Politics and Government

McLean County Board Chair Elizabeth Johnston said she disagrees, in part, with Twin City mayors Dan Brady and Chris Koos who have criticized the performance of the Bloomington-Normal Economic Development Council. Johnston said she thinks the EDC has delivered a lot of bang for the buck.

The City of Bloomington has deferred adoption of an Eid al-Fitr Day proclamation in part due to the conflict with Iran.

Bloomington Mayor Dan Brady acknowledged in a WGLT interview the city has already begun to go its own way in project advocacy. Brady has been critical of the annual One Voice collective community lobbying trip to Washington. The city sent its delegation a day early this year to push its own projects.

There are further signs of a thaw in the shared sales tax dispute between the City of Bloomington and Town of Normal on one side and McLean County government on the other. The county board has approved a three month suspension of paying sales tax money from the city and town.

The updated tentative price to build the Uptown underpass project in Normal is about $33.7 million. That is above the roughly $32 million bid approved in November. The previous winning bidder withdrew over concerns about timing and its ability to meet the cost.

As spring storm season kicks in for Central Illinois, McLean County agencies have a new tool in place to notify residents of emergencies via their cell phones.

McLean County Board members grilled County Clerk Kathy Michael for more than 40 minutes yesterday concerning more than $400,000 in budget overages in her office that Michael has asked the county to pay.

The decade-old Underpass project in Uptown Normal has had another hitch. The contractor, Millstone-Weber, said it can't meet the requirements and construction timeline and has pulled out.

The City of Bloomington is stepping into what promises to be a thorny issue: rules about signs. City Manager Jeff Jurgens said the city hasn't revised the sign code since the 1970s.

A woman is suing the state of Illinois and the Illinois Department of Corrections, alleging the state prison system forced her to give birth before she was due. Amy Hicks was in custody at the Logan Correctional Center in Lincoln in early 2024, held on a drug conviction. Over her objections, she was taken to a hospital and labor was induced two weeks before her due date.