* Capitol News Illinois…

But now, as he enters his third term as speaker, [Chris Welch] and the Democratic caucus he leads face several new challenges, including significant budget constraints and divisions within the caucus itself. Those divisions erupted in a closed-door caucus meeting during the recent lame duck session and spilled over into public view during contentious negotiations over a bill to regulate the hemp industry. […]

“Let me say that we had a caucus on a very divisive issue,” Welch said. “We’ve had three caucuses in three different years now on that particular issue, and it gets very emotional. And I have talked to members who, I think, crossed the line and asked them to apologize. And it’s my understanding, at least one member has reached out to a staffer and tried to apologize.”

As for the governor, Welch said, “our relationship is great.”

“I love and respect the governor. In my four years as speaker, we’ve accomplished some great policy victories,” he said. “I’ve got two more years here as speaker again, thank God, and we’re going to land more big policy victories. You know, the governor has a job to do, but I have a job to do too.”

* City Bureau…

City Bureau spoke with more than a dozen migrant day laborers who said wage theft, sub-minimum wage rates and clashes with Home Depot security personnel — including off-duty Chicago Police Department officers — have made it precarious for them to look for work.

For decades, Chicago immigrants have turned to informal gigs, often solicited on street corners or in Home Depot parking lots, in hopes of earning money to survive. […]

Unlike publicly funded hiring halls in California and Texas, where day laborers can safely connect with contractors and negotiate pay rates, Chicago’s day labor industry is rife with wage theft, unsafe working conditions, physical violence and exploitation, City Bureau found.

People entering the day labor sector don’t always know about minimum wage laws. Some get paid far less than they were promised at the start of the day, while others might finish a full day of work and end up with no pay at all, organizers and workers said.

*** Statewide ***

* Press Release | Illinois EPA Bringing Recycle Coach To All Illinois Communities: Illinois Environmental Protection Agency (Illinois EPA) Director James Jennings has announced a new partnership with Recycle Coach to provide all Illinois residents in 6,835 units of local government a holistic, locally-tailored, easy to access recycling education platform. In the coming months, Recycle Coach will be engaging counties and municipalities across the state to ensure all Illinois residents are afforded the opportunity to have their community participate in this opportunity. Use of the program will decrease inbound contamination at material recovery facilities in Illinois, increase the amount of material diverted from Illinois landfills, prevent environmental contamination, and ultimately reduce emissions that contribute to climate change.

* NPR | Illinois students have sent over 5,000 tips to ‘Safe2Help’ school safety helpline since launch: Since its initial launch four years ago, Illinois students have submitted over 5,000 tips to the service. That’s according to a Freedom of Information Act request by WNIJ. The state says if students don’t have a trusted adult in their life, they can confidentially send in information online, through text, or an app. It’s then vetted by the Illinois State Police. They can get in touch with local law enforcement or school staff like a social worker.

*** Chicago ***

* Crain’s | United Center owners snap up nearby lots as Near West Side megaproject takes shape: A venture controlled by the Reinsdorf and Wirtz families that own the teams and arena paid nearly $36 million late last month for a series of surface lots within blocks of the venue, according to Cook County property records. The entity bought the lots from an affiliate of Red Top Parking, a longtime operator of parking lots near the United Center that has sold other land to the team owners over the past few years.

* Carole Brown and Julie Hamos | Money alone won’t resolve the region’s transit crisis: As a former state legislator and transit board chair, we strongly believe in the importance of the public transit services provided by CTA, Metra, and Pace. We are also intimately aware of the shortcomings of the current system, including fragmented and inefficient decision-making, a lack of coordination, rigid and outdated funding formulas, and unclear lines of accountability. So while it is important to address the looming funding crisis, we want to stress that funding alone will not address the very real structural challenges at the heart of the system.

While she apologized for remarks made comparing Pedro Martinez to a special education student, Stacy Davis Gates has not apologized directly to Martinez by phone, text or in person.
⁦@PedroCPSCEO⁩
⁦@stacydavisgates⁩ pic.twitter.com/dEryWQUr57

— Mary Ann Ahern (@MaryAnnAhernNBC) January 16, 2025

* Crain’s | At 97, Chicago’s pioneering Black capitalist reflects on a career spanning from Afro Sheen to ‘Soul Train’: Johnson is not the first or last business owner to have second thoughts about heading to Wall Street. “Once we went public everything was exposed,” he writes. “Essentially, it meant taking our clothes off in public, in our personal life as well as professionally. The dynamics change when investors own stock in your company. The investors get to ask questions, and you’re there to answer them.”

* ESPN | Are NFL teams letting agents impact coach hiring? Why the league cares: Since 2018, agent and ex-Chicago defensive end Trace Armstrong and his agency, Athletes First, have represented two fired Bears head coaches, Matt Nagy and Eberflus; three fired offensive coordinators, Mark Helfrich, Luke Getsy and Shane Waldron; as well as current general manager Ryan Poles. “I’ve never seen one agent have so much influence on one team and had so little success, but they keep going back and taking his guys,” said one coaching agent, who requested anonymity to speak freely on the topic. “And we all kind of shake our heads like, have they not figured this out yet?”

