*** UPDATE 1 *** I told you Tuesday that the Vallas campaign had paid Chima Enyia’s Ikoro LLC $500,000 during the quarter. $20K of that was for consulting, and the other $480K had the notation “Disputed - not verified.” Well, the Vallas campaign filed a lawsuit against the company yesterday. Here’s Crain’s…

After Vallas made it to the runoff election, Enyia — a political operative who had been an aide to Gov. Pat Quinn, former executive director of the Illinois Liquor Control Commission, former executive of Cresco Labs and brother of 2019 mayoral candidate Amara Enyia — convinced Vallas to hire him as a campaign consultant for $20,000 a month for March and April.

Enyia later told Vallas’ campaign manager he would hire workers from Black Men United to place Vallas yard signs in majority-Black communities and remove signs that had been damaged, as well as unauthorized yard signs connecting Vallas to “MAGA,” an abbreviation for the Donald Trump presidential campaign slogan “Make America Great Again,” according to the filing. Enyia told the campaign manager Vallas had approved the idea. […]

“During an independent review of the Vallas for Mayor raise and spend, and as we prepared to file our report with the Illinois State Board of Elections, we flagged a pattern of payments to a vendor, which are now in dispute,” the [Vallas campaign] statement said.

*** UPDATE 2 *** Sun-Times…

Veteran Democratic strategist Tom Bowen said the level of fraudulent campaign spending alleged in Vallas’ lawsuit is unprecedented and underscores how desperate Vallas was to make inroads into the Black community. It also shows how little oversight his campaign had over the $18 million avalanche of contributions that came pouring in from the business community after his first-place finish on Feb. 28, Bowen said.

“If he set $700,000 on fire with a very atypical campaign vendor to try to win votes in the Black community like that, that is possibly the stupidest thing anyone in Chicago politics has ever done,” said Bowen, who served as a senior adviser to lame-duck Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s campaign and as political director for former Mayor Rahm Emanuel in 2012.

Bowen said he’s sure former Gov. Bruce Rauner and vanquished Republican gubernatorial candidate Darren Bailey “also wasted incredible amounts of money on services like that” in their failed attempts to make inroads into the African-American community.

But in a Chicago mayoral race, it’s “unheard of” to spend that much money so unwisely, Bowen said. After running Lightfoot’s 2019 runoff campaign, Bowen said he “understands the stress” of keeping close tabs on campaign spending when contributions come pouring in.

While that may have been fraud, lots of other folks took full advantage of Vallas’ strong belief that he could win over Black voters. His D-2 report is loaded with payments to South and West Side hucksters. This isn’t new for him. Vallas was fully convinced of his singular popularity with Black voters during the 2002 gubernatorial race as well. Nope.

*** UPDATE 3 *** Tribune…

During the campaign, Vallas spoke openly about hiring Chimaobi Enyia for a high level position in his administration had he won.

A high level position including chief of staff.

[ *** End Of Updates *** ]

* Reuters…

The University of Chicago will become the first school among 17 prominent colleges to settle claims that they conspired for many years to restrict financial aid and overcharged students by billions of dollars in violation of U.S. antitrust law. […]

The plaintiffs have estimated the class size of former and current students at more than 200,000.

The lawsuit accused all of the defendants of having considered prospective students’ financial needs in weighing whether to offer admission, disfavoring students who need aid.

* Gov. Pritzker was on MSNBC’s Morning Joe program today. He talked about his involvement in school board races and was asked about how the Republicans are pushing decades-old culture war issues…

Joe, you’ve got it exactly right at the heart of it, and I think this is why voters are rejecting it, at the heart of all of these positions is this fundamental cruelty. Focusing on attacking children who are LGBTQ, or teachers that are LGBTQ, or taking on people who are not white, banning Black history from our schools, making sure that certain texts aren’t available to people. They want to rewrite history. There’s a cruelty to it all. And I think that voters see that and they’re showing up and rejecting it.

Pritzker was also asked how he could work with Chicago’s new mayor-elect…

Well, we’re already working together. He’s come to Springfield to talk with the legislature and to me about the things that are necessary to lift Chicagoans up. He’s focused on something that I’m focused on too, which is lifting up people who’ve been left out and left behind. We have neighborhoods in Chicago that have been disinvested from. He ran a campaign that focused on that, and he won because, in my opinion, he addressed that. I also want to say that this is a world where people recognize kind of genuineness. You know, authenticity matters. And Brandon Johnson just seems to be, he is who he is. You know, you can see it, you can feel. He’s the son of a preacher. He has kids, you know, family. He lives in Austin, you know, not the easiest neighborhood to live in. There’s public safety issues in that neighborhood. So he kind of represents the challenges and the opportunity for Chicago.

