>> Good evening and thanks for joining us on the week in review.

I'm Nick Blumberg.

Federal prosecutors accuse a Democratic state lawmaker of an illegal kickback scheme.

>> This longer an isolated incident.

It has become a pattern scandal.

Silence, delayed accountability and reform only after public embarrassment state representative Carol Ammons is stripped of her committee assignments and banished from the Democratic caucus.

But GOP lawmakers say she must reside north just hopefully it's a lesson learned by certain members of City council.

>> Because these challenges won't disappear in one budget.

>> Mayor Brandon Johnson says the budget passed over his objections is coming up.

130 million dollars short.

But opponents say it's a revenue gap of his own making.

>> We're pushing the believe all of our systems climate change.

>> Chicago area reservoirs are at near capacity after heavy rainfall as the city looks to improve Westside infrastructure to alleviate chronic flooding.

meantime, all call on Chicago's U.S.

Attorney Andrew Boutros to resign.

And a federal judge reprimands him from publicly discussing a sealed indictment.

>> In the United States.

>> And now to our week in review panel.

Joining us are rob part of WBBM Newsradio our own Heather Sharon of Wt Tw news, freelance journalist can belt where and Alex Nick and of the Illinois Answers Project.

Thank you all for being here.

Let's get right to it.

So Rob State rep Carol Ammons indicted on several counts of fraud, accused of lying to the FBI.

What we know about what she's accused This is an 11 count for wire fraud and obstruction of justice.

>> And the scheme that prosecutors laid out in the indictment.

>> Was that she received not only kickbacks her campaign account where allegedly payments went out to vendors that were reimbursed in some form or fashion about $11,000 with prosecutors say, but also there was an attempt to intimidate with that intimidate, but try to tell witnesses what they could say to quote-unquote, muddy the waters of the active FBI investigation.

And on top of that, there are allegations some of the nonprofits that were received state funding steered by Representative Ammons a later paid her daughter for work.

That was that was nowhere near what she was getting.

Yeah.

And her husband to Champaign County official also charged in this.

You know, Heather, House Republicans filed paperwork today to launch a special investigating committee under the House.

Rules only needs 3 numbers to support Dems couldn't block it.

What will you be watching for us?

That process gets underway?

Well, you know, I think this is now inherently a political process, right?

The Republicans want to cast the Democrats as corrupt and scandal plagued.

The real question is how does this investigation?

>> You know, sort of work with the federal investigation because it is not as if the feds are going to give this committee any more information about what they allege state and insistent that means that they will be certain to be behind the 8 ball and they ran into this when they tried to investigate Michael Madigan.

at the same time the feds were sort of closing in on I guess, no longer alleged criminal operation because he is in federal prison.

But so that's that's the real problem with this.

This is designed to sort of hang this alleged misconduct on Democrats writ large.

yeah, it's an election year old minor detail.

Meyer yeah.

I mean, we should note that, you know, there was an investigation into former Governor Blagojevich, you know, that was also sort of running parallel and he was eventually, you know, impeached and voted out after a trial.

But it'll be interesting.

You know, who knows what that there's actually appetite for that in this particular political moment.

>> You know, there was also this is coming on the heels of state lawmaker Harry Benton resigning after reports of harassment allegations.

So far House Speaker Welsh hasn't committed to actually releasing the report into Benton's, you know, misconduct charges.

you think that, you know, lack of transparency might sit with voters?

>> Well, transparency is that big question.

This is something that I think voters are going to want to know what's in that report and is this is also kind of feeding into this narrative like Heather was saying that Democrats now have, you know, they've got 2 black eyes right now.

This is a this is kind of a tough stretch for, you know, the bat ethics look.

And Speaker Welch has been consistent in saying they need they deserve due process.

You know, he's not calling for representatives resign immediately.

So he has been consistent in that.

But, you know, there is all these questions now of are going to see what's in this report.

Are we going to get the same invest, you know, the same information that the investigators had and they're just to be some public appetite.

But it also voters have a lot of things to pay attention to going into November.

Yeah, I also think it's important that, you know, is the former state rep buttons he's from playing field and then says from Champaign County, these are not Chicago.

