With the holiday season in full swing, the state Capitol is largely quiet. But some legislators say this is the exact time to think of children in the state’s care.

State Rep. Patti Bellock, R-Hinsdale, called reports of physical and sexual violence within the state’s child welfare agency “an absolute tragedy.”

She said an upcoming hearing to examine the problems at the Department of Children and Family Services could mark the start of a bipartisan effort to greatly improve child protection in Illinois.

As he readies to leave office, Gov. Pat Quinn gave quite a parting gift to his recent campaign manager, Lou Bertuca, appointing him as the new executive director of the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority at a public salary of $160,000 a year.

That agency owns the ballpark where the Chicago White Sox play and helped renovate Soldier Field, where the Bears play.

Some politicians are crying foul over the appointment, which Quinn’s allies on the authority board approved by a 4-3 vote this month.

In 2001, Boeing announced it would move its corporate headquarters from Seattle to Chicago. Today, you wonder if Boeing is having buyer’s remorse.

Illinois has become one of the nation’s most unfriendly states for business. According to the Illinois Policy Institute, 850,000 people have left the state over the past 15 years, headed for other states like Texas, Florida and neighboring Indiana. If you are bleeding one person every 10 minutes, something is deeply wrong with the way the state is being run.

For example, Forbes ranks Texas as the sixth best place for business. Washington and Florida, states without an income tax, rank eighth and 19th, respectively. Indiana, a right-to-work state, ranks 13th. Illinois is 40th.

Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn on Monday signed a measure into law that will make it a felony to post sexually explicit videos and photos of another person online without their permission.

Illinois taxpayers will have a little more spending money next year.

With a temporary income-tax increase expiring Wednesday, a typical family of four with an income of $50,000 will pay $930 less in 2015, according to the Illinois Department of Revenue.

The drop in the tax rate means a steep decline in revenue for the state. The state faces a $2 billion deficit through the end of the fiscal year in June. The individual rate drops from 5 percent to 3.75 percent, while the corporate income tax rate declines from 7 percent to 5.25 percent.

The turning of the calendar often serves as time for small business owners to benchmark overall performance and assess their prospects for moving forward in the new year.
In many ways, 2014 was a year of change in small business lending. Big banks re-emerged in the marketplace. However, their focus remains on larger amounts–loans of $250,000 or more–required by larger sized “small” businesses, rather than startups or mom-and-pop shops. Institutional lenders filled the void on marketplace lending platforms and took market share from other non-bank, “alternative lenders.” The institutional lenders include credit funds, insurance companies, family funds, and other yield-hungry, non-bank financial institutions, which are filling loan requests at a much greater percentage than banks are.

With continuously dropping gas prices, slow but steady growth in the overall economy, and low interest rates, small business owners searching for capital in 2015 should have brighter prospects than at any time in the past half decade. Lending approval rates at big banks are up nearly 20 percent compared to a year ago, and the institutional players are gaining in the marketplace, according to my company’s monthly Biz2Credit Small Business Lending Index. Meanwhile, high interest alternative lenders, are beginning to slip, as competition grows in the marketplace.

Gasoline prices in Chicago averaged $2.41 per gallon on Sunday, a decline of more than $1 from a year earlier, according to GasBuddy, a website that tracks gas prices.
For the next few months, it’s likely gas prices in Chicago will continue to fluctuate between $2 and $3 a gallon, said Patrick DeHaan, senior petroleum analyst with GasBuddy. In the suburbs, prices could continue to hover around $2 a gallon, he said.

“That’s the big question, will (prices) continue to drop or will they hold the line,” DeHaan said.

If you didn’t have health insurance this year, you could be on the hook for a penalty when you file 2014 taxes. And if you fail to sign up for insurance during the current open enrollment period, you’ll also lock yourself into an even steeper fine for 2015.

But what if you couldn’t afford health insurance, or you have religious reasons for opposing it? The law allows for exemptions, and a lot of people are expected to qualify. In fact, according to a report out earlier this year by the Congressional Budget Office, by 2016, almost 90 percent of the 30 million people still uninsured won’t pay the penalty, primarily because they’ll qualify for one of nearly two dozen exemptions.

Here, experts discuss the five exemptions likely to be most commonly used, as well as how to go about applying for them.