* Darren Bailey ran away from Donald Trump as fast and as far as he could after winning the 2022 Republican primary. But now, he’s cozying up to the former guy again ahead of a likely congressional bid…

Darren Bailey, the former Republican candidate for governor, talked to former President Donald Trump on Wednesday about a potential run for Congress against Rep. Mike Bost in Illinois’ downstate 12th District.

Bailey was at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort for a fundraiser for Louisiana governor candidate Jeff Landry and was able to buttonhole Trump, according to a person familiar with their meeting.

* NEIU Independent…

The University Professionals of Illinois (UPI), the union representing faculty, librarians, and advisors at NEIU, has voted to authorize a strike. A mediator will work with the union and the administration to attempt to reach an agreement according to Nancy Matthews, the president of the UPI chapter at NEIU. UPI has announced that the earliest they will strike is Tuesday, April 25, 2023.

If mediation is unsuccessful the faculty will go on strike. Depending on how long the strike lasts, coursework, final exams, and projects may be disrupted. Professors will make individual policies for class work in the event of a strike. Union spokespeople have stressed that students will get their grades and be able to graduate.

In a press release from UPI-NEIU, issued on April 13th, “the last two days, NEIU faculty and staff who are members of NEIU’s University Professionals of Illinois (NEIU UPI, IFT Local 4100) overwhelmingly voted to strike, with 95% of voting members asserting their willingness to do so if an agreement can’t be reached at the table.”

* Press release…

The State Treasurer’s Office made a record $98.7 million in investment earnings from the state investment portfolio in March, Illinois Treasurer Michael Frerichs announced today.

Another $75 million in gross investment earnings was earned for cities, villages, school districts, counties and other units of local government that take part in the highly rated Illinois Funds local government investment pool operated by the State Treasurer’s Office.

These key monthly metrics and more are available at The Vault, the transparency website that allows Illinois residents to see how the State Treasurer’s Office is working for them. The site is at iltreasurervault.com.

“Every dollar my office makes through smart, safe investing is a dollar that does not need to be raised in taxes,” Frerichs said. “The State Treasurer’s Office really is an economic engine, and we invest money in a safe and responsible manner.”

* IDPH…

IDPH has recorded a total of 4,127,625 cases and 36,735 deaths, in 102 counties in Illinois since the beginning of the pandemic. The department is reporting 5,278 new confirmed and probable cases of COVID-19 in Illinois in the week ending April 9, and 9 deaths.

Both IDPH and the Illinois Department on Aging have endorsed action this week by both the FDA and the CDC to simplify their recommendations for COVID-19 vaccinations. The two federal agencies approved an optional additional updated bivalent vaccine dose for adults ages 65 years and older and optional additional doses for people who are immunocompromised. The bivalent booster is designed to offer better protection against newer strains of the virus. […]

As of last night, 558 individuals in Illinois were reported to be in the hospital with COVID-19. Of those, 65 patients were in the ICU and 22 patients with COVID-19 were on ventilators. The preliminary seven-day statewide case rate is 44 COVID-19 cases per 100,000 Illinoisans.

* The mystery surrounding Illinois’ official state fossil may have been solved…

However, new research by a team from the University of Tokyo and Nagoya University may have finally brought an end to the debate.

“We believe that the mystery of it being an invertebrate or vertebrate has been solved,” said Tomoyuki Mikami, a doctoral student in the Graduate School of Science at the University of Tokyo at the time of the study and currently a researcher at the National Museum of Nature and Science. “Based on multiple lines of evidence, the vertebrate hypothesis of the Tully monster is untenable. The most important point is that the Tully monster had segmentation in its head region that extended from its body. This characteristic is not known in any vertebrate lineage, suggesting a nonvertebrate affinity.”

* Isabel’s roundup…

* Tribune | Latest Bears stadium legislation would add $3 to ticket prices at Arlington Heights site to help pay off Soldier Field debt: Democratic state Rep. Mark Walker of Arlington Heights, who introduced a separate proposal in the House that mirrors the stagnant Senate measure, said he was familiar with Moylan’s bill but hadn’t thoroughly reviewed it. “I read one paragraph about it,” he told the Tribune Thursday afternoon. “I know of no one that Marty’s talked to. I just guess it’s a bunch of new ideas that people should talk about.”

* Crain’s | State Farm is hiking Illinois auto rates for the second time this year: The new rates will add about $56 annually to the average policy. Last month’s rate hike meant an extra $58 a year for the average policyholder, so the combined increases total $114 on average.

* Illinois Newsroom | After promising to run the former Champaign County Nursing Home for at least ten years, its owner has filed plans to close it after five.: An Evanston-based company headed by nursing home operator William “Avi” Rothner bought the Champaign County Nursing Home in 2019. The transaction included a covenant requiring Rothner to continue operating the facility as a 220-bed nursing home at least until 2028, with at least 50% of its beds reserved for Medicaid patients.

