>> Hello and thanks for joining us on Chicago tonight.

I'm Nick Blumberg.

Brandis Friedman is on assignment.

Here's what we're looking at.

>> We're not asking solve the problem we our souls for >> No tax hikes or layoffs to balance Cook County's budget gap.

So how are they doing it?

Consumer advocates push back on a proposed people's gas rate hike.

And it's a rivalry week as the bear's head to Lambeau to take on the Packers.

First off tonight, the family of a suburban father fatally shot by an ice agent last year is taking legal action against the Trump administration.

So there you have gets.

Gonzalez was killed during a traffic stop in Franklin Park in September 2025. after having dropped his 2 young sons at school and daycare.

Today, his family filed a claim against ICE.

The Department of Homeland Security and the FBI.

In a statement, an attorney representing the family says Villegas Gonzalez's life was cut short senselessly and unnecessarily by our government.

His death shattered a family and has caused untold trauma that will last a lifetime.

While DHS claimed Villegas Gonzalez had driven his car at the agents that pulled him over body cam footage later showed the agent they said was seriously hurt, saying his injuries were, quote, nothing major.

Dhs did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Sox fans cross their fingers and maybe make the sign of the cross hoping that the team can clinch its division series tonight.

Yesterday's game 3 played at Rate Field.

Didn't go the South Siders way with the Cleveland Guardians.

Avoiding a sweep and keeping their playoff hopes alive.

Thanks to a 9 to 3 win.

If the Sox win.

Tonight, they'll face the Tampa Bay Rays in the American League Championship series.

If they lose, they play a winner.

Take all game 5 in Cleveland.

First pitch for tonight's Game.

4 is at 7 o'clock.

If you're making your way down town anytime in the next few days, beware Chicago Marathon Street closures have begun.

Earlier today the city shut down Balboa in Jackson from Dusable Lakeshore Drive to Michigan Avenue and Columbus from Monroe to Roosevelt.

Additional closures will go into effect Saturday morning.

That's Columbus from Randolph to Monroe.

Plus, Roosevelt from the drive to Columbus and Monroe from the drive to Michigan.

Many, many more street closures will begin in the wee hours of Sunday morning ahead of the first runner stepping off or the marathon's 48th year.

Organizers expect more than 55,000 participants, the largest in the race's history.

For more on the Chicago Marathon and what makes it unique check out our Web site.

Up next, how the Cook County Finance team so-called budget magic to close a 550 million dollar gap.

Our Heather sure around explains right after this.

Chicago tonight is made possible in part.

>> By the Alexandra and John Nichols family.

The Pope Brothers Foundation.

And the support of these donors.

>> Cook County Board, President Toni Preckwinkle unveils her plan to fill a 551 million dollar gap.

The next year's budget without raising taxes.

Here's some of what she told the county's board of Commissioners this morning.

>> have bills asked residence or about this.

moved.

>> The Sharon joins us now with more.

So head of the county's got a 9.7 billion dollar budget for 2027.

How do officials plan to balance that budget without any new taxes or layoffs?

Well, Toni Preckwinkle told reporters yesterday to preview her budget speech today that her financial team was able to come up with a little bit of budget magic.

Now it mostly involves dipping into the county's reserve funds, which are, of course, of for difficulty budget years.

Just like this the magician shouldn't reveal their tricks.

But here we All right.

What is the Trump administration's decision to slash spending on health care for low and moderate-income people?

What does that mean for the Cook County Health and hospital system?

It's a huge expense yet.

Nothing good.

So about half of the county's budget is made up of costs for the health and hospital system.

Now the county's going to see more people looking for care because they no longer has insurance.

That means costs are going to go up about 138 million dollars.

And they're gonna be asked to provide about 100 million more.

>> charity care that has made it very difficult to balance that budget in the county is going to use 40 million dollars in property tax revenue to sort of make ends meet.

So this year things are looking.

Alright, but Preckwinkle.

She's running for a record-tying 5th term as board president.

