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Chicago Tribune: Tax dollars still paying off renovations on White Sox stadium
As the White Sox celebrate 25 years at U.S. Cellular Field this season, their fans can rejoice in a resurgent ballclub on the field.
Whether taxpayers are as joyful subsidizing the publicly owned ballpark is another matter. Though the ballpark has now been paid for, a variety of taxes continue to underwrite millions of dollars’ worth of renovations for a facility economists say has limited economic impact on Chicago.
“The return of investment is really low, maybe negative” for the public, University of Chicago sports economist Allen Sanderson said.
Daily Herald: How the odds are stacked against East Aurora students
The bell rings and nearly 4,000 East Aurora High School students burst all at once into the narrow halls. With exactly six minutes to get to the next class, they race up or down the stairs, sardined five and six across — navigating a school built in 1957 for a much smaller student body.
Passing walls of lockers and faded murals, the chatter, most of it in Spanish, is cheerfully deafening.
One girl darts into a classroom to see if her 4-year-old daughter is behaving in day care before running back out on her way to algebra. One student is moving noticeably slower — he worked a late shift last night. Another young man makes a detour into the health clinic near the front office. He is feeling sick, and this is the only doctor he has access to.
BND: Rolling on out of Illinois’ tax hell
Joe Newman runs a trucking business that hauls away liquid hazardous waste. He is in Illinois because it is close to his customers and close to the wash-out facility his tankers need.
He invested in his business in October 2014, building his facility in Fairmont City. He pays his drivers from $50,000 to $80,000, has a 401(k) retirement fund and solid health insurance.
But his trucks can roll and he could easily move a few miles and save big bucks that he said he would spend on adding workers. His workers compensation costs would be $200,000 less in Indiana and much less in Missouri, too.
Chicago Tribune: School funding is big question in Springfield: Can Rauner, Madigan, Cullerton agree?
With a broader budget deal unlikely to come until after the November election, if even then, the biggest remaining question for the last week of the spring session is whether warring Democrats and Republicans will be able to agree on a school funding bill.
It’s a matter of political risk. While much of state government continues to grind along and unpaid bills pile up, dark classrooms would provide a striking image of dysfunction that House and Senate candidates from both parties would be hard-pressed to explain to voters this fall.
Given the mutual interest in the issue, the suspense is whether the powers that be at the Capitol figure out how to put together a deal on education spending by month’s end or whether they’re content to play chicken all summer. Blowing past the end-of-session deadline not only raises the bar to pass a bill, but it also could send many parents into a panic, uncertain whether schools will open in late August or if they’ll have the massive headache of missing work or arranging for daylong child care.
Chicago Tribune: Aurora police, fire departments pay millions in overtime each year
Last year, Aurora police officers who worked overtime earned an average of almost $12,600 on top of their base pay, according to documents obtained by The Beacon-News.
Aurora firefighters last year earned an average of more than $15,000 in overtime pay alone.
All told, the two departments have paid millions in overtime each year since at least 2010. City, police and fire department leaders attributed the overtime hours in part to staff cuts across departments during the 2008 economic downturn. City officials said paying overtime is cheaper than hiring additional employees.
WGN: Illinois Lottery broke law to get around budget impasse
The state’s auditor general says the Illinois Lottery violated state finance law by prepaying $20 million to ensure it could participate in future multi-state lottery games even without a state budget.
The Belleville News-Democrat reports that the lottery made two $10 million payments on June 30, 2015, when it was clear lawmakers had failed to agree on a state budget that should have begun the next day.
The Lottery Department disputes the findings and denies any laws were broken.