>> Politicians, which means Michael Madigan, so Chicago based press corps isn't going to be as interested in sort of getting every last detail out at these as we would be is if it was one of our own.

And I think that, you know, is something that I would imagine that, you know, the Democratic Party's sort of hoping that the interests are flames and this is, you know, all of the other news that we are a deluge with on a daily basis sort of takes precedence.

Know you can color me interested.

I mean, Alex, it seems like there's been maybe just the briefest lull in corruption and misconduct haven't.

Yeah, I anything is is it a surfer frustrating for for Democratic leaders, you know, heading into the November U is what's going to be on voters minds?

Yeah, absolutely.

It's a question of.

>> Has there been this much time without any misconduct having happened or is it just them this much time that the federal prosecutors caught up to it?

We're going to be talking about some credibility issues that this office has with it.

And it's also a question of just is the culture really starting to shift or are they just getting better at hiding Yeah, there is that, you know, the huge wave AF ethics program proposals and, you know, sort of harassment prevention type stuff after me, too.

But maybe the pendulum has swung away from that somewhat.

There's also a larger issue, too, especially in this election year where if you're invested in the political process, regardless of where you fall on the spectrum, you are Nestle believe you want your elected officials to fight the good fight on your behalf.

Emphasis on good.

And I think we've seen this not only in Illinois, but also in other parts of the country, Maine, for example, that maybe the people you are interesting to fight the good fight for you.

>> They see things differently.

view of the battlefield is how can I make money off of this or how can I use this position to pivot into a cynic?

You are that will pay me a lot of money for a long time with very little responsibility.

Yeah.

Secures the things around you.

I think you made me make a good point of this election might be very revealing in.

>> Telling us what voters are really prioritizing in someone who is delivering the things at home that they want versus are they kind of the perfect candidate, the perfect politician?

How much are voters willing to look the other way?

If there's some unsavory?

>> You know, some some checkered past.

You know, again, we're seeing this nationally.

We've seen this all the way up to the presidency that voters have shown some real flexibility.

And you know what, they're what they're willing to accept.

Dems in 2024 were, you know, ringing the bell for.

We need to protect our democracy.

And voters said, no, worried about inflation and worried about gas prices.

The pocketbook issues.

>> All right.

Well, we are going to come back politics.

Don't worry, but we have to talk about was a very rainy, long 4th of July weekend.

Rob MWR, these deep tunnel reservoir didn't quite reach capacity, but it was bright on the brink there.

It got very close.

Both the reservoirs the 3rd and Corey in the south suburbs and again.

>> In Mccook and the startling number about number of times the mccook reservoirs hit capacity.

5 times this year, numerous times since 2021.

This was a system that was built 400 year storms that are showing up on almost yearly basis now.

you know, there's also Heather every time one of these huge storms happen, Westside neighborhoods get hit very, very hard.

A city trying to put some new infrastructure in place to alleviate that problem.

What the details there?

Well, similar to what the city did on the northwest side several years ago.

They're trying to build essentially underground storage.

So when all that with storm water comes in there, somewhere for it to go other than people's basements in the first floors, which is not where you want.

It.

>> The question is, is, is this project going to be big enough now that we are living in world of climate change and can it get done soon enough to help those West side home owners are still struggling to recover from the storms in 2022.

2023 and have gotten not a half.

A whole lot of help from the federal government despite the city and state's best effort, Illinois.

You know, sort of asked the federal government for disaster relief several months ago, President Trump said no while proving to similar appeals for Republican led states.

Yeah, it'll be interesting to see just because you know that we are kind of playing catch-up here every time.

And it's important to note this is one.

It's significant.

We're talking about 11.5, 12 million gallons of water that's going to be detained underground under the West Side, which is, you know, just really vulnerable.

But >> this is a project that the city has been pointing to as like their answer for years.

I mean, since 2023 that Big July 4th >> Event that People been saying are we going to do green infrastructure?

We're going to have different kinds of strategies.

What to do.

The city said, don't worry.

We have this storage tank.

And so it was striking that when the mayor drew bunch of attention to it this week, he didn't say MS Presley's.

I'm announcing this is not me.

I'm introducing it.

I want let everyone know again that we're doing these things.