>> She painted a pretty dire picture for 2028, 2029, what did she warn is going to be ahead?

Well, most of that magic meant that the Cook County swept it's covered to bear.

She said so you can only do that once the cupboards are bare.

That means in the next couple of years.

Very tough decisions are going to have to be made by officials 20 Preckwinkle hopes she will be making this decision.

All right, Heather, thanks so much.

Thanks, Nick.

And you can read Heather's full story on our website.

It's all at W T Tw Dot com slash news.

A proposed people's gas rate hike that's drawn.

The ire of consumers could be getting smaller judges with the Illinois Commerce Commission this week recommended a 54% cut to the proposed 144 million dollar increase.

That would bring the number down to 66 million dollars peoples gas as the rate hike is necessary to replace old iron pipes and modernize its system.

Meantime, consumer advocates say the ICC's proposed cut is a good start but still isn't enough.

Joining us to discuss the rate increase our a scar director of the Illinois Public Interest Research Group.

And Jim Chills and communications director for the Citizens Utility Board.

Gentlemen, thank you for joining us to make you think so.

As we just mentioned, that recommended 66 million dollar figure, a reduction of Jim, why do you think they can trim that rate hike even further?

You know, this is true in any rate case, but there are millions and millions of dollars of unwarranted costs.

>> That the proposed order leaves on Chicagoans gas bills.

We think they can go significantly beyond the 66 Million.

Like you said to step in the right direction.

We need to go further.

Still items on the ledger that aren't necessarily related to Absolutely.

All kinds of things they want cut consumers to to pay for such as you know, insurance for executives compensation for outside consultants, things like that, wasteful spending that we can reduce so people's gas declined to join the program this evening.

But in a statement they told us, quote.

>> Our rate filing is about the critical need to modernize energy infrastructure that serves almost every Chicago in every day.

The Illinois Commerce Commission directed us to retire more than 1000 miles of old natural gas pipe.

So Chicago's heating system remains safe and reliable.

Because on this large-scale complex work requires substantial investment rate request is to recover those costs.

A view of argue that the modernization program isn't actually targeting the system's biggest safety risks wanted person.

Alice's find.

>> Well, the bottom line is we found based on people's gas own risk analysis that the safety benefits that would accrue from this billions of dollars in pipe replacement spending.

I would be only about 60 million dollars.

So that's a penny of benefit for every dollar spent.

And that's just not worth it.

It's not worth it to raise our rates so much for so little benefit.

And the reason for that we've assumed for years that these old iron pipes are at elevated risk of failure and need this urgent attention.

But this evidence from their own risk analysis and there's new national analysis that just shows that a lot of these pipes aren't as risky as we thought and we don't need to replace them right away.

You know, Jim, to that point, the idea of the danger of failure, what would you say to a resident who might worry that?

>> You know, cutting funding for replacing the century.

Old pipes could put their community at risk.

Now the company is under legal obligation to keep their their system safe.

They've got plenty of resources to do that.

This is a company whose parent made 1.6 billion dollars in profits.

Peoples gas this year is going for their record profit for the 8th time in 10 years.

This company has plenty of resources.

And by the way, company always says this is about maintaining their system.

They conveniently leave out the fact that they're asking for a 10.1% profit rate for their shareholders and they're rolling in profits.

how about that?

If, you know, I think that the company might argue or at least its supporters might argue that, you know, they do have a requirement to deliver on, you know, profits for their shareholders and that this is a reasonable request here.

So they have well.

The commission has a responsibility to make sure that people's gas can raise the capital.

>> It needs to make the investments it needs.

And that's a question that's before the commission peoples Gas.

As Jim said, he's asked for a 10.1% profit rate, which we believe is far excessively recommended.

An 8.9% prof are 8, which we still think is actually higher than it needs to be.

These properties have got inflated over the years.

These utilities are very low risk ventures has a financial when it comes to finances.

Its less risky than like a normal business in the market.

