The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services can delay reports for years.
Government Finance & Accountability
Posted inInvestigations
A New Wastewater Plant in Carterville Could Stop Sewage Overflows — Why Hasn’t Construction Started Yet?
Carterville reported 40 sanitary sewer overflows in the past decade. City officials have known for years that a new wastewater treatment plant would resolve the issue. They promised it would be operational by last year. But construction hasn’t started yet. Meanwhile, residents deal with flooding and backed up basements.
Posted inInvestigating Responses
Wasted Waters: How Southern Illinois is Coping with Decades of Sewage Flooding… and Why it Still Isn’t Solved.
Five dozen communities in Southern Illinois account for a third of the reported sanitary sewer overflows in the state in the last decade. But with low revenues, population declines, and bureaucratic delays, solutions are hard to come by. Meanwhile, residents face property damage flooded yards and basements and governments that still haven’t fixed the problem.
Posted inInvestigating Responses
Explainer: What is a sanitary sewer overflow?
Sanitary sewer overflows, SSOs, are a release of untreated or partially treated waste from a city sewer. Sanitary sewer overflows are illegal. But when normal systems become overloaded through heavy rain or a larger load from an increasing population, SSOs occur.
Posted inInvestigating Responses
‘Granny flats’ are illegal to build in most of Chicago —and political gridlock is keeping it that way.
A three-year pilot program that legalized accessory dwelling units or “granny flats” in some areas of the city opened up more housing options in neighborhoods where cheap apartments have become increasingly rare. But the burst of construction seen so far is a pittance compared to the more than 100,000 affordable units experts say it would take to satisfy demand.
Posted inInvestigating Responses
Unsettling Accounts: How Illinois is Confronting the Student Loan Crisis
Illinois has one of the highest rates of student loans in the country, compelling the state to intervene so that residents burdened by debt can have some financial freedom to pursue their goals, including offering state-level loans and programs like the SmartBuy program which relieves a portion of student loan debt for residents who sign up to purchase a home through the program. But legislative support and limited funding for some of these initiatives are barriers to success.
Posted inGovernment Finance & Accountability
Quiet Use of Bonuses for City Council Aides on the Rise
Alderpeople defend the practice, saying the aides deserve the extra money for their hard work, but critics decry the process as arbitrary.
Posted inInvestigations
Chicago Cops Did Little to Investigate How a Gun a Judge Turned in to be Destroyed Ended up at a Crime Scene
The revolver that Cook County Judge William Stewart Boyd turned in at a Chicago police gun buyback resurfaced at the scene of a fatal police shooting in Cicero in 2012. Police said it would be “difficult and unwise” to interview anyone involved in the buyback and closed the investigation.
Posted inInvestigations
Child Welfare Agency Failed Repeatedly to Produce ‘Critical’ Reports After Child Deaths, Injuries
The Department of Children and Family Services is legally required to make the reports public after examining what went wrong but did not in thousands of instances.
Posted inInvestigations
Cook County Assessor Fixes Hundreds of Misclassified Properties Following Illinois Answers-Tribune Investigation
The corrections have put nearly half a billion dollars in taxable real estate value back on the rolls.
