* Sun-Times suspends pension payments

Crain’s Chicago Business reported Friday that Sun-Times Media Group Inc., parent of the Chicago Sun-Times and a string of suburban weeklies, failed to make $800,000 in required payments to its five pension plans. Suspending pension payments preserves cash and improves the balance sheet of the company, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on March 31 and is looking for a buyer. The Crain’s report said the missed pension plan payments are not related to the media company’s request to pay its executives hefty bonuses if they succeed in selling the company.

* Retail thefts here soar as economy slumps

Chicago experienced a 9.6 percent increase in retail thefts in 2008 from 2007, to 11,289 incidents from 10,300, mirroring a national trend of increased shoplifting during a period of tough economic times, according to police reports and National Retail Federation data. So far this year, Chicago’s thefts are down about 2.4 percent, but retailers and police are on alert for thefts brought on by dire economic conditions.

* ShoreBank Ordered to Raise Capital and Adjust Loan Practices

ShoreBank is well known for its work routing lending dollars to low-income neighborhoods.

But regulators say it has to change the way it does business. The FDIC and Illinois’ Department of Financial and Professional Regulation have hit ShoreBank with a cease and desist order. The consent agreement says the regulatory groups have “reason to believe the bank had engaged in unsafe or unsound banking practices, and violations of law.”

The order requires the bank to, among other things, cease and desist from operating with inadequate capital levels and from “engaging in hazardous lending and lax collection practices.”

* $200K jolt awaits buyer of Rezko home

A property tax bill of more than $200,000.

That’s the added cost that awaits whoever comes out on top in next month’s auction of the foreclosed Wilmette mansion of convicted influence-peddler Tony Rezko.

* Patronage hiring still plagues Chicago

Noelle Brennan has been monitoring hiring by the city of Chicago since August 2005. She notes that 290 city contractors were hired in violation of federal court rules.

Brennan also says she found several politically connected truck drivers in the Department of Streets and Sanitation received “disproportionate amounts” of overtime last year while other truckers got little or no overtime.

* He’s out, she’s still in: different endings for Laski bribery scheme

In June 2002, Laski put Traci Jones on the city payroll, hiring her as a data-entry clerk at $10.34 an hour. Two years later, she was promoted to license supervisor in Laski’s Southwest Side office. That doubled her pay, to $41,000 a year.

That’s the job she had when her husband and Laski were indicted by a federal grand jury on Jan. 26, 2006.

And it’s the job she still has today, though the pay is better now. After getting five raises since her husband pleaded guilty in March 2006 and was sent to prison for about a year, Traci Jones makes $54,492 a year.

Mick Jones, meanwhile, got off probation June 23. Two days later, City Hall banned him forever from getting any city work.

* Weis takes cut

* County spends to make sure you know what Forest Preserves offer

* Pre-flight check for Children’s Memorial

The controversial heliport proposed for the $1 billion new Children’s Memorial Hospital in Streeterville is one step away from final approval.

* Children’s and choppers

* Illinois Spending Stimulus Money on Construction

* Data: State spending stimulus cash on repairs

Out of about 340 Illinois projects that have received money so far, nearly 250 are devoted to road repaving and similar improvements, a recently released list from the U.S. Department of Transportation revealed.

Illinois also is using the stimulus cash to begin fixing some of hundreds of aging bridges, with more than 30 projects on the federal list for bridge repair and upgrades. Six projects were categorized as “bridge replacement,” and there was one project to build a new bridge.

* New rail money to put the ‘go’ back in Chicago

But a fresh injection of cash, including a generous slice of a new $10 billion state capital plan, means a long-languishing, $1.5 billion project to ease train traffic jams in the nation’s most important rail hub by building new overpasses and modernizing signals can begin in earnest.

The 500 freight trains that pass through Chicago each day compete for access to tracks with 700 daily commuter trains in the region. This means trains hauling everything from coal to grocery items can take more than a day to wind their way through Chicago.

The Illinois bill sets aside $320 million for the project — money that will be pooled with more than $200 million raised earlier.

“This is a very big deal — the largest single amount of money awarded to this project,” Earl Wacker, a recently retired rail executive and an authority on rail congestion, said Friday. “Earlier, I wasn’t confident this would get done. Now, I’m extremely confident it will.”

* CTA boss: No more take-home cars

Looking to cut costs at a time the mass-transit agency is strapped for cash, CTA President Richard Rodriguez says he’ll take away employees’ free take-home cars.

The agency has been providing 68 employees with “company cars” that they can take home, at no cost to them.

* CTA hearing Thursday on 2 Evanston bus routes

* Public transit’s private club

Whereas fabulous wealth was once the ticket to the Deerpath, all it takes now to hop aboard Car 553 is a Metra monthly pass and a $900-a-year membership in the innocuously named Commuter Associates Inc.

* Entries for state fair parade floats being taken