* Sun-Times | Loop security is expected to tighten over weekend after violent teen gathering: For years Chicago teens have used social media to meet up downtown in large crowds. On Saturday, the crowds culminated around 9 p.m., and several videos posted online showed cars being broken into and set on fire. The chaos made national headlines and sparked debate about who was to blame for the violence. An alderman criticized the Chicago Police Department, some observers pointed fingers at parents, and others focused on a lack of youth programs.

* NBC Chicago | Downtown Chicago March Planned To ‘Help Redirect’ Behavior Following Teen Gatherings: “We are not walking against our children,” said Dr. Charlie Dates, senior pastor of Salem Baptist Church of Chicago and Progressive Baptist Church said in the release. “Our children are brilliant, but we are not absolving them of responsibility for the events that took place last weekend. Instead, we are taking accountability as the church by meeting them where they are and providing alternatives to disruptive behavior.”

* CBS Chicago | Some young people fear fallout of Loop chaos could be more racial profiling: Every teenager out on the streets of the Loop last Saturday night was not there to start trouble. CBS 2’s Terry caught up with a group of supervised youngsters who became swept up in the “takeover” mayhem – and who now fear when, and if, they come back downtown, people will look at them with side eyes because they, in their words, “fit the description.”

* Sun-Times | Bridgeport bank failure cost millions more than feds have said: Where did all the money go?: That figure, records show, turns out to have been far higher than previously has been revealed. Now, for the first time, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. says it spent nearly $139.8 million to cover the bank’s losses after regulators closed the bank on Dec. 15, 2017. That’s about $50 million more than previously was disclosed in court documents.

* Crain’s | What to do with a raft of new aldermen: How about a boot camp?: The session is one of several aldermanic boot camps happening during the transition period for freshman aldermen who are taking over a job that is increasingly expected to be legislative in nature rather than a local ward boss who acts as a rubber stamp for powerful mayors.

* NEIU’s Independent | Student Journalist Files Ethics Complaint Against NEIU Administrator: A NEIU student journalist filed an ethics complaint against Manish Kumar, Vice President of Finance and Administration, at NEIU on April 17, 2023. The complainant alleges that he felt pressured by Kumar to provide favorable news coverage of the administration and the university. The student said “he was trying to…influence me into saying good things about him”.

* Crain’s | At this South Side plant, one new house rolls off the assembly line every week : In a factory near Midway Airport, houses are now being built the way cars, refrigerators and other products have long been made for a long time: on an assembly line. A box-shaped module starts as a steel cage at one end of the assembly line inside the Kinexx factory on South Kildare Avenue in Archer Heights.

* Sun-Times | Joffrey Ballet’s ‘Little Mermaid’ unsettles as it entrances: Much more in keeping with the darkness of Hans Christian Andersen’s 1837 fairy tale, this nearly 2½-hour adaptation is meditative, intense, unsettling and sometimes even grim. It is also unfailingly entrancing and beautiful.

* Sun-Times | Chicago graffiti artist Joos says his philosophy is ‘the wall needed painting’: In just a few years, Joos’ artwork — though he knows some see it not as art but the acts of a vandal — has spilled onto Chicago’s streets to the extent he’s gone from virtual unknown to one of the city’s most prolific and best-known graffiti writers.

* Crain’s | NBA players could be a source of capital for weed: Roberts, who was executive director of the National Basketball Players Association for eight years, says she always encouraged players to become investors in companies as a way to prepare financially for life after their playing days were over.

* NYT | What’s It Like to Be Shohei Ohtani? Only Bo Would Know.: Ohtani, baseball’s only two-way player, is largely without precedent. The best comparison may be Bo Jackson, a “mythological” two-sport superstar.

* Chicago Eater | Celebrate Breakfast Queen Ina Pinkney’s 80th Birthday With 60 Chicago Chefs: Ina Pinkney earned the moniker the Breakfast Queen as the chef and owner of Ina’s, which was a West Loop staple from 1991 to 2013 along Randolph Restaurant Row. Since closing her restaurant, Pinkney has continued sharing her love of food, spending five years writing her monthly breakfast column for the Chicago Tribune and publishing Ina’s Kitchen: Memories and Recipes from the Breakfast Queen. The polio survivor also advocates for post-polio syndrome and advises chefs looking to open their own restaurants.

* Sun-Times | Chicago tavern history: Did you know the vote to make us a city happened in a bar?: WBEZ’s Curious City podcast crew stopped in at the iconic Carol’s Pub in Uptown for a night of beer, honky-tonk and Chicago bar history with writer Robert Loerzel — who has reported on the history of Uptown’s nightlife and entertainment scene — and Liz Garibay, founder and executive director of the Chicago Brewseum.