• The Cook County Board agreed to pay a total of $525,000 - in installments - to former death row inmate Leroy Orange as a result of a wrongful conviction lawsuit. Orange has already received $5.5 million from the City.
• The Board also approved a $108 million redevelopment plan for the old Cook County Hospital.
• The City's handgun ban wasn't the only SCOTUS appearance this week. The court also heard arguments regarding the Honest Services Law which affects both the case against former Sun-Times owner Conrad Black and former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich.

Just days after the death of his father, Cook County Board President Todd Stroger has indicated that he may agree to give control of the county hospitals to an independent agency. Stroger's chief of staff Lance Tyson told Crain's Chicago Business "the intent is to take health services for the poor out of the sphere of politics and put it into a sphere of greater business expertise." The proposal to turn the county's health care system over to an independent body came last October, when a committee of business and health care executives commissioned to study the systemreleased their recommendations. more ›

Crook County Board President Todd Stroger unveiled his $3.2 billion budget Wednesday. Stroger has struggled to give the appearance that his government is small and fiscally responsible, eliminating about 735 positions over the last three fiscal years, and reducing 1,800 positions from this year's budget. Now he claims that bringing the county's tax take to $888 million by 2009 — by tripling the county sales tax and doubling gas and parking taxes — is necessary... more ›

SHOOTING: Two homeless men shot in a 24 hour span in Uptown -- they appear to be unrelated. In more shooting news (why is there so much?!): Police have two "persons of interest" in custody Sunday morning after two teenagers were shot in a playlot on the South Side in the Woodlawn neighborhood, blocks from the University of Chicago campus. TRAINS: Our dear friend warns us: This is why you NEVER put headphones in... more ›

Hell may freeze over yet. After all of daddy John’s efforts to demolish old Cook County General Hospital, Todd Stroger’s leading the charge to renovate the beast. The Toddler plans to make it an agenda at next week’s County Board meeting. Preservation and renovation carry a price tag of roughly $140 million. For now, the plan is to turn the 93-year-old structure into medical office space, libraries, a day-care center and, if there’s any space... more ›

Back in the waning days of the late 1990s, Chicagoist’s college roommate came to visit us. Since he was a big "ER" fan (remember this was the late 90s when the show was still good), he demanded to see where “County General” was. We had to delicately break it to him that there was no such place though we did take him by its doppelganger, the old Cook County Hospital building. We further shattered his illusions by driving him past Michigan and Wacker to illustrate how George Clooney and Anthony Edwards would have been idiots to talk a walk down by the river during their breaks from saving lives. more ›

Santa Claus, The Easter Bunny, strippers who really like you and television medical dramas. What do these things have in common? None of them are real (except for House. That shit’s all true. The woman from last season with a 30-pound tumor? Totally happened to someone at Northwestern). more ›

High noon came and went in the Cook County Board yesterday, and it seems that the bullets hit their mark. It was all about passing the 2005 budget. Three months late, and with a $73 million deficit, Board President John Stroger (at right) refused to make cuts, and instead insisted on increasing hotel and restaurant sales taxes two percent, lifting Chicago taxes to the nation's highest, 19.25%. Cutting the budget would lead to significant service... more ›

Chicago historians and architecture buffs who are in a rage over the impending demolition of Cook County Hospital will be happy to know that the National Trust for Historic Preservation named the historic site to its 11 Most Endangered Historic Places of 2004 list. Well, not happy per-se, but psyched for the backup. Cook County Hospital (handy map) was built in 1913 and was home to the first blood bank in the world in... more ›