With Illinois taxpayers just one year away from the income-tax rate sunset, the push from tax hungry politicians to raise rates again is growing. State politicians are using scare tactics to dupe Illinoisans into paying higher taxes. Their goal is to make the temporary 2011 income tax hike permanent, or worse: increase taxes again with...
Unions are often presented as the plucky defenders of the working man or woman, whose only interest is seeing that workers get a fair shake on the job. But in reality unions are well financed and powerful. And in government, at least, union influence goes beyond the job to include how government itself operates. Government...
Illinois has the worst pension crisis in the nation. If real reforms aren’t enacted, retirees will see their pensions slashed, taxpayers will be forced into a massive bailout and younger state workers might not receive a pension at all. The recent pension reform bill that passed is actually a step backward for the state. Only...
Last week, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released its latest report on union membership in the United States, which covers 2013. The results showed that unions failed to gain members – a fact that will likely prove disappointing for union officials, who might have hoped to regain lost membership under a very pro-union president....
Why do moving companies love Illinois politicians? Because they keep a heavy traffic flow moving out of Illinois. At the end of each year, moving companies release annual migration trends data based upon a compilation of customers who move in and out of different states. United Van Lines is the largest mover in the country,...
Top 10 facts about the proposed progressive tax hike The beginning of 2014 marked an important milestone for Illinois taxpayers: we are just one year away from tax relief. Illinois taxpayers currently fork over 5 percent of their paycheck to the state. The good news is Illinois’ income tax rate is slated to drop to...
For decades, residents of Illinois have been barraged with a constant stream of public corruption stories in the media. In recent years, these tales include a governor trying to sell a Senate seat, a U.S. Congressman illegally siphoning off campaign funds for personal use, and a record breaking corruption story from the small town of...
Despite increased funding over the past10n years, most Illinois elementary schools and high schools still struggle to teach students the basics of reading and math. Some of this is due to laws that allow poor-performing teachers to stay in classrooms, but most is due to the structure of Illinois’ education system itself. Here are 10...
You may be hearing about rosy new pension estimates coming out of Springfield, but don’t be too quick to bite. A memo recently released by legislative leadership points to “good news” coming from a new analysis of Senate Bill 1 to be included in Illinois’ upcoming bond offering on Feb. 6, 2014. The memo claims...
The Illinois Policy Institute awarded the city of Evanston a Sunshine Award at the city’s Jan. 13 board meeting. By posting everything on the Illinois Policy Institute’s 10-Point Transparency Checklist, Evanston recently became the sixth local taxing body in Illinois to garner a perfect transparency score, joining Kane County, Hanover Township, Orland Park, Lombard and...
The enrollment failure of ObamaCare is well documented – so much so that it has become the nation’s late-night talk show punch line. In fact, Moody’s changed the outlook for U.S. health insurers to negative from stable, as implementation of ObamaCare continues to create uncertainty for the industry. The sad reality is that millions of...
It’s common knowledge that Illinois lags behind other states when it comes to embracing education reforms. But a new report recently released by the Friedman Foundation shows just how much catching up the state has to do. The 2014 edition of the Foundation’s “The ABCs of School Choice” highlights every school choice program in the...
Illinois continues to fall behind the national unemployment average in December, as the Illinois unemployment rate moved to 8.6 percent – nearly two percentage points above the national average of 6.7 percent. The state lost 3,200 nonfarm payroll jobs in December. Illinois’ nonpayroll jobs loss came despite the fact that the U.S. added 70,000 nonfarm...
Gov. Quinn’s State of the State Noon Wednesday, Jan. 29 Tune in to Gov. Pat Quinn’s State of the State address live online. HOW TO PLAY Download one version of our cards below. Watch Quinn’s State of the State address Follow @illinoispolicy on Twitter and use hashtag #ILSOTS (we will be live-tweeting throughout the speech) or...