A former contractor who worked for the city of Chicago as a security guard pleaded guilty Monday to stealing cash from Chicagoans attempting to pay city fines or fees, the Office of Inspector General announced Tuesday.

The $2.1 billion renovation of the Red and Purple CTA train lines on the North Side moved forward Tuesday, with the agency announcing its Final Request for Proposals to three contracting teams.

Outgoing Assessor and Cook County Democratic Party Chairman Joe Berrios has started and shuttered eight committees in his decades in politics, marking his time in various positions of power in county and state politics and his ability to shift massive amounts of money to support himself.

Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle’s committee, Preckwinkle for President, raised $820,000 and spent $1 million in her campaign for a third term, outpacing former Ald. Bob Fioretti’s spending 4:1. Unlike other colleagues racing for seats on the county board, Preckwinkle ended the first quarter of 2018 with $95,000 in the bank, and an additional $40,000 rolling in after she was selected to helm the Cook County Democratic Party.  

The access to the city's network of 2,700 surveillance cameras have been tightened since an audit by Inspector General Joseph Ferguson found the system may have been accessed by unauthorized personnel and used inappropriately, according to a follow-up audit released Monday.

With a number of aldermanic challengers lined up to take their shot at the City Council in 2019, one of the longest serving aldermen will announce today that he'd like another four-year term.

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The race for Assessor was unsurprisingly the most expensive county campaign of the March primary, with all three candidates spending $4.6 million over the past six months, according to filings made with the Illinois State Board of Elections. The two challengers to incumbent Joe Berrios loaned themselves $1.8 million.

The race wasn’t only costly to the candidates – the Chicago Board of Elections also estimated spending at least $225,000 on additional printing costs due to election authorities removing, then restoring Andrea Raila as a valid candidate.

As promised last week, Mayor Rahm Emanuel released the names of a selection committee to pick retiring Ald. Mike Zalewski’s (23) replacement. He and City Clerk Anna Valencia also got another press hit for Valencia’s top project, the municipal ID card, dubbed CityKey.

Fresh off an Inspector General report that found the county’s health system lost out on at least $175 million in payments from insurance companies over the past two years, commissioners grilled officials on where the system was falling short and how much taxpayers might end up footing the bill.

After months of negotiations, Cook County President Toni Preckwinkle’s team and Chief Judge Timothy Evans are close to signing off on a settlement that Evans said would avert drastic layoffs included in the 2018 budget. But that solution would include closure of two branch courts and a section of the Juvenile Detention Center, and is already drawing pushback from the union representing Evans’ employees.

If approved by both sides, the deal would end a monthslong court stalemate spurred by the repeal of the county’s sweetened beverage tax.

Commissioners blew a $200 million hole in this year’s budget when they voted to repeal the tax last October. It led to a fraught budget process where Evans, who runs one of the biggest offices in the county, suggested 20 furlough days and court closures to meet his share of cuts. County budget officials said his offer came up short and submitted their own layoffs – 161 non-judicial, mostly senior employees.

Evans responded with a lawsuit soon after the budget passed. In it, he accused Preckwinkle and the board of violating “the constitutional separation of powers by infringing on the court's exclusive authority to decide whom it will employ or terminate from its employment.”

In a Tuesday letter to employees and judges obtained by The Daily Line, Evans laid out the brokered solution. One is furlough days: non-union court personnel will take 10 unpaid furlough days by Nov. 30. “Union personnel will be asked to vote on whether to take 10 furlough days, and for unions that do not accept the furlough plan, layoffs will occur as outlined in union contracts,” he said.

Anders Lindall, a spokesperson for AFSCME Council 31, which represents roughly 1,000 employees in the Chief Judge’s office, said Evans “cannot take any action without first negotiating with the unions that represent employees in his office. AFSCME will keep pressing for solutions that protect public services and jobs, and that don’t force county employees alone to bear the brunt of the budget hole.”

“Threatened cuts could jeopardize operations throughout the county court system, as well as probation services that are necessary to monitor offenders and fight crime. This very dire situation is the result of the failure of the Cook County Board to support the revenue measures needed to fund county services,” Lindall said.

The cost to the county is roughly $11.1 million. $2.5 million is for capital costs. The rest covers various salary, pension, and upfront costs of some major operational changes, including closing branch court locations at Belmont and Western and 51st and Wentworth.

Evans’ office will also terminate a lease at its Walnut Probation Office, shut down one of its centers at the Junior Temporary Detention Center by July 1, and eliminate 21 Youth Development Specialist positions and four mortgage foreclosure positions.

Asked whether the leaked framework was a good deal for the county and what its impact would be on the already-strained budget going forward, Preckwinkle stuck to her script.

“We have negotiated in good faith with the Office of the Chief Judge over the past several months. Until all parties sign off on the final settlement, this remains pending litigation and I cannot comment further,” she said, and chided, “We’ve been operating with the understanding that settlement negotiations are confidential, and we intend to abide by that confidentiality even if the chief judge does not.”

“You’re lawyered up,” one reporter quipped.

“I’m well-briefed,” she replied.

Commissioners were briefed on the case in a closed committee meeting on Tuesday. On Wednesday, the full board gave their go-ahead to settle when the two sides meet again in Lake County Court on Friday.

A spokesperson for Preckwinkle would not respond to follow up questions about how the settlement would proceed at the board or its budget impact, citing pending litigation.

Comm. Larry Suffredin (D-13), an attorney, was an early voice of concern about the future of the courts under the planned layoffs. He suggested the cost could have been much higher if both sides had gone to trial, but cautioned the deal isn’t done. “We’ll see what happens in court.”

Members of the Chicago Teachers Union will protest outside of today’s Board of Ed meeting and repeat calls for an elected school board, while Treasurer Kurt Summers announced a new hire.

Cook County commissioners meet at 9:00 a.m. today for a relatively routine agenda, but behind the scenes, sources say the county is close to negotiating a settlement with Chief Judge Timothy Evans over funding to his office.

South and West Siders packed City Council chambers Tuesday to voice fears about gun violence, prostitution, and drug dealing in their neighborhoods and plead with aldermen and police officials to act. Aldermen did approve a measure from Ald. Chris Taliaferro (29) imposing more harsh penalties on gun offenders stopped near senior and nursing homes, but did not approve another extending the city’s loitering laws to those suspected of prostitution.

New gun safety zones around nursing and senior homes and an attempted crackdown on prostitution-related loitering are both on the Public Safety Committee’s agenda Tuesday.