* Sun-Times seeks $1.8M in exec payouts after sale

* Chicago to Get Two New Harbors

The Public Building Commission approved moving ahead with the designs and construction. Rob Rejman with the Park District says the new harbors will hold more than a thousand boats.

* Vision for fully open lakefront put into action plan

* Chicago Lakefront Plan Laid Out

The Friends of the Parks plan would seem a shoe-in. Chicago controls about 80 percent of its 30-mile lakefront, but transforming the last four miles into park or bike paths could become a political headache.

* Lawyers charged in $7-billion tax fraud

* Chicago area hits 100 bank robberies for year

* Demolition Nears for Chicago Hospital

Preservationists are trying to convince the city to save several buildings that world-famous architect, Walter Gropius, had a hand in designing.

City spokeswoman Molly Sullivan says the plan is still to tear them down and build the Olympic Village.

* Illinois joins effort to update school curriculums:

Illinois joins effort to update school curriculums: Illinois has joined a list of 13 states in a project designed to make public-school curriculums and teaching methods more relevant to today’s world, the Illinois State Board of Education announced Tuesday.

* Daley aide: no tickets until parking meter issues resolved

Chicago’s embattled parking meter contractor still isn’t writing parking tickets to augment city enforcement and won’t until myriad problems that have plagued the transition are fully resolved, a top mayoral aide said Tuesday.

“We haven’t even had the discussion on when they’re gonna resume. . . . [It won’t happen] until we are comfortable. . . . Our concern is making sure they focus their efforts and resources on putting pay-and-displays in and making sure they’re operating well.”

* Mayor Daley to meet with labor goups in attempt to avert layoffs

“It’s worth a try. It’s one last-ditch effort to find a resolution, so he doesn’t even have to cause people anxiety by sending out layoff notices,” she said.

But, Heard reiterated what the mayor has been saying for weeks: With city revenues continuing their steady decline, Daley is in no position to offer union leaders a two-year, no-layoff guarantee in exchange for cost-cutting concessions.

* Budget cuts to cost 1,000 CPS jobs

Up to 1,000 Chicago Public Schools non-classroom employees will lose their jobs this year under a reorganization to save $100 million.

About half the layoffs will hit central office — 27 percent of employees there — in the next two weeks, while another 500 will be cut from citywide positions over the next year, sources said.

* Unions to talk to city about budget shortfall

Davlin warned late last month, only three months into the city fiscal year, that city finances were heading sharply into the red. In an op-ed article published in Sunday’s State Journal-Register, Davlin disclosed that the projected deficit is $7 million to $9 million.

* Peoria City Council Faces Projected Budget Shortfall

* Council previews options to patch budget deficit

* Firefighters feel the crunch: Lifesaving equipment hard to come by

* Weak budgets, high prices may prevent purchase of lifesaving gear

* Daley nephew confirms he’ll exit firm

* Daleys’ family feud clear sign of high stakes

But their revelation that the city started leasing the space in October 2007, one month before they bought the building, only makes anyone with knowledge of real estate time frames more suspicious about the arrangement. At this point, I start with the presumption that the lease was done for the benefit of the Vanecko group until the city can prove it wasn’t.

That’s the price the Daley family has to pay for going down this road in the first place.

* All not so clear in Daley’s ‘transparent’ city

Inspector General Hoffman, meanwhile, sought information from the city pension boards about the Vanecko and Davis deal. The pension boards in question, some of whose members are city officials, wouldn’t answer, refusing to respond to a Hoffman subpoena. That’s when Hoffman brought in the feds and lowered a larger subpoena boom on them.

That shouldn’t have been necessary. Those pension funds, those city officials and all those stonewalling city departments should have been as transparent as the mayor claims he is.

* Chicago may bar trucking contractor from future business

* Madigan: Crestwood lied about tainted well

Citing Scaccia’s letter and other documents, Illinois Atty. Gen. Lisa Madigan filed a civil lawsuit Tuesday that accuses Crestwood officials of lying more than 120 times about their secret use of a community well contaminated with cancer-causing chemicals. The suit outlines a systematic coverup of Crestwood’s routine use of its tainted well and provides more details about actions first publicly revealed by the Tribune in April.

“Crestwood officials violated the public’s trust and the laws designed to protect public health,” Madigan said in a statement. “Through this lawsuit, we are seeking to hold these officials accountable for their conduct and to make sure that this does not happen again in Illinois.”

* Attorney General Sues Crestwood

* Madigan sues Crestwood, Stranczeks and former water official

* Crestwood lawsuit an indictment of IEPA

* Patti’s ride The Blago beat . . .

* Blagojevich to be in The Second City show

* Hawaii archives holds mystery Lincoln document

That proclamation was the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln’s official warning to rebellious Southern states to return to the Union within three months or face military emancipation of their slaves.