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Black lawyers group pulls support for top Alvarez aide as judge
By Robert Herguth With embattled Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez soon out the door after losing the March Democratic primary to Kim Foxx, Alvarez’s top deputy, Daniel Kirk, is finding rough...
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Comfortable apartment, but ‘neighborhood is trouble’
After moving around the city for years, Taura Willhite is glad to now be in a comfortable apartment, with a landlord who’s prompt to respond when she calls with a maintenance request. What she doesn’t...
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Cashing in on the CHA — a Sun-Times/BGA special Watchdogs report
From her 49th-floor condo at Lake Point Tower, Diane L. Gottlieb oversees a public housing empire that brings her nearly $1 million a year in government-subsidized rent. Gottlieb, 55, has a growing...
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CHA tenants shivered until city sued landlords over heat
Eighty-seven-year-old Ernestine Davis says she spent most of January wrapped in a quilted robe and huddled near her gas oven because the heat was out at the South Side apartment she leases with the...
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WATCHDOGS: The Donald & the Democrat; Burke saved Trump $11.7M
A law firm headed by Ald. Edward M. Burke, one of Chicago’s most powerful Democrats, has helped Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and investors in his luxury downtown hotel cut their...
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BGA: Rivers Casino’s winning tax appeal? Ignore our profits
By Chuck Neubauer and Sandy Bergo Of Illinois’ 10 casinos, none is as lucrative as Rivers Casino in Des Plaines. Since 2012, it’s reported revenues of more than $400 million a year after winnings —...
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Enemies Rauner, Madigan not at odds when it comes to business
The Chicago law firm headed by Illinois House Speaker Michael J. Madigan, D-Chicago, has been hired to win property-tax cuts for two companies in which his nemesis, Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner, has a...
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WATCHDOGS: Federal funds for clout school operator despite probe
Des Plaines-based Concept Schools applied for and was awarded a nearly $340,000 federal grant for a new school on the Southwest Side despite being under investigation over allegations the clout-heavy...
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THE WATCHDOGS: Heroin deaths — tragedy or murder?
When police and paramedics arrived at her aunt’s apartment in Carol Stream, Adrianna Diana told them she and her friend Christopher Houdek had cooked and shot up heroin the night before. Diana, 20,...
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The CHA’s waiting game: A Sun-Times/BGA special Watchdogs report
It’s been 18 months since the Chicago Housing Authority closed its wait list for coveted housing choice vouchers, which pay all or part of the rent for poor people to live in homes leased by private...
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Koschman ‘cover-up’ now part of police ‘code of silence’ lawsuit
The botched investigation of a homicide involving a nephew of former Mayor Richard M. Daley has become part of a federal whistleblower lawsuit filed by two Chicago police officers who claim a “code of...
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Intruders breach U.S. airports’ security about once every 10 days
As Americans wait in ever-longer security screening lines inside airport terminals, newly obtained records show dozens more instances of breaches of airports’ outer defenses are happening than...
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THE WATCHDOGS: Sea of new police videos could go unseen
Police across Illinois will soon be required to record vastly more interrogations under a law intended to help ensure that confessions aren’t coerced and that the right people go to prison for...
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BGA: Pilot fatigue, error raised in ‘overrun’ on O’Hare runway
By Robert Herguth The pilots of a United Airlines plane that slid off the end of an O’Hare Airport runway last December had been awake for 23 hours or more and had spoken of feeling “fatigued” even...
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WATCHDOGS: Foundation funded state agency and 2 schools it saved
A private foundation started by the late Walmart mogul Sam Walton and his wife has contributed heavily to the Illinois State Charter School Commission and to two charter operators whose schools the...
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CHA might take over Section 8 from contractors in wake of reports
The Chicago Housing Authority is considering taking back control of management of the agency’s biggest public housing program — Section 8 apartment and home rentals — from the two private contractors...
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WATCHDOGS: Cook County made YUUUGE error on Trump Tower tax bill
For the past six years, Cook County tax officials mistakenly believed billionaire Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, didn’t pay all the property taxes owed on his namesake...
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Paramedics not told of police role in deaths of Jones and LeGrier
Paramedics and firefighters got to the scene only minutes after Quintonio LeGrier and Bettie Jones were fatally shot on the West Side the day after Christmas — but police officers there never told them...
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THE WATCHDOGS: White men get biggest share of police promotions
Despite decades of legal battles and special efforts to increase the number of minorities and women promoted to high-ranking jobs in the Chicago Police Department, white men have gotten more than half...
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Former UNO boss Juan Rangel broke securities law, SEC says
Juan Rangel — the former $275,000-a-year leader of the United Neighborhood Organization and its charter-school network — will pay a $10,000 fine to settle civil securities fraud charges without...
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