That's not a monopoly, right?

we've put evidence in the record and we think commission can lower the even further and that the one of the ways that we can lower this rate hike.

It has a big impact on the rates that the company charges Kunce customer.

Is there a targeted figure that you have in mind lower than that 8.9 Our our expert actually set a reasonable range would be between 6.6 8.4% But we even with higher just for the principle of graduates to not make to draft drastic a change too You know, more than 160,000 families, Jim, are reportedly at least 30 days behind on their peoples gas bills.

A cub says customers the utility more than 90 million dollars.

How could another rate increase affect people who might already be struggling to pay their gas bill?

That's 144 million dollar rate hike would increase bills by about 6 to $8 a month.

>> We hear from people all the time.

What the heck is wrong with my people's gas bill.

People are having a hard time affording their bills right now.

You just pointed out those statistics.

heating affordability, crisis.

people this would be a hardship are far too many customers.

We're already hearing from customers.

I can't pay anymore.

>> And is there you know anything in place, whether it's from people's gas or, you the public assistance try to help people get out of those, you know, the holes that they may be terms of the dead absolutely did question the low-income home energy assistance program just opened on October.

First for a limited number of customers, opens for other income eligible customers.

But, you know, it's never enough and it can't compete with a company that keeps escalating these bills, peoples gas, his raise bills by about a half a billion dollars since 2011.

They've nearly doubled delivery charges.

I mean, that's what is causing the heating affordability crisis.

>> You the ICC is is slated to make its final decision next month.

What are you hoping to see from that?

>> Well, we're hoping to see a lower rate hike and less impact on customer bills for us.

The big priority is stopping this pipe replacement program.

That is the biggest driver of rate hikes said that almost doubling delivery rates over the last 15 years.

Rates will explode people's gas continues to invest in his pipe replacement program, the way it has in the way plans to.

And again, we think that the evidence clearly shows that this spending is unnecessary and wasteful and there are better investments that the company can make to better improve safety.

And so we want the ICC to recognize the evidence that's in the record in this rate case tell people's gas change course and to stop replacing somebody pipes and to instead make smarter investments that actually improve safety.

What with those smarter investments look like if it's not the current So the first thing to acknowledge is that the the number one risk to the people's gas system, according to people's gas itself is excavation damage.

So we don't have this rash of old pipes exploding on their own.

What does happen is that the city of Chicago or road builders are doing work in the streets and they strike a pipe and people's gas has higher rates of excavation damage than pure utilities.

So there are steps the utility can do to prevent.

This is not a fact of life.

So focusing on the actual risks that the utility faces in the the telly itself documents is that the biggest threat to system would be the place to start.

Peoples Gas also told us in a statement, quote, that we fully understand concerns about affordability, postponing essential infrastructure work, though, is not a solution.

>> It would greatly increase safety risk and costs and they add the opponents of our work want to ban natural gas and for Chicagoans onto an all electric system, that's less reliable and would double or triple everyone's heating bills.

Jim, what's your response to those claims about, you know, wanting to ban gas are absolutely ridiculous.

This is a company that wants to protect it's gravy train and it's, you know, record profits that's received several times.

There are alternatives to gas that are much more efficient and it's not going to happen overnight.

It'll be a long term transition, but what's happening right now is you have a lot of people are unhappy with people's gas.

We're already moving off the gas system and going with electric.

He pumps because it's more affordable.

It's cleaner and safer for a number of reasons.

What's happening is getting a fewer number of people on the left on the gas system have to pay these escalating bills.

And it's just an unsustainable system.

They call it the utility death spiral.

And how about that idea that the claimed that an all electric system wouldn't be reliable enough would be more expensive.

Yeah, that just hasn't shown in several in several studies.

It's shown that, you alternatives are much cleaner, much more affordable, much more efficient.

So again, there are people already.

They are pushing a lot of people off the gas rose.

They're going on to alternatives and what's happening is that fewer number of people have to pay these higher costs.

People, I guess is unsustainable.

That is very clear.

