The 21st is starting a new series highlighting mayoral races happening across Illinois, starting with Springfield. We talked with the incumbent and the challenger.

The 21st is starting a new series highlighting mayoral races happening across Illinois, starting with Springfield. We talked with the incumbent and the challenger.

Analysis: University of Illinois Springfield Distinguished Public Finance Professor Kenneth Kriz co-edited a book that documents the evolution of tax increment financing, an economic and community development method widely used across the country, including in Illinois, which has more than 1,400 TIF districts in over 500 municipalities. Tax Increment Financing and Economic Development: Uses, Structures, and Impacts was recently published by SUNY Press.

The Trump administration wants to show rural communities, which voted for him by wide margins in the 2016 election, they are still on the president’s mind. It suggested a list of broad ideas in January to spark growth and carved out rural interests in an infrastructure plan.

Five of the six Democrats running for governor were in Peoria over the Martin Luther King Day weekend. They were making largely similar cases to voters at a forum on criminal and economic justice.