Single parents face countless unique challenges, many of which are tied to balancing the family checkbook. Sometimes this means forgoing family outings, such as going to the movies, to be able to afford groceries for the week. Other times it means taking the bus instead of driving to save on gas.

But one of the most difficult decisions single parents face is how to afford child care while continuing to work. Illinois’ Child Care Assistance Program, or CCAP, provides subsidies to qualifying families – many of them single-parent families – for some or all of their day care costs.

But on Jan. 22, Illinois’ Department of Human Services, or DHS, posted the following child care alert on its website:

In the Illinois public pension world risk is the devil seldom acknowledged, let alone carefully considered. Everyone not living under a rock knows that Illinois has a public pension plan problem – one that poses an immense financial challenge. The public pension plan challenge, however, is overwhelming when the massive risk, currently born by the state, is carefully considered.

Actuarial calculations with respect to pension plans are based on assumptions with respect to events that will occur over the next several decades. An actuarial valuation requires assumptions with respect to future investment earnings, future mortality, future retirement rates, and more. While some assumptions are more likely to be significantly wrong than others EVERY assumption will ultimately be wrong. No one, even the best actuary, has a crystal ball even for next year, let alone decades from now.

Perhaps the biggest fallacy is that if a pension plan is “big enough”, “everything” will work out “on average”, “over time”. That’s nonsense. A big plan, well-diversified plan, over time is less subject to the vagaries of individual events, such as the impact of owning equity in single company that goes bankrupt or the impact of a particularly bad flu season, than a smaller plan over a shorter time period. Size, diversification, and time, however, are not protective against systemic downside risks, such as economic recessions, deflation, mortality improvements, and even an unexpected surge in public pension plan retirements.[i]

To shovel or not to shovel? That is the question for people living in the city. You either risk getting hit with a fine, or you risk getting sued.

Chicago winter’s can be rough for anyone, but even more so for pedestrians like Jake Fruend.

“I’ve fallen a couple of times. You know, it’s part of the sport I guess of Chicago in the winter time,” said Fruend.

Republican lawmakers are targeting so-called “golden parachutes” after College of DuPage trustees approved a $762,000 buyout package for the school’s president.

At a news conference Monday, several legislators said they’re proposing bills to protect taxpayers from future large payouts.

Rep. Jeanne Ives of Wheaton says residents “are demanding action.”

The power of denial was on full display across Chicago on Friday.

Over at Cook County Circuit Court, four unions fought to block a new law that lowers costs on two of the city’s four grossly underfunded pension systems. If successful, the suit could drive a city already facing monstrous pension bills beginning this year over the financial cliff.

And over at the Sun-Times, we heard from the five mayoral candidates on the very same topic. Just how, the editorial board asked, would each candidate find the $20 billion needed to fully fund the city’s four retirement funds, a debt so large that all four funds risk going belly up within a decade or two?

A first massive down payment on that debt — a $1.1 billion bill for police and firefighters, on top of a projected $300 million city budget deficit — is due in just a few short months. This requires budget cuts and efficiencies of course, but also new revenue.

When Marlene Tillis bought her February Metra pass recently, she was surprised to find out how much the cost had jumped: an increase of $14.50 to $92.75 for a month’s worth of rides.

That amounts to an 18.5 percent increase — more than the average of nearly 11 percent that Metra said the fares would rise when it approved the increase in November.

“I was shocked,” said Tillis, who boards Metra’s UP North Line at the Clybourn station on the North Side. “It’s too high. … I was like, ‘Oh, man!’ “

Rosemont has gotten a lot of publicity lately, but it isn’t the only town that would prefer not to disclose financial information regarding its entertainment and convention business.

The subject of both a lawsuit and an Illinois Attorney General’s ruling telling the village to make public the incentives given to Garth Brooks’ concert promoter, Rosemont officials argue the village’s competitive advantage would be irreparably harmed if forced to divulge the deal that brought Brooks to town last year — as well as the discounts and sweeteners that lure other big acts to the Allstate Arena or big trade shows to the convention center.

One thing is clear with respect to Medicaid expansion in Illinois: It will cost more than anticipated.

How much more is the question.

State lawmakers in 2013 expanded the definition of who was eligible for the federal-state program that provides free health care for the poor, with the federal government agreeing to foot the bill for new members through 2016 as part of the Affordable Care Act. The idea was a simple one: By enrolling more people in the program and stressing preventive care, officials hoped to head off more expensive medical bills down the line.

Rosemont has gotten a lot of publicity lately, but it isn’t the only town that would prefer not to disclose financial information regarding its entertainment and convention business.

The subject of both a lawsuit and an Illinois Attorney General’s ruling telling the village to make public the incentives given to Garth Brooks’ concert promoter, Rosemont officials argue the village’s competitive advantage would be irreparably harmed if forced to divulge the deal that brought Brooks to town last year — as well as the discounts and sweeteners that lure other big acts to the Allstate Arena or big trade shows to the convention center.

Lest anyone thinks Rosemont’s viewpoint is unique, reporter Christopher Placek writes in today’s Daily Herald that the same nondisclosure mindset is held by officials in other suburbs.