Erin Allen: Good morning. I'm Erin Allen and this is The Rundown. 

Bring Chicago Home is a homelessness prevention coalition. And they've been pushing a proposal for Chicago to pay for affordable housing by raising the city's real estate transfer tax by 1.9%, but only on properties over $1 million dollars, according to Block Club Chicago. The estimated $163 million from this proposal would go towards support for nearly 65,000 unhoused residents, including permanent housing solutions, mental health, job training and other services, according to The Tribe. A group of alder people advocating for the ordinance called for a special meeting of the City Council yesterday at 9am to push the legislation forward so it could appear on ballots early next year. But their efforts were moot. The meeting was called off after only 14 members showed up. That's about half of who needed to be there. They even rescheduled the meeting for later in the afternoon. But that meeting was still one councilmember short, so the ordinance will not appear on the February 28 ballot when Chicagoans vote for mayor and alder people. 

The average Chicago homeowner this year was in line to pay hundreds of dollars less in property taxes. Instead, many will likely pay the same or more after a Cook County agency shifted the financial burden to homeowners. That's according to a new report from Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi. The assessor determines how much a property is worth if property owners aren't satisfied that can appeal to the County Board of Review. Kaegi alleges the board made unprecedented reductions to the value of commercial properties. 

Fritz Kaegi: That not only eliminated all the work that we did to reduce the gap and valuation that it existed, but it actually ended up putting a little bit more burden on the homeowners. 

Erin Allen: A representative with a Board of Review attributed the changes to having a different methodology than the assessor.

Now if you're a renter the state of Illinois dispersing more than a billion dollars in emergency rental assistance to renters and landlords. The Federal dollars are meant to alleviate some of the negative economic impacts of the pandemic. Since 2020, more than 137,000 Illinois households have received relief. Cook County residents can apply for additional court based assistance by calling 855-956-5763. Now this is a podcast, you can rewind if you need to hear that again, but I got you just in case. That was 855-956-5763. 

Illinois lawmakers are back under the Capitol dome in Springfield today for a six day fall legislative session. What's on the agenda? Tweaks to the SAFE-T Act, a sweeping criminal justice law that will eliminate cash bail starting January 1, among other things. 62 State's Attorneys have filed a lawsuit against Governor JB Pritzker claiming the Act is unconstitutional. Here's what Pritzker had to say at a press conference last week. 

JB Pritzker: I'll be watching carefully. I've made my thoughts clear and we'll see if we can get something done during the veto session to address the changes that we ought to be making. 

Erin Allen: It's unclear whether lawmakers will bring up gun control or reproductive rights this session, but a House Committee on Public safety is scheduled to discuss violence in schools. If you want to hear more about these fall legislative sessions like what exactly are they and why do they happen, I'll be talking to my colleague Alex Degman about it next week on The Rundown. 

Ever had your catalytic converter stolen? Well, if you live in the 35th Ward, you can get your spray painted at an event next week. According to block club Chicago this is part of a larger police effort to address soaring incidents of catalytic converter theft across the city. The 35th Ward includes parts of her Hermosa, Logan Square, Avondale, Irving Park and Albany Park. Alderman Carlos Ramirez-Rosa teamed up with the 17th and fourteens police districts and Jiffy Lube to host the event next Thursday. They'll spray paint and Mark catalytic converters to deter thieves and make scrap dealers think twice about accepting the car parts.

And a few quick hits before we get to weather. Democrat Mary Jane Tice was officially sworn in as the new Chief Justice of the Illinois Supreme Court yesterday. And the Chicago charter school operators The Noble and Learn Networks are receiving $23 million donations from billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott to boost educational program. And in case that name doesn't sound familiar, her ex husband is one Jeff Bezos.

In the weather, usually Chicago sees its first inch of snow in early December. But the National Weather Service is forecasting that this year that will happen today. It was snowing at about 5am as I was getting here this morning, and that will give way to a mixture of rain and snow this afternoon high around 40 degrees. Tonight the precipitation continues with cloudy skies, low in the lower 30s. And that's it today for the rundown. I'm Erin Allen. See you bright and early tomorrow morning.

WBEZ transcripts are generated by an automatic speech recognition service. We do our best to edit for misspellings and typos, but mistakes do come through.