* Naperville businessman charged with bribing ‘city agent’

With both video and audio rolling, the businessman, Wafeek “Wally” Aiyash, allegedly offered Ald. Isaac “Ike” Carothers a $100,000 cash bribe — $10,000 of it up front — if Carothers would secure concessions contracts for him, a criminal complaint unsealed Thursday says.

* Naperville man charged with bribery in airport deals

* Jobless benefits expected to be extended today

As many as 40,000 jobless Illinois residents, who would have exhausted their unemployment benefits by the end of the year, will benefit from a bill President Obama is expected to sign today extending those benefits up to 20 weeks.

The extension will help 28,000 unemployed in the state whose benefits already have been exhausted and 12,000 more individuals here whose benefits will run out by the end of the year. That is according to the Illinois Employment Security Department.

* Suburban Reps back jobless check extension

* Downstate trailer-making plant to close

ANNA — A southern Illinois plant that makes flatbed trailers soon will be closing, costing about 75 workers their jobs.

* African-Americans hit inordinately hard by recession

Staggeringly high unemployment among black middle class wipes out a generation of wealth

* A new Cook County tax?

Commissioner Mario Moreno is pushing a tax on hospitals that don’t devote at least 4.5 percent of their spending on charity care. If they come up short of that target for free health care, they would pay the difference to the county. (Hospitals that handle a high number of Medicaid patients would have a lower target, but could still be snared by the tax.) […]

The tax would raise about $340 million a year, according to the Metropolitan Chicago Healthcare Council, which represents 94 Chicago-area hospitals.

It would impose $105 million in taxes on at least 14 hospitals that already lose money.

Four hospitals that now turn a profit would be plunged into a loss.

* Police consultant at center of lawsuit

A $100,000 no-bid Chicago Police Department contract with Charles Bowen — the former Cook County commissioner who spent more than 15 years as Mayor Daley’s chief liaison to black ministers — is at the center of an unprecedented legal battle between City Hall and the inspector general’s office.

In 2006, Bowen was asked to assist the Police Department with the recruitment and retention of minority officers. He was also charged with reviewing the process of disciplining wayward officers, evaluating community policing and developing “crime-fighting initiatives that involve community participation.”[…]

Earlier this week, the inspector general’s office filed a lawsuit demanding that Corporation Counsel Mara Georges turn over documents and records vital to the inspector general’s investigation of “how a former city employee was awarded a sole-source contract in apparent violation of the city’s ethics and contracting rules.”

The inspector general’s office wants the court to require Georges to reveal who hired that individual and why, saying it “has been unable to determine who bears responsibility for the critical decision to contract with the former employee.”

* Friday’s Illinois political docket: Crimefighting focus of council budget hearing

* Maxwell Street complaints surface at city budget hearing

The once vibrant market is becoming “a dead zone” as vendors take their operations to friendlier operations in the city and suburbs, Fioretti said after the City Council budget hearing for the special events office, which took over running the historic market this year.

McDonald said officials heard from vendors who said they were being harassed by representatives of Jam Productions, which has the contract to manage Maxwell Street.

Spokespeople for Jam could not be reached for comment this evening.

* Overhaul would bring Maxwell Street Market back to glory

* Alderman seeks help for lazy Chicagoans

Chicago residents are lazy and therefore in need of special treatment. That’s what Ald. Eugene Schulter (47th) seemed to say Wednesday at a Chicago City Council budget hearing. He called for preferential seating of Chicago residents at free concerts in Millennium Park.

“You have people from the suburbs who get there earlier and glom on to all the seats. … They’re putting their blankets across rows and rows of chairs,” the Northwest Side alderman whined, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

Are Chicago residents prohibited from arriving early and reserving seats for their friends and family members?

No.

* Millennium Park for everyone

The argument goes that city taxpayers paid for the park, so they should reap the benefit. And as more concerts are held at the park, to save the city money, seats will be at a premium. The only problem is that Schulter’s solution runs counter to the spirit of Millennium Park.

It’s a symbol of the city, one that welcomes folks from down the block or from across the globe.

It says, “Come and share in the beauty of our great city.”

Not, “Buzz off unless you belong.”

* Landmarks panel rejects historic label for Reese

Knuckling under to the Daley administration, the city’s landmarks commission Thursday rejected a recommendation that the former Michael Reese Hospital campus on the Near South Side be designated a historic property.

The Commission on Chicago Landmarks voted 5-3 to withhold support for listing it on the National Register of Historic Places. City Hall has been demolishing buildings on the property, rejecting pleas from preservationists to save some buildings on the 37-acre site. The city bought the property for use in its futile bid for the 2016 Olympics.

* Park Ridge rescues its Christmas lights

Volunteers step in after expense cut from budget

* Will County extends furlough offer for workers

* Ill. Rep. Hare wants Mississippi levees raised

* Fenger student death: 14-year-old boy questioned in fatal beating

* Burge trial postponed

* How to beat a speeding ticket

If city cop caught you with LIDAR, go to court: Judge will dismiss it

* Idea man hopes to kick tickets to the curb

* Illinois teen driving program receives honor

* Evidence backs stroller mom’s story, police, CTA say

* Still harboring doubts about the mysterious stroller incident