Charter school lotteries are appearing in more movies lately. The scenes are made for the medium, parents hoping that blind luck will give them a chance at a better school. Movies such as The Lottery, Waiting for Superman, and The Cartel will be spreading to screens across Illinois. So, coincidentally, are charter school lotteries themselves....
by Kristina Rasmussen You read last week about Illinois’s dubious race to the bottom with California, Iraq, and Iceland for the status of “riskiest borrower.” Have we always been such a fiscal basket case? No. Senate Republican staff took a closer look at our state’s history of rating downgrades. It turns out that Illinois has only been downgraded...
by Kristina Rasmussen The Medicaid transparency bill championed by Rep. Patti Bellock and the Illinois Policy Institute was signed into law by Governor Pat Quinn! The bill authorizes the Director of the Department of Healthcare and Family Services to create an online transparency portal like South Carolina’s website — let’s ask the Director to build onsunshine.illinois.gov and create one without delay. Director Julie...
by Amanda Griffin-Johnson At end of May, the Illinois General Assembly adjourned without addressing how to pay for the $6 billion in unpaid bills and required $3.7 billion pension payment for next year. But both houses did have time to pass House Bill 0859. The bill’s synopsis as introduced states that the bill: “Appropriates $1,000,000 from the General...
That is about how much it would cost to close the US budget deficit for 2010. Using data from the Tax Foundation, Veronique de Rugy of the Mercatus Center has created a chart which shows the average increase in tax burden per taxpayer required to balance the annual federal budget. The cost to close the...
by Will Compernolle According to our transparency website, IllinoisOpenGov.org, the State of Illinois paid 28 Liquor Control Special Agents $1,418,421 in fiscal year 2008. The chairman of the committee was paid a salary of $56,685.71. According to the Illinois Department of Central Management Services website, Liquor Control Special Agents are meant to “conduct field investigations concerned with the...
by Will Compernolle The Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity (DCEO) gave an $873,700.00 grant (#09-463009) in fiscal year 2009 to Unytite Inc.for “equipment that will enable the company to produce the larger nuts and bolts used in construction of wind turbines.” The DCEO’s grant tracker explains “these larger bolts (up to 48mm in diameter) are beyond...
by Heather Wilhelm “Nearly half of American adults see the government today as a threat to individual rights rather than a protector of those rights,” reports a new Rasmussen poll released today. Fifteen percent are undecided. You can read the poll results, along with Rasmussen’s analysis, here.
by Ashley Muchow Eastern Illinois University will borrow up to $7 million to cover university expenses up to August as it eagerly anticipates $19 million in overdue state appropriations. Early this month Governor Quinn signed into law an amendment to Senate Bill 0642 allowing Illinois’s nine public universities to take out loans to cover three quarters of what the...
by Chad Giganti The Pelican Institute’s Fergus Hodgson reports on the importance of health care choice legislation that passed earlier this week in Louisiana. The bill focuses on challenging an unconstitutional individual mandate that forces people to buy health care insurance (whether they want to or not). The legislation was modeled on American Legislative Exchange Council’s (ALEC) Freedom of Choice...
by Heather Wilhelm “Britain announced a far-reaching deficit-reduction plan Tuesday aimed at saving billions of dollars over the next five years,” reports today’sWashington Post, “becoming the latest European nation to slash spending amid increased worries about rising public-sector debt.” The austerity measures include $145 billion in cuts to public-sector spending (including a two-year freeze on...
by Heather Wilhelm When people say they’re going to “the Big House,” they usually mean a football stadium in Ann Arbor, Michigan…or a jail. But prisoners across the country recently gave the latter interpretation of the phrase a whole new meaning, as discovered this week. “Nearly 1,300 prison inmates wrongly received more than $9 million in...
According to our transparency website, IllinoisOpenGov.org, the State of Illinois paid 30 fingerprint technicians $1,457,511.64 in fiscal year 2008 in combined total wages. The highest paid fingerprint technician was paid $52,494. According to the State of Illinois’s Central Management Services website, fingerprint technicians are meant to “perform functions related to the automated and manual processing of fingerprint submissions...
The Problem Illinois’s wealth of energy resources should be utilized to provide Illinois’s families and businesses with reliable sources of power. However, Illinois state government is unnecessarily picking winners and losers, distorting energy prices, and driving up overall government spending by awarding tax dollars to certain energy sectors via special government programs. For example, the...