Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle has been pushing for a substantial pay raise for one of her newest staff hires, and questions are starting to circulate. Preckwinkle has been pushing for a $43,000 pay raise for Mary Laraia, who is "second-in-charge" at the Cook County Forest Preserve. Laraia has been a contributor to Preckwinkle's aldermanic campaigns in the past, and Laraia contributed $2,250 to Preckwinkle's campaign last year. If the raise is approved, Laraia's salary will jump from $111,908 to $155,172 per year, which Commissioner Liz Gorman pointed out was almost a 40% raise. more ›

• Joey "The Clown" Lombardo is the latest mobster sentenced in the Family Secrets trial: Joey received life.
• Uriel Soto-Castro, the man who hit three teens with his car on Friday, is facing aggravated drunken driving charges from the incident; none of the teens' injuries were considered life-threatening.
• The Sun-Times uncovered some rather disproportionately high salaries for some area educators.

The Mark Prior Era is over in Chicago. The Cubs finally gave up on the one-time budding superstar on Wednesday -- the deadline for offering salary arbitration to eligible players--making Prior officially a free agent. Unable to reach an incentive-laden, one-year contract or to find a trading partner, the Cubs chose to non-tender Prior rather than risk overpaying for an injured pitcher. Are we surprised? Chicagoist did predict back in April that we'd never see... more ›

Mike Ditka's red-faced this weekend, and not because of overindulging on his vanity wines. A report in yesterday's USA Today showed that a charity "Da Coach" founded three years ago to help retired Hall of Fame football players whose bodies are ravaged by the violent demands of the NFL has only doled out $57,000 in assistance. Federal and state tax records indicate that $715,000 of the $1.3 million raised by the Mike Ditka Hall of... more ›

Over on Kid Nation, the episode focused on money and greed, as the Council receives directions to go to an abandoned, bat-infested mine (eee!), where they discover a treasure chest full of the town's currency, buffalo nickels. Faced with the decision of distributing the cash among the kids or buying items that the town can collectively share, the Council takes the "big government" approach, buying toys for the town. Shockingly, the kids are A-OK with... more ›

You know it's a slow sports week in town when columnists from the big newspapers start sounding like the drunk guy at the corner bar yelling at the TV during the game, certain he could assemble a better team than the one that management has put together. So who is their target? In his column today Mike Downey follows Jay Mariotti in demanding that the Bulls need to trade for Kobe Bryant. There has been... more ›

Drama at Columbia College is par for the course, with lots of creatives going there to get their degrees. However, we don't think they want this kind of drama. Professor Reid Hyams contends that his recent firing from Columbia College was due to pressure from other faculty members and was out of line with school policy, because it was his first offense. He's filed a lawsuit which contends that his credentials (e.g., has been involved... more ›

Why should billionaires have all the fun? Pretty much any sports fan has fantasized about how they'd run their favorite team if they owned it, and lots of people consider the Cubbies to be their favorite team. A number of them are using the Cubs' impending sale to try to get a piece of the team, even if they don't quite have a 10-figure bank account. Eric Majeski formed 4 Fans Sake, through which he... more ›

This clip from The Simpsons is as good a place to jump off this week, as we're leaving to see the film after we file this, and the beginning setting is at a fair. Which makes a nice segue for us. Last week, we went to the South Side Arts & Music Fest we profiled in last week's installment and were confronted with the sticker shock of seeing a funnel cake sell for nine... more ›

Ever since Frank Kruesi got kicked to the curb back in April, we’ve been nothing short of elated. We looked forward to a new reign of … whatever the opposite of ineptitude is. (Eptitude?) With time comes sobriety, as the usual problems have started cropping up once more. Two trains shutting down in one week? Bad form. Honestly, though, we weren’t expecting that kind of mechanical stuff to be cleared up overnight, especially when the... more ›

In typical short-sighted manner, Mayor Daley lashed out at graffiti artists and their parents yesterday. "Who should be responsible, the building owner?" Daley asked the press. "The building owner should sue them." While Hizzoner has had some success battling graffiti as a quality-of-life issue here in the city, Chicago is gearing up for a projected increase in vandalism, anticipating some 170,000 incidents of graffiti vandalism this year. In response, Daley has proposed an ordinance, at... more ›

Illinois budgets are in trouble all over -- at a meeting with legislative leaders late Tuesday, Gov. Blagojevich warned that unless a budget deal is reached, state government could shut down next month. Selling sex toys on the side and earning a $64,000 salary wasn't enough. Karen Bailey, a top assistant to Cook County Commissioner Jerry "The Iceman" Butler, faces felony charges for allegedly stealing nearly $300,000 from an 87-year-old woman, prosecutors and police... more ›

While the state government devolves into a teeming cesspool of Machiavellian intrigue and self-loathing (quickly becoming an annual tradition in one form or another here in the Land of Lincoln), the world of politics moves on. While we have no problem kicking around Blagojevich (and the other asshole cynics downstate), this week, we're putting it aside, damn it! With out further adieu, here it is, your dose of news before lunch: Daley Takes his Public... more ›

The sports media has been abuzz since ESPN's Ric Bucher reported that L.A. Laker guard Kobe Bryant suggested during an interview that he wanted to be traded if the Lakers didn't lure former GM Jerry West back to the organization. A day later, Kobe refuted that assertion, but the rumor mills continue to swirl about whether the Lakers' prima donna wants out. more ›

