Aldermen spent a majority of the Police Board’s budget hearing late Tuesday afternoon questioning Board President Lori Lightfoot how the new police oversight systems will impact her board’s work. The Police Board reviews disciplinary requests and recommends action against officers accused of serious misconduct.

With the presidential election three weeks away and early voting underway since September 29, the Board of Elections Commissioners spent their testimony updating aldermen on registration numbers and planned voter information campaigns at their roughly 40 minute hearing Tuesday. And it was not without some sarcasm regarding Chicago’s history of voter fraud and questions about one presidential candidate's claim of this year's “rigged election.”

Modernization of the city’s outdated 311 system will include a cloud based software that’ll automatically update regularly like a cell phone operating system, Department of Innovation and Technology Commissioner Brenna Berman told aldermen Tuesday.

Commissioners got a broad overview of Cook County’s finances and spending plans in the first day of two weeks of budget hearings Monday morning. County Chief Financial Officer Ivan Samstein led testimony for the Bureau of Finance for nearly four hours, outlining the county’s $4.4 billion budget, getting into the minutiae of President Preckwinkle’s proposed sweetened beverage tax, and into a minor tiff with Comm. Bridget Gainer (D-10) over tax collection.  

Cook County Highways and Transportation Commissioner John Yonan will testify about his department’s budget Tuesday morning, including some details about a new initiative that would give each commissioner $500,000 to contribute to capital projects like roads, bridges, and pedestrian and bike-friendly fixes in each district. While the program sounds similar to Chicago’s menu program program (which gives each alderman about $1.3 million to spend on infrastructure projects like speed bumps, play lots, and street lighting from a pre-approved list), Yonan, a 19-year veteran of the Chicago Department of Transportation, says this program could be leveraged to do much more.

Chicagoans seem to have a propensity for voting this electoral season, with 14,376 votes cast through Monday evening at the two Loop voting locations since the first opened on September 29, according to data provided by the Chicago Board of Elections. Meanwhile, suburban voters, with polls at a Loop location and four suburban courthouses, are lagging far behind, with only 3,108 votes cast during the same time period, according to data provided by the Cook County Clerk.

With no major taxes or fees proposed, and lacking a threat of one of the city’s pension funds becoming insolvent, the first hearing on Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s FY 2017 budget was fairly uneventful compared to past years. At Monday’s day long hearing, aldermen asked a grab bag of questions of City Budget Director Alex Holt, Comptroller Erin Keane, and Chief Financial Officer Carole Brown. Frequent topics included the new Community Catalyst Fund, two new pilot programs to ease car congestion downtown and at Wrigley Field, and the Chicago Police Department’s hiring plans.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s ambitious plan to add 970 new positions within the Chicago Police Department by 2018 is a complicated numbers game, making it difficult to quantify exactly the net number of new police officers who will join the force over the next two years.

Chicago public school kids (and many parents) went to bed Monday not knowing whether their teachers would strike. It took some down to the wire negotiating and a helping hand from the city’s tax-increment-financing (TIF) districts to reach a deal. But as we discuss in this week’s show, we still don’t know the full cost of the agreement, or how this contract impacts other looming issues at CPS–namely, a pension shortfall and statewide funding fix that hasn’t come through from the Illinois General Assembly.

Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle rolled out her $4.4 billion FY2017 budget in a brief 27 minute Thursday morning address. The budget includes a one-cent per ounce tax on sugar-sweetened beverages, a net decrease in 211 positions across county government, and a pledge to not raise taxes again for at least the next two fiscal years.

While public school students are firmly planted in their classroom seats and teachers are drawing up lesson plans, Chicago Public Schools public affairs staff have yet to return calls requesting information on how much the CPS-Chicago Teachers Union Tentative Agreement will cost. Already behind the budgetary eight ball, CPS’ 2017 budget relied on the idea that the teachers union would consent to an agreement similar to the one CPS offered last January, which included the phase out of the 7% pension pickup. The teachers did not.

A one-cent per ounce tax on sugar sweetened beverages, estimated to bring in $220 million a year once fully implemented, will be included in President Toni Preckwinkle’s budget proposal today, staffers and stakeholders briefed on the matter confirmed to The Daily Line Wednesday. The president is scheduled to formally present her budget at a special board meeting at 11:00 a.m. today.

The 2017 proposed City budget totals $9.81 billion, including $3.72 billion in the corporate fund and $1.59 billion in grant funding. Police, Fire, and OEMC make up 58% of proposed corporate fund spending. As The Daily Line team continues to review Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s budget proposal, we’ll report our observations. Below is a breakdown of some of the revenues and expenditures expected this year.

Aldermen are scheduled for more briefings this morning on the police department’s plan to hire 250 new officers next year as part of a two year hiring plan. It’s one of several initiatives in Mayor Emanuel’s $9.81 billion budget that aldermen say they’ll be taking a closer look ahead of the budget vote in November.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s 2017 budget includes a $1 million appropriation for a new Municipal ID program that is still largely in the planning stage.

Mayor Emanuel and City Clerk Susana Mendoza, whose department would oversee the program, issued identical press releases Wednesday announcing the initiative as part of the city’s overall budget for 2017. But, according those involved in the implementation of the program, a lot of the finer points have yet to be worked out.