Carrie Austin

Months of argument and anguish over Mayor Rahm Emanuel's push for sweeping school closings came to a climax Wednesday as his hand-picked Board of Education voted to shut 49 elementary schools and transfer thousands of children to new classroom settings....

After the Chicago School Board meeting Wednesday, many of the aldermen who argued unsuccessfully to keep schools in their wards open said they were disappointed with the process. Ald. Deborah Graham, 29th, said she went to testify at the school board...

Months of argument and anguish over Mayor Rahm Emanuel's push for sweeping school closings came to a climax Wednesday as his hand-picked Board of Education voted to shut 49 elementary schools and transfer thousands of children to new classroom settings....

Aldermen, have your heads stopped spinning over all the details in that McCormick Place/Navy Pier megadeal announced Thursday? If so, we have some questions for you. No, not about that megadeal. About the last megadeal. The one on revising the parking...

Norma Reyes, who served as Chicago's deputy chief of staff and commissioner of business affairs and consumer protection, died Monday. She was 56. Reyes worked as a Cook County assistant state’s attorney for nine years before becoming chief...

Smaller religious institutions and other nonprofit organizations that do charitable work would get free city water once again, while some larger ones would get greater water discounts than they do now under a plan the City Council Budget Committee...

More than 100 religious leaders and a handful of aldermen today called for a repeal of the water fee imposed on non-profits by the city last year. "The lake is a gift from God," said Cardinal Francis George said. "We feel sometimes we should charge...

Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Chicago aldermen have proposed a compromise to religious leaders who say that paying their water bill after decades of a blanket exemption will rob them of the resources necessary to provide social services. On Sunday, city...

Chicago aldermen today balked at an ethics reform bill proposed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel, even after the mayor agreed to heavily dilute provisions after City Council members fretted about the potential use of anonymous complaints for political retribution....

Mayor Rahm Emanuel said Thursday that restoring free water service to churches and non-profit agencies as some aldermen suggest would reverse a campaign promise he’s fulfilled. “I pledged in the campaign that we were not going to give away...

Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., the ambitious political heir to a powerful Chicago family whose once promising future collapsed amid federal ethics investigations and a diagnosis of mental illness, resigned Wednesday from the South Side congressional seat he held...

Ald. Carrie Austin, 34th, whose far South Side ward is in the 2nd Congressional District, says she wasn't surprised that Jesse Jackson Jr. resigned from Congress. But she believes his constituents in the 2nd District feel stung after rallying behind...