*** Cook County and Suburbs ***

* Lake County News Sun | Lake County business leaders told to expect ‘solid’ economic growth, despite uncertainties: Economic analysis painted a generally positive, if somewhat uncertain, picture of 2025 during the Forecast Lake County Luncheon Thursday, with Thomas Walstrum, an economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, walking local business leaders and officials through an assortment of economic data from S&P Global. “I would call it a good forecast,” Walstrum said. “GDP growth is near trend; unemployment is low. There’s the potential for a bump in inflation … but overall, I’d call it a forecast for solid growth.”

* Daily Herald | ‘He had been wandering all night’: Forest preserve police lauded for finding man missing in frigid conditions: Two veteran Lake County Forest Preserves police officers have been honored for their dedication and effort to find a 60-year-old man with autism who had been lost overnight while the temperature dipped below freezing. Sgt. Brad Ehrhardt was presented with the Service Award and Officer Michael Viramontes received the Lifesaving Award as special recognition during the forest board meeting Wednesday.

* Daily Herald | County, DuPage Foundation raise almost $400K to help shelter homeless this winter: County board members agreed in December to allocate $200,000 from the county’s affordable housing fund to support DuPagePads after President and CEO April Redzic highlighted the demand for shelter. The nonprofit’s board dedicated $150,000 — tripling the budgeted amount — to provide additional winter emergency shelter for people on a waitlist for rooms at an interim housing center DuPagePads operates in a former Downers Grove hotel. But that sum still wasn’t going to be enough.

* Crain’s | Northwestern posts surplus and near-record fundraising: The university posted a budget surplus of $54.6 million for fiscal year 2024, up from a surplus of $8.6 million in fiscal 2023, despite spending north of $200 million more on operating expenses in 2024 compared to the previous year.

*** Downstate ***

* ABC Chicago | Rockford becomes nation’s ‘Hottest Housing Market’ for first time, according to Realtor.com: Their rankings put Rockford in the top spot ahead of Manchester, New Hampshire. Manchester has claimed the top spot on the list for 31 times since 2017. Homes in Rockford, which list for a median price of $242,000, spend just 43 days on the market, compared to the national average of 70, according to Realtor.com. The national median listing price of a home is $424,900.

* WaPo | Only one coach beat Notre Dame this season. Let him tell you about it: The wonderland of this long college football season sits just off Interstate 88 way west of Chicago and just down a boulevard named for Annie Glidden, the famed farmer who lived from 1865 to 1965 while coaxing the soil into wonders. It’s a wonderland that went 8-5 but a wonderland no less, dammit, because of the storybook day it gave itself and the country Sept. 7. It proved how a sunny day can shine even into January when the horizon looks barren and the winter wind means serious business.

* BND | East St. Louis schools reopen a week after others as residents vent about still-icy roads: Most schools across St. Clair and Madison County were back in session by Friday of last week, with several smaller districts with fewer bus routes welcoming students back as early as Wednesday. “Belleville got the same amount of snow as East St. Louis and all of their schools are open. Their buses and cars are running. I’ve gotten stuck three times,” said resident April Jenkins. “I have hit so many pot holes because you can’t see the pot holes over the snow. It’s not fair to the city, the teachers, the students.”

* WCIA | Senior workforce program coming to Decatur: An Illinois non-profit is tapping into a group that might be looking for a new opportunity. It’s offering free healthcare training for people 55 and over. […] The Hospice and Palliative Care Foundation said it will go on for 10-12 weeks. Classes will meet once a week for around 4 hours and teach what you need to know to become a community health worker.

* WSIL | MLK Love Train happening Saturday in southern Illinois: The program will open with a prayer by Darrell Wimberly with a musical performance by LaCaje Hill. Speakers for the event will be Julian Watkins and Ginger Rye Sanders with a performance by Clo Johnson. The closing song will be performed by Aveon Winfield and Anu Dai.

*** National ***

* Atlanta Journal Constitution | Federal loan for Rivian earns approval days before Biden leaves office: The loan, which comes as President Joe Biden exits the White House, will provide Rivian with the financial backing to build its plant in southern Morgan and Walton counties, roughly an hour east of Atlanta. The $5 billion project was first proposed in late 2021 and was initially supposed to open in 2024, but delays mounted as the upstart automaker slogged through supply chain issues and other challenges.

* WaPo | Antiabortion advocates look for men to report their partners’ abortions: The strategy propelled a first-of-its-kind lawsuit filed last month by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton that cited first-hand information from an unnamed “biological father” to accuse a New York doctor of illegally providing abortion pills to a woman in the Dallas area, according to two people familiar with the case’s origins.