By now it comes as no surprise to followers of politics that one of the most valuable assets in Senator Barack Obama's presidential campaign is his wife Michelle. Her demeanor, accessibility and professional pedigree are invaluable to her husband's aspirations. As the Senator's campaign has shifted into higher gear, Mrs. Obama has gradually trained her energies on helping her husband win the Democratic nomination next year. She's taken a leave of absence from her job as Vice President for Community and External Affairs for the University of Chicago Hospitals. But it was her resignation from the board of directors at Treehouse Foods yesterday that may help her husband further in the campaign. more ›

Chicagoist can be lazy sometimes. We feel like we just keep writing, and writing, and writing about injury woes and the Cubs. So we recently decided that it'd be well worth our while to write a fill-in-the-blank post we can simply re-use each time somebody else goes down. How fitting that Mark Prior gives us the first opportunity to utilize our new time saving bit of prefab journalism: Cubs former pitching phenom Mark Prior, who... more ›

Many a pilot and flight attendant will be looking for somewhere else to sleep on their layovers at Midway; an anonymous tip led to an investigation into forty "crash pads" located within a mile of the airport. more ›

Quick, name the top five chefs in Chicago. Now name the five most famous chefs in the country. While the cuisines may vary from Grant Achatz's "molecular gastronomy" to Mario Batali's classic Italian, the one thing that most — or all — of these chefs have in common is the pale, pale, color of their skin. As Maureen Jenkins writes in today's Sun-Times, "the shortage of chefs of African descent is noteworthy if only by... more ›

After months of speculation that the Cubs might be put up for sale as part of a restructuring or sale of Tribune Co., almost immediately after the board's approval of Chicago billionaire Sam Zell's offer, news came that the team would in fact be sold. Now the handicapping can begin on who the new owner will be. There has certainly been no shortage of potential bidders mentioned. Of course, that was before the Cubs went... more ›

Last month we shared with you the rumors that the Chicago Fire were in talks with Mexican Soccer Star Cuauhtémoc Blanco. The Fire announced on Sunday that Blanco would be coming to Chicago on Monday to sign a Designated Player (DP) contract with the Fire. The Fire will become only the third team to take advantage of Major League Soccer's Designated Player rule. The rule allows MLS teams to sign a player and have only... more ›

When we were unhappy with a previous job, our dad gave us a bit of advice about not burning bridges. Even if the situation at the time wasn't ideal, at least it came with a paycheck. And one never knew how actions could impact things — either within that organization, or with others who might move on and could be of help down the road. Unfortunately, Bears linebacker Lance Briggs didn't seem to get the... more ›

Both Red Card and Ridge Mahoney of SoccerAmerica are reporting that Fire GM John Guppy has met with Mexican League Star Cuauhtemoc Blanco about joining the Fire in 2007. SoccerAmerica reported that salary terms of $1.5-2 million per season for either one or three years are being discussed. Blanco, although aging at 34 and having suffered several injuries during his career, continues to find the back of the net, including four times this season for... more ›

Chicagoist is becoming increasingly concerned about Sox GM Kenny Williams and his mental state. Has he been overworked the past few years? Does he need a break? Is he trying to get himself fired? Does he covet some scouting job with the New York Mets? Otherwise, we're at a loss to explain his handling of the White Sox starting rotation since the end of last season. In early December, he traded Freddy Garcia, a workhorse... more ›

Usually, we tend not to take the side of those in sports demanding more, more, more money. And in many ways, it's hard to feel too sorry for a guy who already has a contract that'll pay him more than 20 times Chicagoist's salary. But in the case of Lovie Smith, we just do not understand why he hasn't gotten a new deal yet and why the Bears ownership doesn't just agree to pay what... more ›

It looked like the Cubs and Carlos Zambrano were headed to a contentious arbitration hearing yesterday, but the two sides negotiated right up to the hearing's start time and came to an agreement on a 1-year, $12.4 million deal. more ›

Cubs ace Carlos Zambrano, still awaiting his Feb 20th salary arbitration hearing, made a pretty strong declaration on Monday. Entering the final year of his current deal, he stated that if he and the Cubs don't come to an agreement on a multi-year contract before the season begins, he's leaving the Cubs when he becomes a free agent after the upcoming season. more ›

The Chicago Auto Show is the largest auto show in North America and it is ready to kick off for the 99th time. The show, located at McCormick Place, is open to the public starting Friday, February 9 through Sunday, February 18. The hours are 10am-10pm each day except on the final day when the show ends at 8pm. The event boasts nearly 1,000 domestic and imported vehicles. Chicagoist accepted General Motors’ invite to catch... more ›

We haven't really heard too much from so-called "big box" retailers since City Council unpredictably voted against Daley to decide how much they pay their workers and were subsequently and somewhat-predictably vetoed by Daley. We're not sure where you stood, stand, or sit on the issue, but you should add one more tidbit of info to your argument: Home Depot has announced it will be hiring 2,000 people in the Chicago area. more ›

Today Major League Soccer hosted its 2007 SuperDraft. The draft was overshadowed by yesterday's announcement that David Beckham has signed with the LA Galaxy. Today's newest members of Major League Soccer will get paid significantly less than Beckham's nearly $1 million per week in salary and endorsements. Toronto FC, an MLS expansion team, had the first selection and picked University of Maryland product midfielder Maurice Edu. The Columbus Crew was scheduled to have the second... more ›

Of Fortune Magazine's pick for the 100 best places to work, Illinois companies showed up three times. We're not positive if any of them are somewhere that you work, or that you plan on working when you're done making ends meet with waitressing and bartending jobs, but it's still a nice nod from the wider world of money-making. The three companies listed were CDW Corp., Vernon Hills (technology solutions); Jones Lang LaSalle, Chicago (real estate);... more ›