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* ICYMI: After weeks of wrangling, Johnson wins narrow passage of his $17.1B budget. Crain’s…

- Mayor Brandon Johnson secured final approval, 27-23, of his $17.1 billion budget yesterday after agreeing to completely eliminate a property tax increase.

- A separate vote on city spending, revised downward from $17.3 billion, was approved 27-to-23.

-Johnson also looked ahead, pledging to find the progressive revenue that has thus far escaped his grasp. He repeatedly mentioned working with state leaders to take a second run at imposing a graduated income tax at the state level.

* Related stories…

∙ Block Club: City Council Passes 2025 Budget That Avoids Property Tax Hike
∙ Tribune: Aldermen finally pass Mayor Brandon Johnson’s 2025 Chicago budget
∙ Sun-Times: City Council finally passes Johnson’s $17.3B budget — with no property tax hike

*** Isabel’s Top Picks ***

* BND | Metro-east mobile home parks bought by outside investment firm leave tenants ‘suffering’: Residents of multiple local mobile home parks purchased by Homes of America have been living with leaking roofs, mold and pests and going without heating or cooling because they say the company is deferring needed maintenance and leaving tenants feeling ignored, while also raising the costs to live in what were once affordable homes. Their complaints and living conditions were detailed in interviews, as well as a number of lawsuits and government inspection reports.

* Streetsblog | Illinois could help beat the transit fiscal cliff by shifting federal funding from highways to public transportation: “Every governor in the U.S. has the opportunity to move money towards public transportation that they have already received from the Bipartisan Infrastructure law,” Levin explained. He noted that in November, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro moved $153 million in BIL money from highway funding towards SEPTA, Philadelphia’s transit authority. “We think Illinois has an opportunity to do the same.”

*** Statehouse News ***

* KHQA | Illinois law requires employers to disclose pay scale and benefits in job postings by 2025: The Pay Transparency Law takes effect January 1, 2025, in Illinois. This law requires pay scale and benefit information in job postings. The Illinois Department of Labor (IDOL) is reminding job seekers and employers that, effective January 1, 2025, all job postings made by employers with 15 or more employees will need to include pay scale and benefit information.

*** Statewide ***

* Capitol News Illinois | Illinois’ presidential electors to meet Tuesday to cast votes for Harris: After Tuesday’s ceremony at the Statehouse, the electors’ ballots will be sent to the president of the U.S. Senate, where they will be opened and counted during a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6. Since the vice president serves as president of the Senate, that means Harris will have the responsibility to open the ballots and declare her opponent, Trump, the winner.

* Press Release | Eliot Clay Selected as New AISWCD Executive Director: The Association of Illinois Soil & Water Conservation Districts (AISWCD) is pleased to announce the selection of Eliot Clay as its new Executive Director. Clay, a seasoned policy leader with deep expertise in agriculture, conservation and environmental issues, brings a wealth of experience to the organization. Clay comes to the AISWCD from the Illinois Environmental Council (IEC), where he led their policy agenda on agriculture, conservation and on how natural and working lands are utilized in Illinois.

* Chicago Business Journal | Intersect Illinois’ new CEO Christy George unveils her 2025 goals: Among the things Intersect Illinois, a statewide economic development organization, seeks to do next year is recruit more businesses to the state and help local businesses expand their footprint. Those are some of the goals Christy George, Intersect’s president and CEO, said she hopes to achieve after being hired in November to head up the nonprofit.

* Pantagraph | Illinois Farm Bureau launches beer collaboration with Destihl: Illinois Farm Bureau, originally known as the Illinois Agricultural Association, calls Roots Lager a toast to the hard-working family farmers across Illinois “who feed our communities and protect our environment, the organization said in a news release. “We are always looking for fun, innovative ways to tell people about the value of an Illinois Farm Bureau membership,” said IFB President Brian Duncan in a statement. “Illinois Farm Bureau gives its members an advantage through impactful advocacy, trusted information and meaningful development to support their careers and Illinois farm families.”

*** Chicago ***

* Chalkbeat Chicago | Mayor Johnson announces 10 of 11 appointees for new Chicago Board of Education: Mayor Brandon Johnson picked 10 of 11 people Monday to round out the city’s new half-elected, half-appointed school board — including some who ran unsuccessfully in Chicago’s first school board elections this November. The new board will be sworn in Jan. 15, 2025, and will include 10 people who won in November. State law required the mayor choose the other 11 people, including a board president, by Monday.

* Sun-Times | Mayor appoints new members to fill CPS school board: Johnson’s 11 appointees are led by new school board president Sean Harden, a consulting executive who worked as an executive assistant to former Mayor Richard M. Daley in the mid 2000s, then for CPS as deputy CEO for community affairs from 2009 to 2011 under then-schools chief Ron Huberman. Since then, he has been involved in real estate development, community revitalization and workforce development organizations.

* Block Club | CPS Shares Plan To Keep Open 5 Of 7 Acero Charter Schools Due To Close: The district’s recommendation came after nearly two-and-a-half hours of public comment at Thursday’s Board of Education meeting, as teachers and families pleaded with the district to help save the seven campuses.

