>> Mayor Johnson delays, his budget address as he works to close a billion dollar gap.

Meanwhile, city lawyers recommend a settlement highlighting the high cost of high-speed police chases.

And with 5 weeks until the election, early voting gets underway here with all that and more is our spotlight politics team, Heather Sharon and Nick Bloomberg.

Hey gang.

Welcome back.

So we know a coalition of groups they've been sending out these campaign style flout flyers in various wards targeting older people for supporting or opposing a plan to phase out natural gas hookups in new construction.

Nick, what were you able to find out here?

>> That's right.

Grant is these are the kinds of mailers we might expect during a city election year.

But in fact, they are targeting Alders because they are concerned about this ordinance.

As you mention, new natural gas hookups.

There have been a lot of groups, including People's Gas, Union's trade organizations that have been pushing back against this measure.

They say it's decarbonization without a plan, but those mailers did not have any information about who sent them out.

We were able to learn that the operating engineers union, local one, 50 was at least one of the organizations that help to bankrupt these mailers.

A representative said drove the mail, bankrupt all the mailers.

And they said that they were part of a broad coalition of groups involved with them, although they didn't give any other specifics.

Now, another woman, Maria Hadden who has been sponsoring this ordinance, said this is the kind of mail or that if you're going to make these accusations, including claims that she says are false about what the ordinance would actually do, you should put your name on them.

But fortunately, we were able to determine at least some of who is behind these that have been just flooding.

Chicagoans mailboxes across the city this Thank you, Nick.

>> So moving on to the budget.

Mayor is postponing his budget address.

We know by 2 weeks grappling with billion-dollar deficit.

Heather, how significant is this delay?

Well, it's definitely unusual.

And I think it's a sign of the magnitude of the problem that the mayor is confronting.

It will also mean less rest for older And and it will give his budget address the day before Halloween and the first of 2 scheduled budget votes would be the day before Thanksgiving, which is a day.

Most older people.

And again, me like to be focused the holiday.

But that's the schedule, at least for right now.

There will be lots of questions about what exactly the mayor is going to ask the city Council to do.

And that is sort of up all of the oxygen in the room right making a batch of cranberry sauce to lot of questions about that also and maybe we could pick different dates, y'all.

So as Heather mentioned, you know, Council's got 2 weeks for budget hearings.

What kind of scrutiny as this budget going to face?

Well, I think it depends a lot upon what city officials are able to do with those extra couple of weeks.

It's not a ton of time.

>> But it seems like, you know, they could use this to try and scramble and come up with some options here.

The reception depends a lot upon.

What's in the mayor's proposal?

Is this going to be, you know, a request for a big hike in taxes and fees?

Is this going to be sort of a doomsday budget laying out all these possible draconian cuts?

>> Is there a middle way?

And, you know, the mayor went through a very contentious budgeting processes.

Heather well last year when there is this huge question about funding for migrants which ultimately the city didn't even need all of his.

It turned out.

So, you know, he's not necessarily going to have an easy road with this either way, given the current makeup of the council and his relationship with older people.

But the reception is going to depend upon, you know, a lot upon what he puts forward.

>> So moving on to something that's definitely not going to help solve this budget crisis.

City lawyers are asking all there is to approve a 1.7 5 million dollars settlement to a man injured by a driver being chased by police than we, of course, heard overnight about another police pursuit ending with a fatality in McKinley Park.

One person died.

2 others injured.

Heather, what are the rules on police pursuits and what costs to citizens citizens of Chicago?

So since 2019 and is caution, Congo, taxpayers more than 74 million dollars to resolve lawsuits sparked by police pursuits.

So this is a massive drain on the city's treasury.

>> That was in part why mayor former Mayor Lori Lightfoot change the rules regarding police police pursuits to require police to have the sort of investigating or trying to detain somebody suspected of a serious crime.

So it's no longer a misdemeanor or a traffic violation that could spark a pursuit.

However, this pursuit that they're looking to settle.

The lawsuit from was before those rules were changed.

And in fact, the city tried to sue the man who fled police to try to get him to pay the costs of the person who was injured.

He doesn't have any assets.

So the ship so the city is going to have to bear the entire cost moving on to schools because it's it's it's been a couple of weeks, hasn't it?

Pedro Martinez, school CEO, he was scheduled to appear before City Council later this week.

That hearing conflicted with Russia, China.

>> Nick Martinez, though, he's still in the midst of, you know, some very tense negotiations over the Chicago Teachers Union contract and their most recent request is kind of interesting when they have.

Well, they are looking.

They have put a proposal across the table today.

That looks to basically extend Martinez's termination terms his contract.

>> To all employees that are covered by the CTU contract.

Now the CEO has a six-month window basically after he is terminated.

If it is without cause, he continues to be paid for 6 months under the terms of the deal that he negotiated when he took over.

Ctu leaders say we want this for everybody who's covered by the contract.

Now it is vanishing.

Liam likely that they are going to get such a provision in their contract.

But this is another effort to kind of needle CPS and CPS leadership saying, you know, we want this guy out and hey, if he gets these, you know, relatively generous terms when he's dismissed, we think this is something that everyone under the sea to contract should be getting.

But again, I would not be holding my breath for that me 5 weeks to go until the election.

Nick, early voting already underway in some places.

That's right.

Basically everywhere in Illinois, other than the city of Chicago and Cook County City starts this week.

County starts next week.

What's interesting is that we heard on Friday from the state GOP that 180,000 Republicans have pledged to vote early.

That's a big about-face from the kind of added to the Republicans in Illinois and nationwide have historically had about early voting.

But clearly they see this is a disadvantage.

They've had to contend with in several previous elections.

And they want to say, you know, the basically they're saying at this is the law, then we're going to try and take advantage of it.

And, yeah, we definitely heard some of that rhetoric during the RNC during the Republican, Republican National Convention