Letters to the Editor
Submissions from Chicago Sun-Times readers weighing in on issues facing the city and its residents.
A reader from Englewood didn’t get the ballot he requested by mail. So, he showed up at his polling place. That didn’t go so well.
Proposed legislation to ban five food additives in Illinois leads consumers to believe there’s a systematic failure of the U.S. food safety system. That’s not true, the head of the National Confectioners Association writes.
Closing the facilities for an extended period would all too likely disrupt and potentially destabilize the prison system, the executive director of Council 31 writes.
The city shut down park district facilities to house migrants even as the Catholic Archdiocese was offering its buildings.
Parking mandates make new housing more expensive to build and keep us from improving the city’s public transportation system.
The city can raise revenue by offering companies the opportunity to light the light poles along North DuSable Lake Shore Drive with colored bulbs representing their brands. There are thousands of CTA buses and drivers whizzing by on any given day. That’s a lot of eyeballs, which is music to advertisers’ ears.
In the first five months of the school year, 126 schools in 33 counties across Illinois reported using state-funded emergency asthma medication 265 times on students in respiratory distress.
There’s been a shortage of people signing up as election workers due to the intimidation and violent threats aimed at these volunteers. But every election requires bipartisan oversight to ensure fairness.
If Trump is reelected, he will have complete immunity, a reader from Deerfield writes.
Government intervention is needed so that lives are protected before pharmaceutical profits, a reader from South Shore writes.
To test whether we still need two baseball teams in Chicago — or whether the Sox should stay — Wrigley Field should host both teams. If the Sox start winning again and minting money on the North Side base, maybe a new stadium makes sense. If they win a World Series and still don’t draw a crowd, they can consider leaving town.
It’s accountability. What percentage of people released without a cash bond are showing up for their court date, a retired Cook County corrections officer asks.
Insurance companies consider some personal characteristics in pricing auto insurance, such as age, marital status, gender and credit score, because these factors provide a more accurate assessment of risk.
Since the law’s implementation, the jail populations in several counties have decreased because people are no longer being held because they can’t afford to bail themselves out.
While the Food and Drug Administration took a commendable step in 2020 by banning pod-based e-cigarettes, it neglected to impose restrictions on their disposable counterparts, creating a dangerous loophole.
It’s on states like Illinois to make access to IVF more widely available, to destigmatize it and to allow parents to grow their families through whatever means they and a doctor agree is medically appropriate.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker is right: Doctors and patients, not insurance companies, should make decisions about medical treatment.
Four field houses have been closed and used as shelters for migrants. As the migrant population declines, it’s time to give the facilities back to the neighborhoods.
Black women have far higher maternal mortality rates than white women. Bringing more persons of color into the perinatal workforce, and requiring health care providers to complete training on implicit racial bias could help narrow the racial gap.
With meteorologist Skilling leaving, Mother Nature might rebel and March weather could be a bear.
Multifamily housing, which could be as little as two homes on a lot, provides more affordable options and promotes a more efficient use of space and resources.
These boards cost money to operate, have no clear benefit and place bureaucrats between patients and their physicians, the executive director of the Chicago Hispanic Health Coalition writes.
COVID-19 continues to rage unchecked because the federal government has clawed back nearly every resource and regulation that kept us safer from this virus.
In most cases, co-pays aren’t mandatory. They’re optional, state Sen. Donald DeWitte writes.
Who among us has not been surprised by a fee on a failed bank transaction, or an unexpected surcharge when renting a car or checking out of a hotel? Illinois Treasurer Mike Frerichs writes that these hidden junk fees should be banned.
Illinois would experience fiscal savings as families could rely less on safety net programs, state Sen. Mike Simmons writes.
When you have few or no choices on your primary election ballot in a few weeks, blame gerrymandering. When the violence in our cities escalates and the response remains utterly inadequate, blame gerrymandering.
The tax would bring on rent hikes that could push stable, paycheck-to-paycheck individuals into housing instability and increase homelessness.
“Going digital” would hurt our older and lower-income Illinoisans, who would be left without enough access to this lifesaving information.
Simply passing an assault weapons ban that is ignored by criminals who get their guns illegally, yet places new mandates on lawful gun owners, is not the answer, state Sen. Craig Wilcox writes.