* Ag director resigns to care for sick wife
* Will Wrigley Co. buy what it’s been getting free?
* The Tribune vs. Chicago
“If I think about it logically and not sentimentally, Wrigley Field is a corporately named field,” he said. “But it’s been that way for so long that nobody even connects the two things anymore.”
* Zell wants more night games, concerts
* Lawmakers push for income tax increase
An Illinois Senate committee on Wednesday approved a 66 percent income tax increase that would lower property taxes by 20 percent and spend billions elsewhere on education, pension debt and construction.
* Tax hike to help schools moves up
* The new “tax swap”
* Time for state to join civilized world and end death penalty
* Board eyes budget cuts after Stroger shuns smaller tax hike
Commissioner John Daley conceded Wednesday that part of the big-tax strategy is so Stroger can avoid having to come back for tax hikes again in 2009 and 2010 –which is the year Stroger is up for re-election.
* Cook commissioners OK bigger staffs, deny mammogram funding
On a day when a block of Cook County commissioners cried out for tax increases to pay for health care, most of the same commissioners chose to raise their own office staff budgets by 26 percent rather than give up some of that money to pay for poor women’s mammograms.
* Board’s D.C. trip costs you $10k
Amid threats to cut jobs and close health clinics and courthouses, Cook County Board President Todd Stroger and almost half of the County Board are set to get away from it all this weekend in Washington, D.C., at taxpayer expense.
* Public schools to close, merge in Chicago
But some parents walked away feeling they had been steamrolled. They accused CPS officials of using stilted statistics, of courting kids in “gentrified'’ areas and marginalizing poor ones and of experimenting on children. The changes didn’t go far enough, they said.
* Chicago’s plowing budget in red
* Democratic chairman won’t run again
Party Vice Chairman Kathleen Bergan Schmidt is considered a front-runner to replace Cynor. The party convention begins at 7 p.m. Wednesday at the Woodstock Opera House.