The proposed Residential Tenant Landlord Ordinance (RTLO), which will go to a vote by the Cook County Board of Commissioners this week, is far from revolutionary. It creates basic floors for landlord conduct that have existed for more than 30 years in Chicago, Evanston, and Mount Prospect.

Landlords who foster good working relationships with their tenants are already doing what the ordinance requires: offering fair lease terms, making repairs, respecting tenants’ dignity and privacy, and ensuring safe, healthy living conditions in their units and buildings. For these landlords, the RTLO won’t make a big difference. By clarifying roles and responsibilities and establishing more uniform standards throughout Chicagoland, it will in fact make life simpler.

This month the Cook County Board is considering a Residential Landlord and Tenant Ordinance (RLTO). Unfortunately, instead of protecting tenants, this measure unevenly protects problem tenants who impact the quality of life for everyone who lives in the building as well as the landlord. Cook County commissioners should consider four principles before adopting this new law.

First, judges should have discretion to weigh the facts of the case and the relative harm caused by any alleged violation when determining an appropriate punishment and whether to award attorney’s fees. In other cities where these local ordinances are common, these laws have been weaponized against smaller housing providers.

The defeat of the Fair Tax Amendment to the Illinois Constitution is a devastating blow to progressives who hoped to end the archaic and regressive tax system in Illinois that favors the rich.

However, there is still an opportunity to create a progressive income tax system through legislation without amending the Illinois Constitution. The Illinois Constitution prohibits anything other than a flat tax rate. But it does not prohibit changes in other factors such as the size of the personal exemption or a standard deduction, a factor that can have a similar effect on taxation. You don’t need a progressive tax rate in order to have a more progressive tax system.

The delayed half-measures that characterized the initial global response to the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrate the catastrophic toll that denial and apathy can have in perpetuating and exacerbating a crisis. Governments acting quickly with proactive measures to contain the novel coronavirus are seeing slower infection rates and fewer deaths. Preparedness matters, and it saves lives. We have a collective responsibility to apply this lesson to another major global challenge: the climate crisis.

More than 30 years ago, I began ringing the alarm bell to Congress about the negative consequences of increasing greenhouse gasses for our climate. Since then, the world has taken some steps forward—and some backward. Without an immediate, visible threat, leaders across the world have been slow to act, risking the progress we’ve made toward securing the clean energy future our nation and world deserve.

The Covid-19 pandemic and Illinois’ Stay at Home order last March created a challenging logistical situation at many of Chicago’s 1,250 polling places—especially at the hundreds of sites that provided less than 1,000 square feet of voting space, often in senior housing apartment lobbies and poorly ventilated church basements.

This is a time of grave crisis for our city and our people. Children are being killed in the streets where they play and infants are shot in their homes while police guard Trump Tower and the Christopher Columbus statue. Without work, renters are hopelessly behind on their rent and fighting off illegal evictions. Over 5,000 Chicagoans, the overwhelming majority of them Black and Latinx, have died from COVID, leaving their families with unspeakable loss and staggering medical debt. Food pantry use has more than doubled this year as unemployed parents struggle to pay for food for their families.

Overshadowed by the Biden/Trump hoopla this election cycle is a major initiative on the Nov. 3 ballot that should not be overlooked. In fact, its success or failure will have a dramatic impact on the fiscal solvency of the state moving forward.

The ballot initiative will ask voters whether the state should scrap it’s flat income tax rate, where everyone pays the same tax regardless of income, or move to a gradual structure where individuals who make over $250,000 will pay more in taxes. Additionally, any individual making below that will either pay the same or less.

After years of public meetings, design review and a dismissed lawsuit aimed at blocking the project, a 100-unit, 100 percent affordable housing development has broken ground on what was formerly a surface parking lot in Logan Square. But like all the land in Chicago, it had a previous life. Prior to the creation of the surface parking lot, that land housed people, via one of of Chicago’s most important forms of vernacular architecture: the workers cottage.

Reserve Management Group (RMG), which last year purchased the assets of North Side metal recycler General Iron, is expanding its Southeast Side operations by building a new metal recycling facility to serve the region’s demand for processing end-of-life vehicles, appliances, and other discarded metal goods into reusable raw material.

With nearly a dozen affiliated companies operating 14 facilities in 10 states, RMG has established an environmentally responsible presence in Chicago’s 10^th Ward for over 30 years. Since 1987, RMG companies have conducted metal and electronics recycling, stevedoring, and shipping operations, and they have owned the 178-acre repurposed brownfield at 116^th Street and Avenue O, the site of former LTV and Republic steel mills, for approximately 20 years.