Saying he didn’t want to increase taxes, Gov. Rod Blagojevich on Tuesday rejected a proposal to let East Peoria and Morton raise their local hotel tax rates by a single percentage point, to 6 percent.

Gov. Rod Blagojevich is willing to turn over the former Hanna City work camp property to Peoria County for free, but he wants the state to get paid if the county ever stops using the land.

State lawmakers say they’re willing to debate Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s major changes to the ethics reform measure they approved this spring — but not in the governor’s all-or-nothing approach.

Five days after presidential hopeful U.S. Sen. Barack Obama drew a monster crowd to Springfield’s Old Capitol Plaza, it remains unclear who was responsible for providing water to the sweltering attendees.

Illinois fields that were under several feet of water in early summer have rebounded to the point that the fall harvest shouldn’t be off by much from the bin-busting crop of 2007.

Rising gas prices have motivated many consumers to drive vehicles that have two wheels instead of four.

Four labor unions are going after a piece of the residential construction market with the groundbreaking Monday for a 33-home, “green” subdivision in Chatham.

The time for summer vacations and exotic destinations has come to a close, and travel agents say they sold less of them because of higher gas prices and the advent of "staycations," where people stick closer to home.

The average cost of Illinois farmland has reached $5,000 an acre for the first time after the fourth-year in a row of double-digit price increases, said a report released Tuesday by the University of Illinois.

Chicago caterer Greg Christian didn’t like to see the tons of food scraps, paper plates, plastic forks and glass bottles generated by his business go into the garbage, but he wasn’t sure recycling and composting would be practical in a commercial kitchen. So he researched the issue, drew up a plan, and today operates a zero-waste commercial kitchen — the first Chicago caterer to do so.

Your mother always told you to turn the music down, and she’s right. Excessive noise is the No. 1 reason for hearing loss, according to Melody Hartman, an audiologist with Swedish-
American Hospital. And with iPods, car stereos and loud video games common staples in today’s society, the risk for damaging your hearing is higher than ever.

Gov. Rod Blagojevich said Monday he’s following through on his promise to “rock the system” by drastically changing an ethics-reform measure to target lawmakers while cracking down on campaign contributors with large state contracts.

An Indiana-based company that develops proton therapy centers is charging Northern Illinois University with stifling competition in Illinois.

Jerry Paulson, executive director of the Natural Land Institute, can look at a map of Winnebago County and point to properties he wishes his group could have bought and preserved for future generations — but wasn't able to, with land such a hot commodity during the housing boom. That's not the case now.

She grew up on a farm in Roseville near Monmouth, where her family tended cows and pigs and grew their own vegetables. He grew up in the Longwood subdivision around Devereau Avenue in Peoria, where his mother was a District 150 administrator.