* Crain’s | Columbia College launches layoffs, course restructuring as deficit looms: Columbia College Chicago’s board of trustees today approved a plan to restructure the school’s course offerings, which will include elimination of up to 25 full-time faculty positions and some programs and offerings, as the school tries to close a $34 million deficit it recorded in fiscal year 2024.

* Crain’s | Harris Poll: Chicagoans don’t want to pay more taxes or have services cut: Taxes and fees topped Cook County residents’ list of policy concerns in our poll, with 66% citing the issue — that even beat public safety, which only 55% named. The two issues were virtually tied among city dwellers specifically (with 66% citing public safety, and 65% citing taxes and fees), but that only underscores the extent to which it is at the front of public consciousness.

* Tribune | Chicago Stars and Sky make the case for equality and ‘drive toward change’ in a stadium public funding bill hearing: Chicago Stars President Karen Leetzow wants to further the conversation and education about equity in women’s sports. As the Stars navigate building a training center and venue, Leetzow and other key figures within the Chicago women’s soccer and basketball scene finally had an opportunity to address equality in public funding to Illinois state representatives.

* Sun-Times | Bears keep heading south in NFC North as Vikings blast them 30-12: The Bears dropped their eighth consecutive game Monday night — this time predictably getting trucked 30-12 by the Vikings in a nationally televised game — to tie the second-longest losing streak in franchise history. When they fell behind 27-6 with 10 minutes left, Williams had completed 14 of 23 passes for 157 yards with no touchdowns for an 81.3 passer rating. The Bears (4-10) have a ton of problems, but they’re not going anywhere with him playing like that.

* WTTW | Start Sharpening Your Puns, Chicago. Annual ‘Name a Snowplow’ Contest Is Now Underway: Submissions — limited to 50 characters or less — are due by Jan. 4 or whenever entries hit 20,000, whichever comes first. (Click here
for info on how to submit.) Streets and Sanitation staff will choose 50 finalists and then open up the voting to residents on Jan. 10. People can vote for as many as six names by Jan. 21.

* Block Club | Christkindlmarket Is The Most Overcrowded Holiday Market In The US, Survey Says: Last year, 1.3 million visitors passed through the Daley Plaza Christkindlmarket, while 480,000 people visited the Wrigley Field Christkindlmarket, according to market organizers. The market had a record-breaking year for attendance in 2023 across its three markets in the Loop, Lakeview and Aurora.

*** Cook County and Suburbs ***

* Daily Herald | ‘Matlock’ moment sinks candidate’s Elk Grove Village board bid: Elk Grove Village’s spring village board election will be uncontested after trustee candidate Jacob Glimco was tossed from the ballot Monday for not having enough valid signatures on his nominating petitions. The village electoral board — a rarely-constituted panel composed of Mayor Craig Johnson, Village Clerk Lorrie Murphy and Trustee Chris Prochno — formally invalidated three signatures and sustained one, during a hearing Monday afternoon on fellow first-time candidate Keith Lasken’s objection to Glimco’s nomination.

* Sun-Times | Suburban pizzeria owner gets 4 years for largest sales tax evasion in state history, prosecutors say: Cirrincione, 60, pleaded guilty on Nov. 12 to a felony count of continuing a financial criminal enterprise. Prosecutors accused him of failing to report over $104 million in income from a chain of family-owned pizza restaurants and businesses in Chicago and the suburbs.

*** Downstate ***

* SJ-R | Crouch: Merit commission part of new hiring process for sheriff’s department: Among the most pertinent hiring changes under Crouch are a sheriff’s merit commission and a mandate that investigators review records in person if an applicant worked at another law enforcement agency. Those changes come as the U.S. Department of Justice last month launched an investigation into the sheriff’s department and other county offices. The offices had to comply in turning over records by Dec. 14.

* Herald Whig | Airline reliability key for new EAS provider: Southern Airways Express, the city’s current provider, promised it would expand Quincy’s air traffic from the 10-12,000 passengers it got annually under Cape Air and SkyWest Airlines up to 20,000 annually. Instead, complaints of unreliability that was first attributed to pilot shortages, then weather and mechanical failures and finally fleet shortages reduced traffic to 4,000.

* PJ Star | Comedy icon Chevy Chase dines at longtime Peoria steakhouse during visit: Comedy icon Chevy Chase – who starred as Clark Griswold – hopefully enjoyed a meal with fewer mishaps when he and his family visited Jim’s Steakhouse in Downtown Peoria this past weekend.

*** National ***

* The Atlantic | The Technology That Actually Runs Our World: In 2024, culture is boring and stale due to the algorithms calling the shots on what gets produced and praised—or so the critics say. The New Yorker staff writer Kyle Chayka wrote an entire book about how Big Tech has successfully “flattened culture” into a series of facsimile coffee shops and mid-century-modern furniture. The critic Jason Farago argued in The New York Times Magazine that “the plunge through our screens” and “our submission to algorithmic recommendation engines” have created a lack of momentum. Pinning the blame on new inventions isn’t a fresh argument either: In a 1923 essay, Aldous Huxley pointed to the ease of cultural production, driven by a growing middle-class desire for entertainment, as a major culprit for why mass-market books, movies, and music were so unsatisfying.