. A package of proposed measures aimed at improving police officer mental health was also introduced during the July council meeting.

Related: Aldermen introduce legislation to improve police officer mental health, examine possible tax on vacant properties

Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison speaks during a news conference in Fulton Market Tuesday. [City of Chicago/Facebook] 

The Democratic Party is looking for a 2024 convention host that will positively “showcase” the party’s values and diversity, Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison said during his visit to Chicago Tuesday. He also emphasized the role of convention logistics and downplayed the importance of a swing-state locale, both signs pointing to Chicago’s status as a serious contender to host the event.

Cook County Budget Director Annette Guzman speaks during a preliminary budget hearing with the county Board of Commissioners Finance Committee on July 18.

Nearly 15 percent of Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx’s labor force has quit in the past year. More than one-quarter of positions at Stroger Hospital remain unfilled as nursing shortages stretch the limits of patient care. The county’s finance bureau needs to hire dozens of people to help get hundreds of millions of federally sourced dollars into the right hands. And Cook County Board of Review staffers are working mandatory evenings and weekends, prompting fears that the veteran appeals officers who haven’t already quit are being pushed to their breaking point as they try to make up time from late tax assessments.

On its face, the $263 million year-end budget surplus Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle declared last month would portend an easy upcoming budget season, a sharp turnaround from the painful cuts forced by pandemic-driven revenue shortfalls just two years ago. But the extra money also exposes a major dilemma for the county: system-wide staff shortages that threaten some of the county’s most basic functions.

Related: Cook County boasts $263M year-end surplus, $18M preliminary gap as budgetmakers brace for recession

Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa (35) speaks during a news conference last week. [Alex Nitkin/The Daily Line]

Last week marked one year since the City Council approved an ordinance creating a civilian commission empowered to oversee the Chicago Police Department. But the city has blown past multiple deadlines laid out in the ordinance, and members of the commission have yet to be confirmed.

A group of police reform advocates and aldermen held a news conference Wednesday morning urging Mayor Lori Lightfoot to choose the seven people she wants to serve on the commission from a list of 14 aldermen handed to her in May. But Lightfoot said during a news conference Wednesday afternoon that her office is still reviewing the candidates, as the City Council’s selection process didn’t represent a “full vet” of the applicants.

Architect Jerry Walleck shows plans during a Chicago Plan Commission hearing for the 23-story senior apartment building planned at 4030 N. Marine Dr.

One day after the City Council green-lit an initiative to spur denser housing construction near public transit lines, city planning officials pushed forward a massive North Side development they called a model of the plan’s principles — including for how to get hundreds of new apartments with relatively few parking spots past neighboring homeowners who would typically be opposed.

Ald. Michele Smith (43) speaks at a March 2022 City Council meeting. [Don Vincent/The Daily Line]

Lincoln Park Ald. Michele Smith (43) will retire from the City Council next month, capping her City Council career at 11 years and giving Mayor Lori Lightfoot her third opportunity this year to appoint a new alderman, she announced on Thursday.

The sudden announcement, citing a desire to spend more time with family and friends, comes one day after Smith scored a major legislative victory with the City Council’s passage of an ethics reform ordinance she championed.

Ald. Anthony Beale (9) speaks at Wednesday’s City Council meeting. [Don Vincent/The Daily Line]

After circling in legislative purgatory for 16 months, a proposal to roll back a controversial 2021 crackdown on speeding finally earned a final verdict from the City Council on Wednesday. Aldermen rejected the push, siding with Mayor Lori Lightfoot as they called to accelerate the city’s efforts to tamp down on accelerating traffic deaths.

During its last meeting before the August recess, the City Council also voted to approve dozens of other measures, including a bid to crack down on drag racing, an update to the city’s ethics rules and Lightfoot’s “equitable transit-oriented development” ordinance to boost housing density near public transit.