Good morning, Chicago.
Yesterday Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed a sweeping energy policy overhaul, which includes a bailout for nuclear plants and ambitious climate change goals. The bill aims to set Illinois on a path to 100% carbon-free power by midcentury. It also puts the state’s utility customers on the hook for the nearly $700 million bailout. Here’s what you need to know about it.
In other news, Chicago hospitals are seeing a rise in a respiratory illness that can be severe for some babies. Rates of respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, are increasing at winter levels, according to pediatricians. Hospitalizations have increased so much that hospitals expanded the window in which they provide treatment that can help prevent hospitalizations, my colleague Alison Bowen reports. Read more about it here.
— Nicole Stock, audience editor
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Lawsuit against Dennis Hastert involving hush-money pact is settled before trial
Days before they were set to go to trial, lawyers in a 2016 hush-money lawsuit against former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert involving decades-old sexual abuse agreed Wednesday to settle the case. The terms of the agreement will be confidential, attorneys said.
A Kendall County judge ruled last week that the man who sued Hastert, seeking the unpaid balance of an alleged $3.5 million pact, would be named publicly at the civil trial. The man had filed the breach-of-contract lawsuit under the pseudonym James Doe in April 2016.
Dennis Hastert timeline: Key events in the rise and fall of the former U.S. House Speaker
Forty-four out of 50 Chicago aldermen have opted to accept a 5.5% pay increase in 2022 that will push the highest paid among them to a salary over $130,000.
Just six aldermen turned in paperwork to the city by a Wednesday evening deadline indicating they want to decline the hike.
San Antonio schools Superintendent Pedro Martinez was named as the next CEO of Chicago Public Schools on Wednesday, paving the way for the first permanent Latino CEO to lead the nation’s third-largest district as it navigates a full return to in-person learning amid the coronavirus pandemic.
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Homeowners have had some protections during the pandemic, including forbearance programs that allow mortgage payments to be deferred and federal rules for mortgage servicers intended to prevent foreclosures. A widespread wave of foreclosures
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when the rules will expire in January and as forbearance programs end is unlikely, experts said.But the Chicago area could have less of a buffer against foreclosures than other parts of the country, and housing advocates fear some communities are particularly vulnerable. Also at risk are the city’s iconic two-, three- and four-flats, which historically have been an accessible, income-producing homeownership opportunity and a key source of lower-cost, family-sized housing for renters.
Responding to COVID-19, several valiant Chicago pop-up drive-ins showed what they could, in locations ranging from a Soldier Field parking lot to the Lincoln Yards development to the SeatGeek Stadium parking lot, or a corner of it, in Bridgeview.
ChiTown Movies is physically smaller than those pop-ups. It’s tucked back where South Throop dead-ends near the South Branch of the Chicago River, which sounds like a horror movie, but it’s cozier than that, really, Tribune film critic Michael Phillips writes.
Top 10 movies for fall: Our hopes for streams and the cineplex, from Bond on down