But there's going to be increasing pressure as with climate change these 100 year storms become 50 year storms tenure storms become annual and it just will become more intense.

Yeah.

And city leaders, political leaders are gonna wear the jacket for it even though they're not responsible for climate change necessarily.

>> You know, Alex, you've also reported on some of the cities that replanting efforts, you know, the storms are really getting exacerbated by climate change.

You know, this effort to to Green.

Chicago is aimed at helping some of the flooding, some of the heat, some of the air pollution.

But how's that planting effort going?

>> Overall, we went through the data from our roof, Chicago, which the name of really big comprehensive effort to plant 75,000 trees equitably all across the city.

We found that they are ahead of schedule, which the they planted something like 68,000 trees, just as of the beginning of this year as to whether it was done equitably.

It's a little bit more mixed.

They.

How did the fact that he's going to when you look at the world level, which is sort of at the city level in departments, that's all they care about.

It has been new trees are gone primarily to 7 West Edwards.

But if you look at the census tract level, it's been a lot more uneven.

And that really matters because as you sort of noted, having a tree in your neighborhood has a really significant or rather a small impact across a really significant number of categories were talking about cooler summers, critically less flooding because you have those routes water out of the ground and it's a real disparity in a real an equity when some neighborhoods are awash entries and others do not.

And so the city has been trying to to catch up on that.

It had limited success.

Now the pressure is going to be on them to try to keep that momentum going.

Yeah.

And of course, you know, trees to take time to grab.

is not going to be an overnight fix just like this sewer system is not me or tanks are not going to be overnight.

Fix.

>> All right.

Well, we mentioned some of the cloud hanging over the local U.S.

attorney's office.

Kim federal judge this week, reprimanding U.S.

Attorney Andrew Boutros for publicly an indictment related to that render our gang that had not been quite unsealed yet, although it has been now, were you surprised to see him be be scolded so publicly there wasn't necessarily punishment that came along with Well, normally I would be.

But this is not the first time we've now seen pretty extraordinary to have.

>> The U.S.

attorney come in personally appear before the judge, you know, famously he did this when he dismissed the broad view.

6 case in this is something that, >> you know, is such an unusual step, especially for an office that has the track record of the Northern District of Illinois that has just that, you know, Sterling reputation and for him to come in and kind of get his know smacked with the newspaper.

unusual for an office like You know, when you also read what was discussed in court, just, I guess, a lack of discipline or maybe a sloppiness.

But I think a lot of alarms of that office.

But I spoke to said they were surprised by he went He goes to DC he's appearing with Todd Blanche and Kash Patel to talk about this indictment that was under seal and the judge said that right before this news conference, she is asked to unseal in just about 15 minutes to do so.

And she says that's not enough time.

So he speaks about it.

And he was under the assumption he said that when his underlings made the request to have this indictment unsealed.

It was going to happen.

Turns out it was going to be the case.

He made his apologies said, you know, it's going to work to have this not happen again.

But this again is just, you know, another kind of confidence blow from an office that normally really held the highest standard of so many office.

Us attorneys offices across the country.

>> Well, you mentioned him, you know, seeing Boutrous up there with with the FBI director with the acting attorney general, you know, both of whom much more political figures predecessors.

Does it feel like maybe Boutros is trying to shore up his his bona fides with that with the Trump administration?

Absolutely.

And that's where he needs his support from because even though there are there's an increasingly loud chorus of voices in Chicago.

>> Including members of Congress in the city and in the state they don't have any power.

The the only person who can do anything here is President Trump.

Well, that that course Heather included a city council committee this week calling on Boutros to resign.

>> It's a symbolic gesture certainly but struck me unusual for alders to so directly attacking U.S.

attorney.

Absolutely.

It's one of those things where I think a lot of us reporters are sort of grappling with how much of the norms have sort of started to sort of wear away at the edges because, you know, and are, you know, previous U.S.

attorneys who would never have seen them in front of a judge must less be reprimanded, much less the potential of sanctions be starting to even mentioned.

Nor would you have city council members feel emboldened to not to say, hey, you're not doing the right thing.

You have lost the public's confidence in should resign.

That's a big deal.

And I think that it was interesting that it was nearly Alderman Nicholas Basado voted against it.

