News Local/State
Rochelle Harden was sworn in Wednesday night as the first-ever African-American trustee at Parkland College in Champaign. But that milestone has been overshadowed by the fact that the new trustee is also a member of the community college’s faculty.
News Local/State
Bambenek's 2016 nomination was never confirmed by the Illinois State Senate and drew protests from University of Illinois faculty, who said he wasn't qualified to serve.
News Local/State
An Illinois retirement board is terminating former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert’s state pension. He’d been collecting about $28-thousand a year for his service in the state legislature. The General Assembly Retirement System's board of trustees voted 5 to 2 Wednesday to end the pension.
News Local/State
Illinois Senate President John Cullerton says he and his colleagues will take up a partial government spending bill passed by the House earlier this month.
News Local/State
As women rallied at the Illinois Capitol Tuesday, the House passed a measure that would allow abortion to be covered by Medicaid and state-employee health insurance. If it also passes the Senate, it would be the first abortion legislation sent to the governor’s desk in 17 years.
News Local/State
WILL AM-580 is welcoming a new voice to our airwaves beginning Monday, May 1. The talk show 1A will air weekdays from 9-11am, just before Illinois Public Media's daily talk show “The 21st.”
News Local/State
Actor and alumnus Nick Offerman will be the commencement speaker for the University of Illinois' Urbana campus on May 13. The selection was confirmed late Tuesday afternoon with a short video of Offerman posted to the U of I's Facebook page. In the video, Offerman took on the mannerisms of Ron Swanson, the character he played on the TV show "Parks and Recreation."
News Local/State
State Representative Carol Ammons (D-Urbana) says she’ll announce by late June if she’s running for Illinois’ 13th Congressional District in 2018. For now, she's formed an exploratory committee to help her decide whether to challenge Republican Congressman Rodney Davis of Taylorville. She announced her possible run for Congress after Tuesday's women's march in downtown Springfield.
News Local/State
Legislation aims to improve working conditions for temporary workers as the need for them increases. There were more than 840,000 workers employed by staffing agencies in Illinois in 2015, according to the American Staffing Association.
News Local/State
It's a sentiment shared by Democratic politicians and liberal pundits: disgust over how Republicans drew up favorable (for them) legislative districts after the 2010 Census. But one place Democrats aren't fighting is Illinois, where they could be seen as the bad guy, having drawn legislative boundaries in 2011 that put the GOP at a disadvantage.
