people consider banning January 6th participants from city jobs.

Here with all that and more is our spotlight.

Politics team had a Sharon and Nick Blumberg.

Welcome backing, missed So Heather, the centerpiece of Mayor Johnson's effort to build more affordable housing facing a key test tomorrow in City Council.

What makes this proposal unique?

Well, it would create a nonprofit organization run by the city to essentially >> fund these projects directly.

So it is a new approach to funding affordable housing that would have the city take a much more direct role in giving these units built before the city really work to leverage federal income tax credits and to sort of connect developers with sort of a smaller set of city subsidies and perhaps help them borrow money from banks or private equity funds.

In a sense the city would take that lead role in trying to help finance these developments and they'll do it as part of the mayor's 1.0, 2, 5 billion dollar bond borrowing that was approved a year ago.

This proposal would sort of take 135 million dollars of that and use it just to sort of create this new development corporation.

Any insight into how this is going to go over with all the people tomorrow?

This is the details.

Now the general analogies was approved as part of that borrowing approved a year ago.

But it will be a real test for the mayor.

And we've seen a lot of reporting about his tense relationship with older people.

So it will really be a chance for the mayor to show that can not only make promises, but sort of fill in the details and get that through the city Council.

So Public transit workers were in Springfield today.

Head of the Transportation Committee meeting Friday in the Senate.

What was today's rally about?

Well, this is a group of more than 30 labor organizations.

They are backing an effort that they're calling United.

We move.

So this is an effort to governance reform to the public transit system here in northeastern Illinois.

It would stop short of this sort of wholesale merger that we've seen a proposed of the different bus and rail systems.

>> But it would involve, you know, having a newly empowered to, you know, RTA, you know, changing all sorts of questions about, you know, the composition of, you know, these different systems in ways that they say can address some of the structural issues that they've heard from lawmakers are really key to tackling.

It's been a very clear message that we know you have that 770 million dollar fiscal cliff coming up next year.

But we are not going to come through with the money unless we see some of these governance reforms.

So, of course, this is an effort to to keep the bill moving forward.

There was a lobbying day about a month ago.

But this session, you know, the end of the session is coming up in just a few weeks.

And, you know, transit organizations and, you know, their labor organizations that are supporting them are really concerned that they might just see governance reform get passed in the spring session, but they won't have certainty and funding until the veto session in the fall, which I think is probably causing a lot of heartburn to say the least so we will see where this goes.

You know, just today, RTA Chair, Kirk Dillard had a, you know, and at that out in the Tribune saying, you know, listen, the state is not doing its share.

The state is not funding public transit the way deserves to certainly Dillard a former lawmaker knows the power of trying to put some public pressure on lawmakers.

We will see where this goes.

Well, we know you'll be a you write that out for us.

Heather, you focus this week on a significant change in how felony gun possession cases are being brought into Southside police districts in particular.

>> Why is this change from the Cook County State's Attorney Eileen O'Neill?

Bert Weiss been controversial.

I heard from a lot of older people this week that there are concerns that it sets up a 2 tier system of justice.

So if you are arrested and police want to charge you with basically felony gun possession anywhere other than in Inglewood police district or the Calumet Police District, which is Roseland on the far south side of the city.

Those charges have to be approved by Assistant state's attorney before it starts making it way through the legal process.

But in those 2 districts, only a Chicago police lieutenant has to sign off on those charges before they're filed.

And this, I mean, Burke says is an important change, sort of streamline efforts to get cops back on the street.

It has the full support of police superintendent Larry Snelling, however, at the Chicago Police Department is under a federal court order to reform itself after decades of abuses and other problems.

So there are real questions about whether it makes sense to certain gives more power to the police department, which is only complied with 9% of that court order.

Now, Mayor Brandon Johnson, I asked him about it this week.

He said it is worth trying whereas there are a lot of people sort of wondering whether this is the right move even as crime continues to come down, soared across the board in Chicago, along with other cities across the nation.

