Daywatch: Biden Pardons Former Chicago Secret Service Agent | Ethics and lobbying become focus in the career of advisers | Chicago Reader owner resigns

Good morning Chicago.

Councilmembers are rejecting the three proposed finalists for a Chicago casino as the city moves closer to the final selection. Resident reaction at community engagement meetings earlier this month was overwhelmingly negative, with concerns being echoed by councilmembers representing nearby neighborhoods Monday about crime, traffic, safety, noise and the use of the Chicago River in two of the three proposals.

In other business news, Illinois residents who have been featured in a photo in the Google Photos app in the past seven years may be eligible for a share of a $100 million class-action privacy settlement reached by Google this month. The lawsuit alleges that Google’s face grouping tool, which ranks faces in the Google Photos app by similarity, violates Illinois biometric privacy law.

In labor news, workers at Starbucks locations in Cary and Peoria won union elections Tuesday, making the stores the first and second Starbucks locations to unionize in Illinois.

And enjoy it while it lasts: it’s cherry blossom season in Jackson Park.

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Nearly 60 years after his conviction on what he said were racist and retaliatory federal charges, President Joe Biden pardoned the first black US Secret Service agent assigned to a presidential detail.

Abraham Bolden, 87, of Chicago, who served in President John F. Kennedy’s security detail, was among 78 people granted pardons or commutations of their sentences as part of Biden’s first use of his executive powers of mercy. Bolden recalled Tuesday when Kennedy asked her to join his security detail.

“When we were in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, he treated me like a son,” Bolden told reporters at his home on Tuesday.

The ethics issue is once again central to the Cook County Assessor race, as first-term incumbent Fritz Kaegi is criticizing his main opponent, Kari Steele, for the work of his husband as a lobbyist for an international development company that could benefit from the decisions made. by the appraiser’s office.

For years, ethics has been a key campaign issue in races for county assessor, an office responsible for accurately and fairly assessing the value of the county’s 1.8 million properties. Like an outsider four years ago, Kaegi defeated Assessor Joseph Berrios, who was also head of the Cook County Democratic Party, in part by pointing to Berrios’s history of receiving campaign contributions from property tax appeals attorneys and noting that Berrios hired family and friends in the office.

Steele has countered that Kaegi has not followed through on his promises to reform the assessor’s office by making property valuations more equitable and transparent.

Teachers and elected officials from Emiliano Zapata Academy gathered Tuesday outside Little Village Elementary School to protest a proposed $894,000 cut to the school’s budget for next year.

Members of the school community called on the district to spend federal COVID-19 funds to ensure that no schools have to suffer cuts, but especially those in Little Village, which have been hit hard by the pandemic.

Chicago Reader co-owner Len Goodman and three board members resigned Tuesday amid employee protests, freeing the beleaguered alternative newspaper to transition to a nonprofit.

The Reader has been stuck in limbo since December, when a planned transition to a nonprofit model was delayed due to concerns about alleged censorship of an op-ed written by Goodman, who pushed for an investigation into the matter. and more representation on the successor board.

Smoque BBQ, Chicago’s widely acclaimed barbecue restaurant, will debut a barbecue later this year, not downtown, but in neighborhoods. The new restaurant, under construction at 3310 N. Elston Ave. in the Avondale neighborhood, is scheduled to open this fall. Neighbors will include Honey Butter Fried Chicken almost across the street, as well as Chief O’Neill’s and Parachute on Elston Avenue.

“The new project is called Smoque Steak,” said chef and partner Barry Sorkin. “It’s a different kind of steakhouse that features what we think is a unique and really good take on steak.”