It was déjà vu in Springfield as proponents of more debt pushed Illinois to borrow another $4 billion from the bond market. Their promise? That the state’s backlog of bills would finally get paid down. This is exactly what we heard almost two years ago, when advocates of the massive $7 billion income tax increase...
Veto session commenced yesterday morning in Springfield. Typically, we would expect to see movement on controversial bills during this time because of the lame duck legislators who have been voted out of office but still retain voting power. However, impending Democratic supermajorities in both chambers of the Legislature means that we expect to see movement...
Providing entertainment may seem like a far cry from an essential government service, but not in Illinois. The Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity (DCEO) doles out hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars in grants each year. Funding entertainment is one of the many ways in which this money is used. The...
Illinois has a long history of fake reforms – legislative proposals that promise to solve the great policy challenges of the day when passed, but never actually accomplish these goals. There is perhaps no bigger fake reform than the 1995 pension ramp passed by the Republican-controlled General Assembly and signed into law by former Gov....
Families in Illinois are struggling to afford higher education for their children. Incoming undergraduate students have seen tuition and mandatory fees at Illinois’ public universities increase by more than 60 percent since 2004. But that’s not the only problem. The government expects families to pick up the education bill for state employees, too. The Upward Mobility Program, available...
If Illinoisans want a glimpse of the state’s upcoming fiscal cliff, they should look no further than the failed negotiations between the maker of Twinkies and the unions that took them on. Hostess Brand’s bankruptcy is much more than the demise of famous brands like Twinkies, Ho Hos and Wonder Bread. It’s also the tragedy...
For the third time in the last five years, the General Assembly Retirement System (GARS) has posted a negative investment return. Although the pension fund predicted it would earn $4 million in fiscal year 2012, it actually lost $81,448. The fund posted an investment return of -0.14 percent, far below the 7 percent it expected....
Illinois’ pension systems are one year closer to complete insolvency. According to actuarial reports, the state’s five public pension systems owe a combined $94.6 billion. That’s up 14 percent from the $82.9 billion reported last year. Worse yet, none of the pension systems have enough assets on hand to pay benefits to those who have...
Does the government have any business taxing foods it deems unhealthy? That was the status quo in Denmark until recently, when the country got rid of its controversial fat tax. This nanny-state policy, originally put in place about a year ago, increased taxes on all foods with a saturated fat content of above 2.3 percent. Authorities...
Taxes are about to go up again on many items for Cook County residents under the county’s 2013 budget. The Cook County Board of Commissioners approved a $2.95 billion budget for fiscal year 2013 by a landslide 16-1 vote last week. The budget includes a series of new revenue initiatives– a $1 per pack tax...
Gov. Pat Quinn and many groups in Illinois are pushing for the state’s next multibillion dollar tax increase – a progressive income tax. Passing a progressive income tax is “one of my goals before I stop breathing,” Quinn said. There has been a lot of misinformation about the progressive income tax floating around. It’s time to...
President Barack Obama has won a second term, giving him what he described earlier this year as “more flexibility” in his policy choices. Will one of those choices be bailing out state pensions? All across the country, states are grappling with pension systems that are massively underfunded. Under new accounting rules, Illinois’ unfunded pension debt stands...
Last night, California Gov. Jerry Brown asked Californians to pay higher income taxes. Fifty-four percent of voters opted for the tax increase. A similar scenario is beginning to play out in Illinois. Under California’s current progressive income tax structure, the second-highest marginal rate of 9.3 percent kicks in at just $48,000. To put that into perspective,...
Last night, four Illinois counties had referendums asking voters if they wanted to create a new sales tax. All four referendums were defeated. The 2007 Illinois County School Facility Tax Act allows a referendum to go on the ballot once a school board representing 51 percent of a county’s population approves the measure. Recently, the...