Florida gets more money than Illinois to replace lead pipes

Good morning, Chicago.

When it came time to split up the first batch of $15 billion Congress set aside last year to replace toxic lead pipes, Illinois officials had plenty of reasons to expect they would get the biggest share.

Utility groups have long estimated the state leads the nation in the number of lead service lines connecting homes and two-flats to municipal water systems, largely because Chicago’s plumbing code required use of the brain-damaging metal until 1986, decades after most other major U.S. cities had banned it.

Plumbers in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin also installed tens of thousands of lead pipes during the last century to convey drinking water to homes and apartments.

But when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced last month how it plans to share nearly $3 billion this year, Florida got the biggest cut.

Read the full story from the Tribune’s Michael Hawthorne.

Here are the top stories you need to know to start your day.

Subscribe to more newsletters | Puzzles & Games | Today’s eNewspaper edition

Over the last two months, the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability fielded hundreds of questions and comments in seven public meetings held across the city to find out what Chicagoans want in the next leader of the Chicago Police Department.

The commission has a mid-July deadline to submit three finalists for the job to new Mayor Brandon Johnson. Whomever Johnson picks will need approval from the full City Council, but he can order the search process to begin again if none of the finalists are to his liking.

A Cook County program implemented during the height of the pandemic to provide legal and financial support to landlords and tenants behind on their rent has dramatically slowed down the eviction process, drawing praise and pushback from renters and property owners.

Afternoon Briefing

Daily

Chicago Tribune editors’ top story picks, delivered to your inbox each afternoon.

But the innovation has brought additional challenges.

During a break at the Brunswick Studio in Chicago one day in 1972, engineer Bruce Swedien asked Willie Henderson if he knew of any good gospel groups. “Sure,” Henderson replied. “I know some singers at my mother’s church.”

His mother’s — actually the entire Henderson family’s church — was Beautiful Zion Missionary Baptist in West Englewood. Swedien, who would go on to win Grammy Awards for engineering Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” “Bad” and “Dangerous,” among other successes, decided to check out the church’s young adult choir. He liked what he heard and, with Hearn’s blessing and Henderson as producer, recorded the Beautiful Zion Young Adult Choir’s debut LP for Myrrh in summer 1972.

Workers began demolition on the inside of the former Arlington International Racecourse Tuesday, another nail in the coffin of the storied horse track, and a step toward a potential new stadium for the Chicago Bears.

A backhoe, other heavy construction equipment and workers were seen outside the grand edifice, which won architectural honors and held up to 32,000 fans for nationally known races before being closed by Churchill Downs Inc. in 2021.

One of the most anticipated events of the summer comes to town this weekend as Taylor Swift makes a three-night stop in Chicago in the middle of the U.S. leg of her Eras Tour, which spans decades of music and dedicated fandom.

For fans lucky enough to have scored tickets during the Ticketmaster fiasco that left many empty-handed, we’ve compiled a list of what to know: how to get to the concert, rules at the venue, weather to expect and more.