People are telling us now they can't afford these rate hikes.

And now they faced another rate hike.

You know, we've been talking a lot about pipe replacement program, but before we run out of you know, what are some of the other priorities you have long-term looking for changes from people's gas.

You know, things like lower bills are improved environmental outcomes.

Well, we do welcome the debate about the future of home heating in Chicago.

And I think it's important to recognize that by spending billions of dollars on its system now.

>> Peoples Gas is trying to foreclose that debate and lock us in to using this polluting infrastructure for decades in decades to come, where we pay for it, even if we stop using it.

So some of the safety recommendations we have, believe will actually make the system safer more safer than the pipe replacement they're doing now will cost less and actually help facilitate this transition to safer cleaner energy.

And we think those are the types of solutions that the utility should be considering right now in its thinking about investments in its system.

All right.

I know a lot of folks will be looking to see what happens with the ICC's decision next month.

That's where we'll have to leave it.

>> scar, Jim chills and thank you both for your insights.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And up next, a preview of the Bears Packers matchup this Sunday.

It's baseball fever in Chicago and Wisconsin right now.

But there's another big game this weekend.

That's sure to draw a few eyeballs.

The Bears are heading to Lambeau Field to take on the Packers this Sunday.

It's their first meeting since a nail-biter playoff game last season.

But this time the ice man's on ice with quarterback Caleb Williams out with a hamstring injury and the team expected to start 3 different QBs in 4 weeks.

But with the Packers struggling so far, this season Bears fans are hopeful for their 3rd straight win against their northern neighbors.

So grab your cheese grater and buckle up.

Joining us to talk about the upcoming game is James Big Cat Williams, former offensive lineman for the Chicago Bears.

James, welcome back.

Thanks, So the Bears coming off a 2, 1, record against the Packers last year, including as we mentioned, that big playoff win are the days of the bad news Bears officially over?

Is it too soon to tell not sure calling back different Johnson, very mayor.

That kind of change everything around a little bit.

But.

>> Yeah, it's it's starting off.

Well, I think there are going look a little better everyone thought they were going to do to start off the season.

>> Kind of thought they were going to come out the gate, a little slower room.

exploded out of the gate.

So it's been fun to watch.

It's very interesting what the good, the bad news bears But, you know, you put a lot of games against the Packers over the years.

What are these rivalry matchups like, especially in an environment like Lambeau?

>> Well, there are very tense because you have We.

Between the players, but between the you have so many households a little >> Your husband loves the Packers.

Wife loves the Bears.

You what are we going to do on game day?

Who's sitting?

Where cause?

I don't want to sit next them.

sure everybody wants to talk to the grocery store about it.

It's a big week.

There's a lot of it is going be an intense atmosphere up at Lambeau Field.

They hate it when the bears come in your north from the brush right here on your way into the stadium.

They do not like you and your job is to go up there.

Put your foot on their throat and make them some of those mixed households might be somebody sleeping on the couch that the So as you mentioned, quarterback Caleb Williams can be out this week.

A continuing to heal from that hamstring strain in week 2 against the Vikings.

>> How could that affect the team?

Morale?

Well, I think when first happened, it's a little bit of shock first because you're starting quarterback your franchise quarterback.

>> Has gone down.

But then you realize after 2 wins with 2 different other quarterbacks that you have a chance do this to they haven't lost to be defense has played well, the offense has continued to move the ball and points on the board.

So, you know, you're excited right now because you know that, yeah, we had our main piece Cordero and we're still winning games and that's what it's all about.

And I want to come back to to those backups.

But before we move off, Caleb Williams and a lot of talk in the preseason about >> him, breaking records, maybe even making a run at MVP is that's still something that can happen missing at least 3 games.

>> it starts diminish a little bit.

But, you know, with the way cable plays flashy as he is and his off time rolls.

And the big play capability that he has.

It's still wish I mean, it's a long shot, but a shot.

His heart is in it a limited season.