He is one of the most conservative members of the City Council and and about Donald Trump supporter.

But the fact that certain there's not a whole lot.

The city council agrees on right but they agree on that.

And I think that's a show of just how deeply the broad 6 case handling has really damaged the U.S.

attorneys credibility.

And, you know, we've seen, you know, Boutros be out very publicly pushing back against these kinds of calls with some pretty aggressive statement, some pretty forthright comments here.

Now, what's interesting and we talk about who is the only voice that matters at this point in time.

>> And it's that person who's either and the White House or at Mar-A-Lago and and if you're on the cable company for a Palm Beach, Florida, that service, that particular suite in Mar-A-Lago.

If you want to get to the point that the president's here, you're buying advertising on local cable in Palm Beach so you can get in front of him and there has to be an entire ecosystem of former Trump administration people.

People work in the White House in the first term run com shop this is how you can respond to certain events and the way that the boss will be happy and so that it that is where all of this language comes from right now.

This very bellicose response to what the to what the City Council dead.

And we also you know, the Chicago's top FBI agent, you know, reportedly forced into early retirement because he wouldn't a line with the administration's priorities.

>> We've been certainly something of a purge of career FBI agents.

Are surprised at all to see it happening?

Someone at such a high level know that relate not anymore.

Once again, as as Heather said, talking about those norms that are falling behind the boards aggressively now in the in the second Trump term and you watch this right now and then you think what's going to happen 2 years from now or 3 years from now and how many cases are going to fall apart?

How many people are going to walk free for procedural reasons because the career people are out.

it's certainly a hollowing out that could have, you know, follow-on effects.

All right.

And DOJ related matter.

State officials say they are reviewing a threat essentially from the U.S.

Department of Justice to prosecute.

>> Local elections officials for allowing non-citizens to vote, something that experts across the board say is vanishingly rare.

You Alex, you think we might see another Illinois lawsuit from Attorney General against the federal government over this issue?

It is entirely possible.

You seen other attorneys general from other states come at the sort of fighting back against these efforts and broadly being successful beating the backyard.

>> The U.S.

Constitution is pretty clear about states owning the entire responsibility for managing elections.

And so we're seeing a lot of these efforts by the federal government started from the president's off to try to nationalize elections and try to bring as much of the topic of conversation back to this idea of undocumented people voting.

The Illinois State Board of Elections give their standard like, oh, we're going to give this serious thought and we will look far and wide to see if we find any, you know, illegal voting and will probably come and say, no, we did our job.

We did a very aggressive search and haven't found anything.

And then.

It's just going know is what actually happens it's interesting, too.

I mean, we've seen, you know, folks in Congress so far, you know, President Trump has This bill is push to restrict voting.

>> That has not gotten no traction.

I mean, is there may be some pushback against him as a lame duck or is this just kind of a 3rd rail for even some of his Republican supporters in Congress?

This to be something where even Republicans are pushing back like Alex said that, you know, elections have always belongs to the states.

This is another power that, you know, maybe the president would like to have in his portfolio that constitutionally doesn't belong to him.

>> But there's also huge privacy consequences that any lawmaker who backed this would have to answer to their constituents, you does a constituent, especially maybe in a more conservative religious libertarian part of the country.

One, a national voter registry.

That seems like something that would be pretty unpopular.

Yeah, that folks don't.

They don't want to be in a big database necessarily.

>> Alright, turning to some city news.

Heather's we heard at the top.

Mayor Johnson says the most recent city budget that he allowed to become law without his signature.

Now he says the revenue isn't materializing.

What's the issue there?

>> Well, the budget was based on the assumption that the city was going to be able to find a 3rd party, you know, company that would want to serve by the rights to collect a billion dollars in unpaid city that now this is debt owed by people who got parking ticket didn't pay their utility bill.

You know that sort of But the mayor says there have been no takers because in many cases the stat is years old.

It's really hard to find these people.

It's even harder to make them cough up money that they may or may not have.

And I think a crucial part of that, too, is that the mayor stopped the city from selling any medical debt.

So if you had an ambulance ride, you didn't pay that debt or couldn't pay that debt.

The city can't sell that But that means that the city was unable to sort of come up with, you know, cool, you know, 90 million dollars that it needed to pay its budget.

