Chicago News
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MAR 10, 2020
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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. -
Former Vice President Joe Biden is the best Democratic candidate to take on President Donald Trump and defend Chicago residents, Mayor Lori Lightfoot said Friday, spurning Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot endorses former Vice President Joe Biden for president as his wife, Dr. Jill Biden, looks on. [Heather Cherone/The Daily Line]
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Cook County Comm. Jeff Tobolski (D-16).
Cook County Comm. Jeffrey Tobolski (D-16) announced on Friday that he will resign from the Cook County Board of Commissioners — five months after federal investigators raided his suburban office amid a growing corruption investigation.
“It is about time,” said Cicero Township Committeeperson Blanca Vargas, who controls approximately 21 percent of the vote on the committee that will be formed to pick Tobolski’s replacement.
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MAR 09, 2020
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Cresco senior counsel Jim Boland reviews the company's plan for a dispensary at 436 N Clark St. [Alex Nitkin/The Daily Line]
Downtown Ald. Brendan Reilly (42) excoriated the mayoral-appointed Zoning Board of Appeals as “a joke” on Friday after its members green-lit a proposal for a River North cannabis dispensary over his objections and those of a neighborhood group.
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Jill Rose Quinn has racked up a powerful list of allies as high-ranking Democrats and LGBT organizing groups rally around her bid to become the first openly transgender judge ever to serve in Illinois.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot wrote in a Jan. 24 Facebook post that Jill Rose Quinn “has fought for fairness, equality and justice her entire life and her perspective and experience will be invaluable for our courts and our community.” [Facebook]
But that doesn’t mean she’s stopped working for votes.
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MAR 06, 2020
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MAR 06, 2020
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Supporters of a planned Emmett Street affordable housing complex say they aren’t worried about a lawsuit filed by a group of Logan Square property owners that aims to block the development.
The lawsuit, filed by prolific Northwest Side landlord Mark Fishman among others, takes aim at city leaders and the nonprofit Bickerdike Redevelopment Corporation, which plans to begin construction this year on a seven-story, all-affordable complex at 2602-38 N. Emmett St. -
MAR 04, 2020
Cook County Clerk Karen Yarbrough’s first-year staffing initiatives did nothing to improve the function of her office’s five suburban locations, but they did make supervisors miserable — and that was the point, county employees testified in federal court on Tuesday.
Cook County Clerk Karen Yarbrough addresses the news media. [Heather Cherone/The Daily Line]
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MAR 03, 2020
A group of Logan Square property owners including prolific Northwest Side landlord Mark Fishman want a judge to nullify the city’s support for a planned affordable housing development, writing in a lawsuit that replacing a surface parking lot with 100 subsidized apartments would cause them “irreparable injury.”
Plans call for a 100-unit, all-affordable apartment complex on city-owned land near the Logan Square CTA Blue Line station. [Bickerdike Development]
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As early voting in the March 17 presidential primary expanded to all 50 wards and the Cook County suburbs, election officials said in-person voting was off to a slow start — but requests for mail-in ballots surged 85 percent.
Voters cast their ballots at the Loop Super Site, 191 N. Clark St. [Heather Cherone/The Daily Line]
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MAR 02, 2020
A representative of anti-patronage attorney Michael Shakman tipped his hat to Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi on Friday for making “positive progress” on a series of court-ordered hiring reforms, even though federal oversight is likely to continue for at least another year.
Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi. [A.D. Quig/The Daily Line]
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FEB 28, 2020
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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.
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