Chicago News

  • Cook County voters’ March primary ballots got shorter Wednesday, as election officials determined multiple candidates for ward committeeperson — including three Republicans — did not turn in enough signatures.

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  • A proposal from Mayor Lori Lightfoot that would allow Chicagoans to toke up outside their homes stalled on Wednesday amid questions from aldermen about whether the rules were too rigid.

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  • A proposed ordinance aimed at curbing gentrification along The 606's Bloomingdale Trail was reintroduced at City Council this week. [Alisa Hauser/DNAinfo Chicago]

    Two aldermen said Wednesday they are on track to resuscitate a measure next week that would freeze construction near the 606 Bloomingdale Trail as a way of blunting rapid gentrification on the Near Northwest Side.

    Alds. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa (35) and Roberto Maldonado (26) told The Daily Line Wednesday they are working on a series of “tweaks” that would narrow the scope of their sweeping ordinance (O2019-9439) to ban building permits, demolition permits and zoning changes near the popular elevated trail for 14 months. Proposed changes include carve-outs for affordable housing developments, as well as for minor construction work.

  • A month after Mayor Lori Lightfoot beat back an attempt to delay the sale of recreational pot in Chicago for six months, the mayor will ask aldermen to approve new rules to allow Chicagoans to toke up outside their homes.

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  • Election officials tossed a challenge against the Cook County Democratic Party’s chosen candidates for three contested seats on the board of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago, ensuring that Eira Corral Sepúlveda, Cam Davis and Kim Du Buclet will appear on the March 17 primary ballot.

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  • A measure on Tuesday giving the city control of seven vacant lots in Woodlawn in an effort to stem the tide of gentrification near the planned site of the Obama Presidential Center cleared a City Council committee Tuesday.

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  • Gia Biagi, Mayor Lori Lightfoot's pick to lead the Chicago Department of Transportation, fields questions from reporters. [Alex Nitkin/The Daily Line]
    Gia Biagi teased out plans on Tuesday to preserve the city’s controversial red light camera program, boost neighborhood bike and bus infrastructure, and design public spaces to curb violence during a public audition to be permanently installed as Chicago’s top transportation chief.

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  • Aldermen are set on Tuesday take a second pass at selling hundreds of vacant city-owned lots, after an earlier attempt stalled amid a debate over aldermanic privilege.

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  • Attorneys Bob Fioretti urge elections officials to kick State's Attorney Kim Foxx off the ballot. [Alex Nitkin/The Daily Line]

    Lawyers for former Ald. Bob Fioretti (2) said on Monday that petitions to re-elect Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx showed a “pattern of fraud” in a longshot challenge to get the incumbent thrown off the ballot before she faces Fioretti and two other Democratic challengers in the March 17 primary.


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  • Two aldermen will ask their colleagues on Tuesday to kick off 2020 by cracking down on noise made by motorcycles along north Lake Shore Drive and throughout the city.

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  • Mayor Lori Lightfoot tapped approximately equal numbers of men and women to serve on citywide boards and commissions and to head up city departments in 2019, according to an analysis by The Daily Line

    Lightfoot made 46 appointments that must be confirmed by aldermen between her inauguration in May and the final City Council meeting of 2019. They were nearly equally divided between white appointees and people of color.

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  • Jacob Meister, right, consults with his attorney during a Thursday hearing on his challenge of the petitions filed by Michael Cabonargi in the Cook County Circuit Court Clerk race. [Alex Nitkin/The Daily Line]
    With the holiday season over, elections officials began sorting through dozens of challenges that will determine who makes the March 17 primary ballot.

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  • County officials signed off on approximately $76,000 in extra grants for community organizations to conduct outreach programs for the 2020 Census, boosting the $1.4 million officials paid out in November after widening the application criteria.

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  • Chicago will see a raft of new ethics laws take effect at the start of 2020, as federal investigations shadow City Hall. But nonprofit organizations will get a three-month reprieve before new rules requiring them to register as lobbyists take effect amid an outcry about the impact of the new regulations.

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  • The owners of the MOCA Modern Cannabis dispensary ask the city's Zoning Board of Appeals for a permit for a new dispensary. [Alex Nitkin/The Daily Line]
    While most people spent the last days of 2019 preparing for holiday celebrations or buying last-minute gifts, Rosa Escareno, the commissioner of the city’s department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection, had a warning for Chicago’s nascent legal pot industry.

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