Get the latest news from around Illinois.
Crain's Chicago Business: Do tax credits bring jobs? Not in Illinois.
Illinois politicians will be the first to tell you the state needs all the revenue it can get. Yet from 1999 through 2017, they issued $1.65 billion in tax credits to major companies across the state. Is the investment paying off?
The state’s tax credit program, Edge—which stands for Economic Development for a Growing Economy—grants credits to companies that promise to create jobs and invest in Illinois. Takeda Pharmaceuticals, one of the biggest Edge recipients, recently announced plans to shutter its Illinois headquarters and move out of state. Takeda’s decision to close its Deerfield headquarters calls into question the efficacy of the Edge program. The biopharma giant reportedly is consolidating its operations in the Boston area as it works through its $62 billion acquisition of Irish drugmaker Shire.
Champaign News-Gazette: Homeowners taking a hit
Illinoisans are facing core problems that their elected officials are failing to address.
The Illinois Policy Institute recently released a study of housing ownership that is disappointing in at least two respects.
The study concluded that “Illinois ranked 48 out of all 50 states in terms of improvements in the user cost of homeownership and now has the eighth-highest cost of homeownership in the nation, up from 25th-highest in the pre-housing bubble period. For every $100 in home value in Illinois, homeowners are now paying $10.15 in annual costs associated with owning their home — more than in 42 other states.”
Chicago Tribune: Scores of Chicago Public Schools employees still barred from working with children over background checks
More than 140 Chicago Public Schools employees still are barred from working in schools as the district scrutinizes their backgrounds, the district said Friday, including six teachers and more than 100 who work as coaches.
The district said its massive effort to recheck the criminal and child-welfare histories of its nearly 44,000 employees is complete and that more than 99 percent of workers directly employed by the Chicago Board of Education were cleared to work with children. But the figures showed that the district still is churning through the background results of more than 1,800 vendors, including custodians and nurses who work as contractors. So far, about 88 percent of CPS vendors have been cleared, the district’s figures show.
Daily Herald: Pay thousands to Roselle now for sidewalks sometime later? Residents object
A group of homeowners in an unincorporated neighborhood near Roselle say the village is forcing them to make a difficult decision.
They must either pay Roselle thousands of dollars for sidewalks they may never get, or be disconnected from the village’s sanitary sewer system.