Midwest

Faculty at Ohio State University last week voted against the administration’s plan to privatize its parking system.

The Minnesota Department of Transportation released a revised cost estimate of $626 million on building the St. Croix River Crossing bridge project.

Standard & Poor’s last week downgraded the city of Allen Park deeper into junk-bond territory, dropping its long-term rating on the Michigan city’s unlimited-tax and limited-tax general obligation bonds to B from BB-plus.

Indiana lawmakers ended their brief 2012 session Friday after passing controversial labor legislation, an automatic taxpayer refund, and a phase-out of the estate tax, among other measures.

The Illinois Health Facilities and Services Review Board approved Northwestern Memorial Hospital’s new $300 million, 1-million square-foot outpatient facility. The hospital hopes to complete the project by 2014. The building at the hospital’s main downtown Chicago campus will also house doctors’ offices.

Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn on Tuesday announced state funding of $32 million for the construction of a new transportation-related education center at the City Colleges of Chicago’s Olive-Harvey campus.

After it courts buyers at an investor conference set for late next month, Chicago plans to offer up more than $3 billion of new-money and refunding general obligation water revenue and airport debt.

CHICAGO — Illinois has agreed to the Illinois Medical District Commission's request that a $4.5 million capital grant be diverted to cure a debt-service coverage default and ensure bondholders receive full payment later this year on $40 million of state moral obligation-backed bonds.

A U.S. District Court judge in Chicago has dismissed the final count lodged against former Bear Stearns public finance banker P. Nicholas Hurtgen by federal prosecutors in connection with an extortion scheme involving a Chicago-area hospital seeking regulatory approval for a new hospital.

Still recovering from Gov. Pat Quinn's recent call for $2.7 billion in Medicaid cuts, not-for-profit hospitals in Illinois took a second blow when he lifted a six-month moratorium on stripping hospitals of their property tax-exemptions for failing to provide sufficient charity care.