- Resignation ruse? Gov. Quinn says he hasn’t actually carried out his pledge to ask for department head resignations yet because he’s been preoccupied with budget woes. The governor tells the Trib he’ll get to it ASAP. Trib also reports that Quinn is scrapping the $122 million Put Illinois to Work program because it only found permanent jobs for 10 percent of the applicants.
- Regional relief. Jim Warren’s Chicago News Coop column in The New York Times focuses on an important but mostly ignored conference in Chicago that looked at how other cities around the world have benefitted from regional or metropolitan solutions to urban problems.
- Budget busters? Sun-Times reports on big raises for a few administrators in Cook County’s health care system at a time when county government is facing a nearly half-billion dollar deficit.
- Goudie goody. Chuck Goudie writes in the Daily Herald that Illinois “takes a giant leap back into the Dark Ages” with changes to the Illinois Freedom of Information Law that exclude access to personnel records. BGA agrees.