We really And we got >> coach Ben Johnson announced he'll be starting backup QB Tyson Bagent this week.

What did you see him playing against the Jets last week that you liked?

>> Well, I think Britain is he's a good quarterback.

If he can throw on time.

When he's prepared you know, I thought last week with it being his first start of the sees little rusty.

I think some of that rust got knocked off the way we got into the game.

But I'm excited to see how he grows because that's what it's all about.

It's about having having here.

We have the ability to grow as the season goes on, whether he's in that starting role or in that backup role.

So that Graham is called comfortable with what he can do out on the field.

And you think it's the right call starting him rather than Case Keenum.

was a great story Case Keenum Love.

First week after cable got hurt.

>> But I understand why Beijing is you know, he is or backup quarterback if something happens to be know that you have here and there to be a competent backup to the backup yet.

But yes, is a guy supposed to be there right So as you know, well, Bears fans.

They love their online speculation.

And some folks seem to think Caleb Williams might make a surprise appearance just given the significance of that game.

Do you think that's likely?

>> I got I their fears not practiced all week.

I don't costar.

So we'll take the risk of putting them out there for everything even for a little Yeah.

Be a great story Maybe not the best.

Alright draft.

>> So bears running backs D'Andre swift common on guy.

They've been really key to the offense this season last week in career high, 30 carries 146 yards.

How important are those to going to be against the Packers defense ranking 28th in the league in stopping the rush.

talking about.

>> Theres team that growing a heck of a ball right now.

They're going up to play a Packers team that is having trouble stopping the run.

So believe the powder down their throat, too.

And when you're doing wrong, why the Bears have been running.

All people more you know, coming from an offensive lineman.

That's what you want to do.

You want to you know what the put the game on our shoulders.

Let's run the ball up and down the field.

You know, Mary was going to have is a big place set up.

But the problem going set up off the world and the way they've been running the ball so far, it's gonna be a fun game watch for.

Crews are going strike against weakness right?

So they're on the heck out of the ball.

But they're struggling in the red zone.

Second-worst in the NFL.

What do they need to do to to adjust their?

>> Yeah, that's that's interesting question.

>> It's going to be a combination of a couple things.

I think I think, you know, great play calls, executing those right plays.

I'm not throwing the ball behind putting it out.

We're player can catch a warmer, be up high or down low.

just being able to see what the defense taking, what the defense is giving.

So I think Rivera give us a couple things that I think be ready take advantage You know, Packers struggling so far this season, they've had offensive line influx.

Some key players out.

>> Every game's have a way of surprising you, though, especially with, you know, bragging rights are on the line.

What are the bears need to do to ensure a win?

Well, I think they need to know.

always talk about They need to start fast.

>> He did come out if they get the ball.

If they get the kick off and take that first drive down, put it in end zone.

No questions about it.

No penalty, but stay away from the pet off sizes, golden, better.

All the little prayer is a little bit Things up.

A very warm through parents of those things out and should be smooth world for bringing All right.

To look into your big cat crystal ball.

What's your prediction for Sunday score?

A road.

27 14 its.

I hope that we All right.

James Big Cat Williams, thank you so much.

Thanks for him.

>> And we're back with details on important voting resource before you head to the polls.

>> Before >> we go tonight, early voting is underway in Chicago and Cook County for November's midterm election.

Be sure to check out our website for a one-stop shop for everything you need to know before you cast your ballot.

That includes profiles and questionnaires from the candidates descriptions of the offices where your polling places and how to get registered.

You can check it all out at W T Tw dot com Slash voter guide.

And that's our show for this Thursday night.

You can stream Chicago tonight on our W T Tw YouTube channel every evening and catch up on any programs you may have missed.

Join us tomorrow night at 5.37, for the week in review.

Now for all of us here in Chicago tonight, I'm Nick Blumberg.

Thank you for watching.

Stay healthy and safe and have a good night.

Closed captioning is made possible by Robert.

A clip from and Clifford law offices, Chicago personal injury and wrongful death.

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