* ICYMI: Happy Valentine’s Day! Here’s some ❤️ stories to start your day…

- Daily Herald: Puppy love: How the friendship between a suburban postal carrier and a Chihuahua became a social media sensation
- Sun-Times: Down the rat hole for Valentine’s Day
- Block Club: For over 160 years, you could sue for a broken heart with Illinois’ ‘Heart Balm’ laws

* Isabel’s top picks…

* STLPR | Rep. Mike Bost says he’s a ‘governing conservative’ ahead of feisty GOP primary: Bost said the key difference between himself and Bailey is that he’s more pragmatic. That makes him a “governing conservative,” Bost said. “That means I am a conservative, and my voting record shows that I’m a conservative,” Bost said. “But I’m not willing to all of a sudden just keep saying no.”

* STLPR | Darren Bailey says it’s time for change in Illinois’ 12th Congressional District: Darren Bailey, the former Republican Illinois gubernatorial candidate, is banking on his deeply conservative values and unwillingness to sacrifice them to propel him to victory against U.S. Rep. Mike Bost in the 12th District primary next month. “As a Republican — and as a conservative Republican — I cannot compromise my values,” Bailey said on the Politically Speaking podcast.

* Capitol News Illinois | After week of delays, former GOP State Sen. Sam McCann’s trial finally underway: The trial finally got underway Tuesday morning after a week of delays stemming from McCann’s sudden hospitalization the previous weekend. U.S. District Judge Colleen Lawless ordered him arrested and detained last Friday for violating her direct orders to communicate with the federal probation office after being discharged from the hospital.

Click here for Equality Illinois’ endorsements for the 2024 primary.

* Here’s the rest of your morning roundup…

* WCIA | IDOT workers return to bargaining table after strike authorization vote: The union members have two key issues, including higher salaries, and attempts by the state to change health insurance plans. The union currently operates under an insurance plan that is managed by multiple groups, including the unions themselves. Fyans said the state wants them to switch to a state-sponsored health insurance plan, which would increase premium costs.

* Sun-Times | Flight attendants picket outside O’Hare, joining thousands at airports across the country: More than 150 flight attendants, joined by U.S. Rep. Jesús “Chuy” Garcia (D-Ill) and Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill), picketed outside O’Hare Airport on Tuesday to protest the lack of contract negotiations and demand better wages and working conditions.

* WCIA | Mayors make their pitch for more state funding, extended pension ramp: The Illinois Municipal League, which represents local governments in the Capitol, said the state should be sending local governments a 10 percent cut of income tax revenues as a part of the LGDF. But right now, that percentage is at 6.47 percent.

* Vandalia Radio | Rules for Illinois’ Paid Leave for All Workers Act on hold amid concerns: Tuesday, the Illinois Municipal League’s Brad Cole promoted legislation to exempt municipalities. Cole said the department improperly changed the law through rule making, something legislators told the department to address before next month’s JCAR hearing.

* Vandalia Radio | Rep Wilhour talks about his campaign and race in the Primary Election: Republican Voters in the 110th State Representative District have a contested race for the March 19th Primary. State Representative Blaine Wilhour is running for re-election and is challenged in the Primary by fellow Republican Matt Hall.

* Crain’s | Here’s Illinois Realtors’ first mailer against the transfer tax referendum: The mailers, which are part of a $1 million campaign by the Springfield-based group to oppose the measure, refer to the proposal as a “property tax referendum” rather than one dealing with the real estate transfer tax.

* Sun-Times | Number of migrants in Chicago shelters at lowest point in months: Down from mid- and early-January peaks of nearly 15,000, the number of migrants in shelters fell below 13,000 for the first time since Nov. 28. The number in shelters has dropped by nearly 1,000 since the start of February.

* Crain’s | Chicago’s new top doc knows what she’s up against: Aside from dealing with funding and staffing shortfalls, Ige is also tasked with establishing “Treatment Not Trauma,” a plan touted by Mayor Brandon Johnson to send therapists and social workers to some 911 calls instead of police officers and reopen city-run mental health clinics over the next several years.

* Sun-Times | Chicago among top cities seeing rising foreclosures: In January, among major metropolitan areas, Chicago had the second largest number of completed foreclosures at 194, ranking behind Detroit’s 609. New York City, Philadelphia and San Francisco rounded out the top five.

* Block Club | 35 Years After Wrongful Conviction, Englewood’s Brian Beals Is Getting His Life Back: Beals returned home in December after serving more than three decades in prison for a crime he didn’t commit — the second-longest wrongful incarceration in Illinois’ history.

* Daily Herald | ‘A convenient argument’: Superintendents say they’re not to blame if Bears stay downtown: “It’s been a convenient argument to keep the conversation going about looking at both areas,” Rowe said of the property tax dispute. “And we’re not surprised one bit that all the other (suburban sites) have fallen off and now it’s just down to the best possible location for all they want in their current home, and a political environment they have to navigate through. I think that it was a convenient argument. And honestly, it stinks. We don’t like it, because it’s not true. But we understand it. And it was used in the process.”

* News-Sun | Coal ash ponds the subject of Pollution Control Board hearing; ‘Waukegan residents deserve better’: Taylor said the company has refused to cooperate with the city removing the pollution its coal furnaces have spewed for nearly a century. Waukegan already has five Superfund sites from other polluters in its industrial past, much of it along the lakefront. “The residents of Waukegan cannot bear the financial cost of yet another environmental catastrophe caused by a private company,” [Waukegan Mayor Ann Taylor] said “This company is failing to address its environmental mess adequately. Waukegan residents deserve better.”

* 25 News Now | Pritzker appoints Peoria’s lead crimefighter to statewide commission: Gov. JB Pritzker has appointed Peoria Police Chief Eric Echevarria to the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority, which is assigned to identify key issues facing the justice system and come up with solutions. The governor appoints 11 of the agency’s 25 members, including a police chief. He became Peoria’s chief in July of 2021 after serving for 20 years for the Elgin Police Department.

* Route Fifty | A decade in, pedestrian deaths dip under Vision Zero: New York City’s ability to curb traffic deaths comes almost entirely from its improved record for pedestrians, according to an analysis by Transportation Alternatives, a New York advocacy group. The number of walkers who died decreased from 140 in 2014 to 100 in 2023. In other words, pedestrian deaths decreased by nearly 13% from the start of New York’s program until 2022, while pedestrian fatalities nationally increased by more than 50%.

* Herald-Review | Decatur officials propose reducing fixed bus routes, introduction of ‘micro-transit’: “By reducing the number of fixed bus routes, the city can increase the frequency of fixed route buses that remain, and focus the bus network to serve key north-south and east-west corridors with high population and more commercial activity,” City Manager Scot Wrighton and Transportation Director Lacie Elzy wrote in a memo to the city council.

* WTTW | With Monarch Butterfly Population at Near Record Low, Chicagoans Have Their Marching Orders: Every Milkweed Stem Counts: The 2023-24 count of monarch butterfly colonies wintering in Mexico has left conservationists reeling, after the recently released results of an annual survey showed the species occupies just .9 hectares (or roughly 2.2 acres) of forest — close to a 60% drop from last year and a near record low.

* Sun-Times | White Sox’ Pedro Grifol eyes a second chance to get this managing thing right: Nobody believed in White Sox manager Pedro Grifol more than former general manager Rick Hahn. At spring training last year and right up until the start of the season, Hahn absolutely gushed about Grifol, bragging to everyone that the man he had wanted to replace Tony La Russa was delivering — and then some — on every expectation.