Come Thursday, truckers will be able to legally drive 60 mph on some Chicago-area highways, pregnant women will get tougher workplace protections and children with seizures will be allowed to use medical marijuana.

The three changes are among more than 200 new laws that take effect with the new year, despite 2014 being an election year that saw much of the action unfold on the campaign trail instead of under the Capitol dome.

Topping the annual new law list are a pair of measures that will lead to higher speed limits on tollways and highways. Outgoing Gov. Pat Quinn had vetoed both speed bills citing safety concerns, but the General Assembly controlled by his fellow Democrats overrode him.

When former Enron trader and Texas billionaire John Arnold donated more than $1 million to a November 2014 initiative to reform the public pension system in Phoenix, pension activists took notice.

Arnold’s donation to Proposition 487, also known as the Phoenix Pension ReformAct, constituted close to 75 percent of total donations for the ballot measure, which failed. Had it passed, it would have moved new state employees from a defined benefit plan into a less generous (and less expensive) defined contribution plan such as a 401(k).

Stock gains for Illinois public companies dropped sharply this year and lagged the major indices.

The 140-company Crain’s Chicago Index, calculated by Bloomberg L.P., rose 6 percent this year through yesterday, down from a 35 percent jump in 2013.

The index, made up of Illinois-based companies with market caps of at least $100 million, posted a smaller gain than the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which rose 8.5 percent through yesterday, the S&P 500, up 12.6 percent, and the Nasdaq, up 19.2 percent.

The pace of agencies issuing new rules and regulations has hit a record high under President Obama, whose administration’s rules have filled 468,500 pages in the Federal Register.

And, according to the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the president is poised to unleash another 2,375 new rules on American businesses without first giving Congress an up or down vote.

CEI’s Clyde Wayne Crews, vice president for policy, told Secrets Wednesday that of the top six biggest Federal Register page tallies since 2002, the Obama administration owns five. This year, he said, the Federal Register ended up printing 79,066 pages — 78,978 when blank pages are removed.

As the calendar flips to 2015, fiscal pressures will continue to tax the budgets of state and local governments.

And that could mean higher taxes for many Americans.

Projections released this month by the Government Accountability Office show that state and local governments will see current gaps between revenues and expenditures continue to widen in 2015 and beyond. In aggregate, those governments are already underwater, and the amount of red ink will continue to grow over the next 50 years, unless changes are made, the GAO says.

President Barack Obama has preached economic opportunity and equal access to education as cornerstones of the legacy he wants to leave behind.

But in the contest to host his presidential library, two public universities that serve needy communities fear the playing field has been tilted against them by a pair of elite, private schools with seemingly endless money.

As Obama weighs a decision he’ll announce within months, the University of Hawaii and the University of Illinois at Chicago are struggling to offer the upfront resources needed to offset the massive cost of building the library and presidential museum, expected to run close to half a billion dollars.

Billions of dollars from pension funds and other nontraditional players have been moving into the reinsurance business in recent years, according to a report released on Wednesday by the Treasury Department.

The report did not identify individual pension funds or other providers of what it called “alternative capital” for reinsurance. But it found that such newcomers had put about $59 billion into the $570 billion global reinsurance market as of June 30.