Nearly 230,000 Chicago-area union workers and retirees risk not getting the pensions they’ve been promised, and some may not get any retirement benefits at all unless Congress comes up with a fix soon.

While lawmakers wrestled with the issue for at least 10 years, $6.26 billion in unfunded retirement obligations was racked up by 30 union-affiliated plans in the city and suburbs that are in financial danger. That doesn’t count the Teamsters Central States, Southeast and Southwest Areas pension fund, which alone is $17.55 billion short of what it needs to pay benefits for its nearly 408,000 members nationwide, including 30,000 in Illinois.

It has been a quiet, slow-moving crisis, but Central States could change that. If a solution isn’t in place by 2017, the Rosemont-based plan is expected to go belly-up in 10 years or so, experts say.

On Dec. 24, 2009, the Democratic-controlled Senate passed President Obama’s healthcare law with a filibuster-proof 60-vote majority, triggering a massive backlash that propelled Republicans to control of the House the following year. On the Senate side, going into this year’s midterm elections, 25 senators who voted for Obamacare were already out or not going be part of the new Senate being sworn in next month. After Democratic losses on Nov. 4 and Saturday’s defeat of Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., the number has risen to 30. In other words, half of the Senators who voted for Obamacare will not be part of the new Senate.

To be sure, it isn’t fair to attribute all of the turnover in the chamber to Obamacare. In some cases — such as John Kerry leaving his seat to become secretary of state, or Robert Byrd passing away — Obamacare clearly had nothing to do with the departures. Additionally, some outgoing pro-Obamacare votes were replaced by new Democratic senators (although that tended to be the case in heavily Democratic states).

That having been said, many senators who voted for Obamacare lost re-election battles in which they were hit hard for their support for the law and other Democrats were forced to retire because they had no hope of getting re-elected given their support for the law. A total of 16 Senators who voted for Obamacare either failed to win reelection or declined to run for reelection and had their seats turned over to Republicans.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel formally announced his candidacy for a second term on Saturday in a speech that highlighted his successful effort to push through a minimum wage increase in the city.

While mostly avoiding specific references to the achievements of his first term, Emanuel expressed pride in a bill that the city council passed this week to bump up the minimum wage gradually to $13 an hour in 2019 from the current $8.25 an hour.

“Washington wouldn’t do it. Springfield couldn’t do it. But here in Chicago, we did it,” Emanuel, a former White House chief of staff under President Barack Obama, said, referring to failed efforts to increase the minimum wage at the federal and state levels.

A s the holiday spending season is well underway, the
outcome for consumer spending will provide the basis
for the path of the economy in the New Year. Expectations
remain high as a series of recent reports indicate that
consumers, which account for two-thirds or more of Gross
Domestic Product, are invigorated. Unlike last year, when
forecasts of improved holiday sales were not met, with
actual results falling short, this year there seems to be
virtual agreement as to the improved outlook for such
spending.
The second estimate of GDP for the third quarter showed
an annual rate of increase of 3.9%. While this was an
unexpected upward revision from a preliminary estimate of
3.5%, it was below the 4.6% rate in the second quarter.
The spurt in growth in the second quarter largely reflected a
weather-related rebound from the annual rate of decline of
2.1% in the first quarter. While on a rocky path, economic
growth this year was in the 2% range, similar to that seen
in each of the past two years.

When Governor-Elect Bruce Rauner walked on stage on Election Night, he was greeted by a diverse group of supporters. Most notably, Hermene Hartman who hugged Rauner moments before his victory speech.

As the Publisher of N’Digo Magazine, Hartman is best known for her connections with leaders in the African-American community. She led Rauner’s minority outreach effort during the campaign. Hartman said she was surprised by the backlash and bullying she endured for supporting a Republican.

“I don’t know what it is. I don’t know if it’s a stigma, I don’t know if it’s a stereotype of African Americans with Republicans that is a phenomena of negativity for I think a whole lot of reasons of which I didn’t quite fully understand, however, I liked Bruce Rauner and I was for Bruce Rauner and I was with Bruce Rauner,” said Hartman in an interview with FOX 32’s Tisha Lewis.

Out of money and at war with the City Council he was hired to oversee, Legislative Inspector General Faisal Khan turned it up a notch Wednesday — by accusing  employees in 24 of  Chicago’s 50 aldermanic offices of engaging in political work on city time.

After a two-year investigation that saw five aldermen refuse to cooperate, Khan said he has identified 68 current and former aldermanic employees who “may have engaged” in unlawful conduct by spending hours or even entire work days reviewing candidate petitions at the Chicago Board of Elections.

In 18 of those cases, Khan claims to have hard and fast evidence — in the form of election board sign-in sheets and requests to review political petitions.

Insurance companies around the world are promising lower rates on car coverage. The catch is they want to install the equivalent of an airplane’s black box to track how and where you drive.

Smartphone applications and devices that record trip and vehicle data are set to infiltrate auto insurance at a rapid pace, bolstered by discounts of as much as 30 percent. Consultancy Oliver Wyman forecasts that car insurance using driver data to set prices will grow 40 percent a year to become a $3.6 billion market by 2020.

For insurers, it will provide fine-grained information on an individual’s driving style, like flooring it to beat a red light, to improve returns in the competitive segment. For drivers, Big Brother-like monitoring offers the prospect of lower rates and faster response time in the event of an accident, including medical assistance and repairs. In any case, the shift away from standard practices of rating customers by age and driving history might be unavoidable.

Recently the peer-to-peer ride-sharing company Lyft announced a new program that allows employers to automatically cover transportation costs incurred by employees. It’s called Lyft for Work. The setup is simple: Employers set a recurring limit in Lyft for employee transportation—to and from meetings, carpools, etc.—and any unused credits are left unbilled.

It another step toward Lyft’s goal to become an indispensable part of the ride-share economy. Meanwhile its archrival, Uber, this week announced another $1 billion funding round, spiking it to a valuation of over $40 billion. But Lyft presidentJohn Zimmer believes the two company’s models can—perhaps optimistically—coexist.

Speaking at Fast Company’s Innovation Uncensored conference last month, Zimmer said he believes that, if you pay attention to how the ride-share market is expanding, there will be more than enough room in the future to accommodate both companies. No sabotage necessary, apparently.

At its recent annual conference the Illinois Municipal League, a century old adviser and advocate for local government, took the unprecedented step of sponsoring an in-depth session on a volatile topic: hometown bankruptcies.

The Sept. 18 session, entitled “Finance: Lessons from Detroit and Pension Cases,” couldn’t have been timelier. Many of Illinois’ municipal leaders are warily eyeing Motown’s bankruptcy proceeding while questioning whether their financially desperate and cash-crunched cities, suburbs and villages could face the same fate, a Rescuing Illinois investigation finds.

At the very least, these leaders are now, more than ever before, openly questioning if bankruptcy is a viable option to reorganize or slash their growing financial obligations, including public pensions for retirees and current workers.