News

While state politicians Sen. Doris Turner and Rep. Mike Coffey represent different parties, both were displeased with two of the bills passed during last month’s veto session. At a Tuesday evening Citizens Club forum held at the Hoogland Center for the Arts, they shared their thoughts on a transit reform package to avert Chicago public […]

A court hearing is scheduled Dec. 4 to finalize a $7.6 million settlement that would pay people whose personal information was seized by hackers in a targeted cyber attack that temporarily crippled Hospital Sisters Health System in 2023. The nonprofit health system, based in rural Sangamon County near Riverton, discovered the suspicious cyber activity “by […]

The city of Springfield’s Police Community Review Commission approved an extension of the window that citizens can file complaints from 15 days to 30 days – though the city council will also have to approve the change – during its final meeting of the year on Nov. 6. In addition, Sunshine Clemons, co-founder of the […]

U.S. Rep. Nikki Budzinski is demanding to know why a building management company accused of failing to provide safe and clean living conditions in one of its Springfield-based apartment buildings has not taken action. Budzinski, a Democrat who represents Illinois’ 13th congressional district, sent a letter Nov. 24 to Pacific Management Inc., seeking answers about […]

If advocates, stakeholders and members of the public were granted all their requests for public school funding next year, lawmakers would have to increase the state’s K-12 education budget by nearly three-quarters of a billion dollars. That’s the approximate total of all the requests that Illinois State Board of Education officials received online and in-person during a […]

Crews dispatched by the city Nov. 24 cleaned up what remained of an encampment of homeless people in the 800 block of North Ninth Street in Springfield that had persisted since the spring. Cleanup of the site – spread across three vacant lots owned by the city, Sangamon County and a private landowner – took […]

It’s unclear whether the Sangamon County Board can, or will, delay a vote for six months or more on zoning, as some residents have requested, for what would be the county’s first data center. But the board has taken a step to broaden discussion on the controversial proposal by scheduling a Dec. 3 public hearing. […]

The Springfield City Council once again shot down the idea of a landlord registry during a chaotic Nov. 18 meeting, voting not to place an advisory referendum on the March ballot for voters to decide whether the city should compile a list of landlords and monitor their rental properties. The ordinance failed despite a 5-4 […]

Springfield, the site of the very first paid professional women’s baseball game of any kind, will soon be home again to women’s professional baseball. The inaugural season of the Women’s Professional Baseball League will be played at Robin Roberts Stadium starting Aug. 1. Four teams, from San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston and New York, will […]

Steven Herman, the former White House and chief national correspondent for Voice of America, gave a 45-minute speech at Illini Country Club Wednesday night that that the Trump Administration surely wouldn’t have liked. In a packed room that included U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, Herman chastised the government’s incursions on freedom of the press that have […]