News

Reporting from WBEZ's Tony Arnold used in this report.

Illinois' two U.S. senators are saying party leaders are trying to avoid a government shut down. Lawmakers are facing a Friday deadline to finalize the federal budget.

Illinois' senior U.S. senator, Democrat Dick Durbin, said budget negotiations with House Republicans and Speaker John Boehner are close to wrapping up.

The Pruitt-Igoe public housing project in St. Louis was once considered the template for post-war public housing, a national model.  For awhile it was—until it wasn’t.  The high rise complex was constructed in 1954.  Two decades later, and by then notorious, Pruitt-Igoe was a pile of rubble, imploded and bulldozed into history. What went wrong and why?  That’s the subject of a new documentary film called The Pruitt-Igoe Myth: an Urban History.   Directed by Chad Freidrichs, the film will have its St. Louis premiere this Saturday at the Missouri History Museum.

Missouri's tax revenues are up 6.5 percent with only one-quarter of the budget year to go.

Figures released Monday by the state Office of Administration show the growth fueled by stronger individual and corporate income tax collections than during the 2010 fiscal year. A decline in tax refunds also has contributed to the growth in state revenues.

Officials with the Missouri and Illinois Departments of Transportation are joining efforts to highlight Work Zone Safety Week, which begins today and runs through Friday.

With the start of spring in St. Louis, crews will be increasing construction efforts, patching potholes and resurfacing roads.

Ed Hassinger is district engineer with MoDOT. He says last year in St. Louis there were 2,500 accidents in work zones and eight people died.