A trio of Chicago Federal Reserve economists recently proposed a special property tax aimed at erasing Illinois’ pension funding shortfall.

Their report, released last week, called for a 1 percent property tax increase on homeowners only for 30 years, or however long it takes to cover the pension shortfall. They reasoned that people wouldn’t be able to escape it simply by selling their homes because it would reduce the amount they could get for them. It would be a means of locking people into paying, one way or another, and the more their homes were worth, the more they’d be billed.

The Illinois tollway contends its no-bid process that uses a selection committee to makes recommendations to the board on expensive engineering contracts is independent and transparent.

But when asked to provide meeting minutes, the agency blacked out the names of committee members in a majority of cases, making it impossible to see who is voting — a response criticized by attorney and public access expert Don Craven as improper under Illinois open records law.

The Chicago Board of Education doubled the size of its bond sale Thursday to $561 million amid signs of strong demand for the junk-rated district’s high-yielding securities.

The offering, which was initially planned for next week until officials moved it up, is the first this year for the nation’s third-largest school district and was increased from the $260 million initially scheduled. Because of its chronic fiscal strains, the system’s uninsured bonds carried yields that were 1.93 percentage point to 2.24 percentage points more than top-rated securities, with debt backed by Assured Guaranty Municipal Corp. offered for as much as 1.35 percentage point over the benchmark, according to a repricing note sent to an investor.

Mary Mahady has a lot of questions about the effect of township consolidation, but she isn’t getting any answers.

The McHenry Township assessor is running for the 32nd District Senate seat soon to be vacated by McHenry native state Sen. Pamela Althoff. In the lead-up to the November election, the Democrat has been sitting front row for a volatile campaign to consolidate the township’s highway department and ultimately collapse townships under the county government umbrella.

A bipartisan group of Lake County legislators led by Grayslake Democratic state Rep. Sam Yingling want to make the county’s chief assessment officer an elected position.

But first they’ll need voter support.

Faced with persistent budget deficits and a jump in student enrollment, Glen Ellyn Elementary District 89 is launching a series of community meetings about the state of school finances.

Superintendent Emily Tammaru and school board members will hold three forums next month as part of a new “Our 89” community engagement plan.

DuPage County will gain the power to disband the county election commission if Gov. Bruce Rauner signs legislation now on his desk.

The Illinois Senate on Friday unanimously approved the legislation that would amend the Election Code to allow DuPage County to dissolve its election commission and transfer its functions to the county clerk’s office. The state House approved the measure last month.

The U.S. Supreme Court decision to allow states to legalize sports gambling leaves us betting Illinois will be scoring taxes in time for basketball season.

Like too many poor, desperate people, state lawmakers will replace hard work with games of chance. No need to watch your pennies when you can win big bucks. No need to seek treatment for your addiction to gambling taxes.