And now we're 6 months into the year.

There's lots of requirements for the mayor's administration to report at the midyear mark.

And he's saying, look, we don't have that money.

Other things that didn't materialize included a plan to sell augmented reality, you know, on the city's parks like you could go and you could see an ad that would pop up on your smartphone or on your smart glasses.

Nobody apparently is interested in.

one of the Kardashians is pushing last.

Yes.

Next time you're there.

You golf at >> scans of advertise.

Can't And then there was all other.

There was another proposal to put ads on light poles and bridge bridge house is a miracle inflatables.

Apparently nobody is interested in that either.

Now the mayor's opponent on the city council said they're not convinced that that's actually what happened.

They believe that the mayor is essentially been slow walking these proposals because he doesn't agree and that they say he is to blame for imbalance.

this is the argument that everybody's been having ad nauseum repeatedly for the last year or so of my life and the problem is, is that nobody agrees on the facts anymore.

City right?

I mean, how about, you know, the the opponents basically said that.

Will you implemented it wrong?

That's why this isn't happening.

I mean, just seems like you know, evidence of of the mayor and the city council, at least a significant chunk of locker.

And then the next budget go-around is going to be in the meat of campaign season and no one is going to >> go out over their skis with so much on the line.

And in 2027.

But, you know, nobody wants to come back either and have to some sort of an amendment or some sort of effects.

Another budgetary issue this week, Heather, we got the final analysis how much the Chicago Police Department overspent its budget last year.

What are the details there?

Well, the Chicago Police Department had a budget of somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.0 8, 1, 0.9 billion dollars.

They went 162.5 million dollars over its city council approved budget.

This is the 5th year in a row that they have overspent their budget.

>> And it is due to 2 things.

One over time.

The city last year had a budget of over time for 100 million dollars.

They spent somewhere in the neighborhood of 260 million dollars on overtime.

And they also overspent on what they budgeted to resolve police misconduct.

Plus, to the tune of at least 133 million dollars.

When you have that kind of overspending, makes it really hard to come on budget and it's not clear, you know what, if anything, the mayor is going to do to sort keep this overspending from continuing to happening?

I didn't get a clear answer from him this week on yeah.

I mean, it feels like something like this happening.

You know, several years in a row, maybe it feels like it's just kind of an untouchable budget element for it for the city to try and tackle.

>> mean, is their fix it, Alex, Yeah.

I think that if he there's a reason why if you asked a lot like asking a lot of unions, they'll say it sounds kind of counter counter intuitive, but you need to hire more people.

If there is so much overtime as we know in so many different departments is driving up all of the spending and all these then gets also reason why they argue that even in the event of like a budget crisis, layoffs would be counter intuitive because it would lead to more overtime.

And so I Well, the police may have a lot of overtime, but we've got to end the show at So we're out of time.

Our thanks to.

>> Rob Heart, Heather.

Sure around.

Kim, Delaware and Alexan.

It can.

And we're back to wrap things up right after this.

>> Chicago tonight is made possible in part by the Alexander and John Nichols family.

The Pope Brothers Foundation.

And the support of these donors.

>> And that's our show for this Friday night.

Be sure to sign up for our free email newsletter, the Daily Chicago and that's a W t tw Dot Com Slash newsletter.

Now for the Week in review.

I'm Nick Lumber.

Thank you for watching.

Stay healthy, stay safe and stay informed.

Have a great weekend.

All right.

Another measure that advanced and City council that would bar a city employees from using any private information on addiction.

Markets like Kalshi.

>> Fans already in place at the state level.

fairly anonymous market.

Them kind of wondering, is this going to be whack-a-mole trying to prove these questions?

My question is, what are people?

What is kind information that people are supposed to be betting right What we saw that this week, hour before the Graham Platner story dropped the future.

A contractor him dropping out, went through the roof.

someone knew something.

And this brings in place.

The Murphy raw from CFTC about trading on.

>> Information that may have come to you through covert means.

So if you steal the crop report from Clarence it's illegal.

You can't do it.

We need more training places right close captioning is made possible.

>> By Clifford and Clifford Law offices, personal injury law firm, working to preserve