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Derrick Johnson, a worker with the Chicago Department of Streets and Sanitation, trims branches from a maple tree on the 11500 block of South Bishop Street last month.
Derrick Johnson, a worker with the Chicago Department of Streets and Sanitation, trims branches from a maple tree on the 11500 block of South Bishop Street last month. (Credit: Victor Hilitski/For Illinois Answers Project)

Alex Nitkin is a government finance and accountability reporter conducting investigations on systemic problems and the public policies that are meant to fix them in Chicago, Cook County and Illinois government. Before joining Illinois Answers, he worked as a reporter and editor for The Daily Line covering Cook County and Chicago government. He previously worked at The Real Deal Chicago, where he covered local real estate news, and DNAinfo Chicago, where he worked as a breaking news reporter and then as a neighborhood reporter covering the city's Northwest Side. A New York native who grew up in Connecticut, Alex graduated Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism with a bachelor’s degree.