July 8, 2014

QUOTE OF THE DAY

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Pew: After Supreme Court Ruling, Fewer State Workers to Organize

The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent ruling in a case brought by home health care aides in Illinois casts doubt on labor agreements between such workers and state governments in nine other states.

It also closes off—or at least complicates—one of labor’s clearest paths to reversing a decades-long trend of declining ranks and shrinking clout.

The petitioners in Harris v. Quinn were home health care aides who did not want to join a union, though a majority of their co-workers had voted to join. Under state law, the non-union workers still were required to contribute their “fair share” to help pay for collective bargaining and other union activities that would benefit them.

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Reuters: Illinois’ expensive retiree health care ruling

Illinois suffered a blow when the State Supreme Court ruled that public employee retiree health benefits are enshrined in the state constitution and may not be adjusted via legislation. Illinois has lost an important tool for reducing $56 billion of unfunded retiree health care liabilities and $100 billion in unfunded pension liabilities. These unfunded retiree costs outstrip the state’s $33 billion of net tax supported debt.

The Chicago Tribune wrote:

The Illinois Supreme Court ruled today that subsidized health care premiums for retired state employees are protected under the Illinois Constitution, signaling potential trouble for an overhaul of pension benefits that’s also being challenged in court.

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USA Today: Couple splits up to stay insured

The day Linda Drain put baby’s breath in her hair and said “I do,” she had no idea that government policies would tear her apart from her husband.

But 33 years later, she and her husband, Larry Drain, separated so she could keep her health insurance.

Six months into the full implementation of the Affordable Care Act, the Drains are among 162,000 Tennesseans who got caught in a coverage gap. Their household income is too little to qualify for a government subsidy to buy health insurance, and they live in a state not expanding Medicaid.

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Chicago Sun Times: How IHSA compares on spending, transparency

In Florida and Pennsylvania, the private, not-for-profit organizations that oversee high school sports operate like governments in terms of openness.

They let the public see sponsorship contracts, vendor payments and other records, just as a government agency would have to do under those states’ “sunshine” laws.

In Texas, the agency that oversees high school athletics operates is part of the University of Texas at Austin. So its records are open to the public, too.

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Economist: Red tape blues

IAN TONER, an architect in Philadelphia, recently went to city offices for a permit to build a stoop for a client’s home. The city, he learned, had just imposed new requirements: he would have to get maps from gas, electric, water and other utilities to ensure the stoop would not disturb their underground lines and then resubmit his application. A process he thought would take a day took more than two weeks.

That’s not all. Other new rules require that he prove that his builder has general liability, workers’ compensation and car insurance, and has paid all his taxes. Four times a year he must set aside a half day to ensure he is paying the state’s and city’s myriad taxes correctly. Mr Toner doesn’t question the need for rules and taxes; what galls him is the time and hassle involved in complying with them. “The information exists all over the place and the burden is on me not just to gather it but [to] interpret it. I’m not going to leave here because of this, but they’re all things that could turn a person off of coming here.”

America’s states and cities have traditionally tried to attract businesses by offering them tax breaks and other cash incentives. Yet there may be a more effective way, and one which puts no strain on stretched budgets: make life simpler.

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Northwest Herald: McSweeney: Illinois needs property tax relief now

Home ownership carries a tremendous amount of responsibility. Maintaining a home often can be a labor of love, but it is a labor nonetheless. Here in Illinois, homeowners not only have to contend with the usual problems of home ownership such as bad appliances, leaking roofs, flooding basements and other home repair problems, but they also have to deal with the second highest property taxes in the nation.

That’s right. Illinois has the second highest property taxes in the country. Only New Jersey has higher property taxes than Illinois.

The average property taxes in Illinois are about 2.28 percent of a home’s value, while in New Jersey the average property taxes are about 2.32 percent of a home’s value. It is possible for Illinois to surpass New Jersey in the very near future.

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Quincy Journal: Illinois losing residents at a rate of 1 person every 10 minutes

More than 850,000 people have moved out of Illinois since 1995, which comes out to a rate of 1 resident leaving every 10 minutes, according to a new report from the nonpartisan Illinois Policy Institute.

This figure is calculated after counting all people who have moved into Illinois. In this new report, brand new data from the IRS and U.S. Census Bureau shows the dramatic effect of years of high taxes and powerful government unions; for more than a decade, Illinois has lost hundreds of thousands of residents to almost every other state in the nation.
“Illinois is bleeding residents to other states at a rate of 1 person every 10 minutes, and that’s after you take into consideration all the people who have moved into the state,” said Michael Lucci, director of jobs and growth at the Illinois Policy Institute. “We can’t ignore that high taxes play a major role in encouraging people to jump the border. The latest Census Bureau data, for example, shows the pace at which people leave Illinois accelerating since the 2011 state tax increase. If Illinois wants to stop the bleeding, it must abandon its tax-and-spend policies and look at pro-growth reforms being implemented in other states.”

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Bloomberg: Illinois Pension Reform in Question on Insurance Ruling

llinois can’t cut contributions to government retirees’ health-insurance premiums, the state’s top court said in a ruling with possible implications for Governor Pat Quinn’s bid to fix a $100 billion pension shortfall.

The Illinois Supreme Court, in a 6-1 decision today, ruled the health-insurance premium subsidies are pension benefits protected by the state’s constitution that can’t be diminished or impaired, as Illinois lawmakers tried to do with a 2012 law that let an administrator determine the level of contributions.

Protection of pension benefits is the same provision in the Illinois constitution retirees are relying on in challenging Quinn’s plan to cut the pension shortfall with reductions in cost-of-living adjustments and increasing the retirement age for workers who are now 45 or younger.

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NY Times: The Health Care Waiting Game

ONE small consolation of our high-priced health care system — our $2.7 trillion collective medical bill — has been the notion that at least we get medical attention quickly.

Americans look down on national health systems like Canada’s and Britain’s because of their notorious waiting lists. In recent weeks, the Veterans Affairs hospitals have been pilloried for long patient wait times, with top officials losing their jobs.

Yet there is emerging evidence that lengthy waits to get a doctor’s appointment have become the norm in many parts of American medicine, particularly for general doctors but also for specialists. And that includes patients with private insurance as well as those with Medicaid or Medicare.

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Crain’s: Chicago’s ‘lost decade’ extends its run

So just how bad of a stretch has the metropolitan Chicago economy had over the past decade or so?

A batch of new data out today puts this region’s relative decline in pretty stark terms. We’re definitely, absolutely lagging. But for you optimists, there’s at least a hint that things have bottomed and begun to turn around.

One set of new data comes from the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, which finally is beginning to fulfill its task of not just drawing lines of new highways on a map but actually crunching numbers about where we’re been and are going.

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CARTOON OF THE DAY

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