One of those people in addition to the alderman that you that you speak about or other people you speak about is the Cook County Public Defender has raised some concerns when so strong.

Mitchell highlighted the fact that even if you're only arrested and charged inserted not brought to trial, that could have a profound impact on people's lives.

You can lose your job.

You can lose your housing.

You can sort of child custody issues.

And he said that it doesn't make sense to lower burden to file those charges into police districts where 85% of the residents are black.

And we know that Chicago has faced sort of the problems with systemic racism.

Now even older people who are in favor of this program say why not roll it out?

Citywide?

We'll have to see what happens Of course, there's the contacts that has been very well reported that the delays in the Cook County Criminal Court system that folks can be arrested and go to jail.

And if they do not have the financial means to get out, they can stay behind bars for quite some time while they await, you know, their case to be resolved, whether that's, you know, a settlement charges dropped going to trial.

What have you so this can have, you know, to to Heather's point about what public defender Mitchell said.

>> It's gonna be a very lengthy process.

If you don't have the means or someone, you know, close to doesn't have the means to get you out.

>> So also for a vote tomorrow, Heather is a measure that would disqualify anyone who participated in the January 6th Capitol riot from working for the city.

Why is the city Council stepping it?

Well, if you remember one of the first things, Governor JB Pritzker did after President Donald Trump took office was to issue an executive order saying, hey, if you are arrested, charged and convicted and then pardoned of participating in the January 6 Capitol Riot, you can't work for the state of Illinois.

Mayor Brandon Johnson did not sort of follow soon and the issue of state similar executive order for city employees.

So this is the city council led by Alderman Matt Martin stepping in to say actually, we think that's the right way to go.

faces its first test tomorrow.

This I think is especially important because, of course, one of those people pardoned by President Donald Trump, former Chicago police That's right.

And that.

But the mayor supported the governor at the despite not issuing something of his own.

It's you know, I a lot of people told me this was a no-brainer, right?

Every day we hear sort of from the mayor how terrible President Donald Trump is for the people of Chicago.

It's not clear, I think to a lot of people why he didn't issue this executive order.

And of course, Nick, this comes on the heels of tens of thousands of people gathering Saturday in Chicago and across the city protest of the current administration happened all over the state here all over the state.

I mean, there were folks in, you know, Rockford in Arlington Heights, in Gurnee, you know, all over the country.

There are these demonstrations in all 50 states, this sort of hands-off is what they're calling this movement.

You know, many local organizers said this was the largest Anti-Trump demonstration they'd seen in a long time, of course, now has the flavor of also being anti.

Elon Musk.

>> But it's a, you know, a really broad cross section of folks who helped organize this to gather this in a granddad advocates, environmental activists, folks who, you know, are concerned about the effect on the abortion access reproductive rights, the community, of course, the question here is always how do you funnel this into further action in Divisible, which is one of the organizations that helped, you know, sort of lead the charge here literally and figuratively.

They say that's kind of the next step is how do you make sure that this isn't just people out in the streets expressing their anger and their frustration?

But how do you channel that into something that has an effect on our current, you know, state of politics in the nation.

And before we go another week, another state lawmaker a criminal charges yesterday.

>> Bribery trial for state Senator Emil Jones.

The 3rd getting underway.

these charges been pending since 2022.

>> Remind so Senator Jones was among the people caught up in this red light camera scandal that snared quite a few politicians in its way.

He was on tape allegedly accepting a $5,000 bribe from the executive of a red-light camera company as well as a job for someone he was trying to, you know, allegedly help out It's definitely an interesting time to be, you know, as we've talked about with the trial of Mike Madigan with the so-called ComEd 4 Supreme Court is significantly weakening bribery law.

I think that's something that defense attorneys are very hopeful of.

They're also hopeful that they can paint this executive who cooperated with the FBI has no choir boy, someone who folks shouldn't be listening.

You