by Paul Kersey How did Detroit get to be the urban disaster area it is today? One tipping point come in 1978, when a union got a “win” that cost the city, and eventually its own members, dearly. This “win” came in the form of a raise concession granted to a powerful police union, which...
In what’s become a torrent of bad news regarding Illinois’ fiscal health, Moody’s Investors Service has downgraded Chicago Public Schools’ $6.3 billion general obligation debt one notch. The credit rating agency’s outlook remains negative, and CPS debt is now just four levels above junk bond status. The CPS ranking drop to A3 from A2 follows recent downgrades...
Suburban Chicago-based NorthShore University HealthSystem announced last month that it will “will freeze its employee pension plan as of Dec. 31 and shift all employees to a defined contribution savings plan.” The NorthShore hospital system isn’t the only private company making this move — Boeing, American Airlinesand Verizon each dropped their defined benefit plans for defined contribution retirement systems. The core...
Illinois has the nation’s worst-funded pensions. Each Illinois household can expect to pay more than $40,000 in additional taxes to cover the pension shortfall if no reforms are passed. The size of the pension crisis demands that state lawmakers pass the boldest reforms in the country. Fortunately, Illinois lawmakers can look to the examples other states have...
Another union has lost its enthusiasm for ObamaCare – or at least for one major feature of the federalized health insurance scheme. The National Treasury Employees Union, or NTEU, is encouraging its members to write their congressmen in opposition to HR 1780, a bill that would have federal government workers use health insurance exchanges to buy health insurance....
On the same day the White House announced an honor for Chicago Alderman Joe Moore as a “pioneer for political reform, governmental transparency and democratic governance,” Moore also revealed that he had been questioned by the FBI in an ethics probe concerning some of his former employees. As the Chicago Tribune reported: The accusations involving...
Buried beneath the news of Chicago Public Schools’ dismal Illinois Standard Achievement Test scoreslast week was another bombshell: students from receiving schools – those schools that students from closed schools will attend next year – saw less than half of the gains on the ISAT as the rest of the district. In other words, thousands of displaced...
When Chicago Public Schools laid off more than 2,000 employees – including 1,036 teachers – last week, Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis skewered Mayor Rahm Emanuel for not supporting tax-increasing policies that she claims would bring additional revenue to the city. She said: “It is equally shameful that as CPS slashes school budgets, they have not offered one...
As we reported a few days ago, one of the five companies participating in Illinois’ ObamaCare exchange is Land of Lincoln Health Inc., a startup funded by a $160 million federal loan to cover about 20,000 individuals in 2014. In Vermont, the federally funded Vermont Health CO-OP was denied its state insurance license, with a state regulator noting that the...
Turns out there’s no proof that Chicago’s red-light camera program has done anything to improve safety. In May, the Chicago Inspector General released a scathing audit of Chicago’s controversial red-light camera program. The audit found the Chicago of Department of Transportation couldn’t prove it placed cameras at Chicago’s most dangerous locations or that the cameras actually...
North Carolina lawmakers reached an agreement last week to overhaul the state’s tax environment. The state made a lot of changes to its tax structure, but the biggest reforms included reducing North Carolina’s corporate income tax rate and exchanging the state’s progressive tax structure in favor of a flat tax. Gov. Pat McCrory provided the...
Our local government transparency partners often report that employee compensation is almost universally the most in-demand transparency suggestion from our 10-Point Transparency Checklist. Not only is public worker compensation regularly the No. 1 budget area for most local governments, but it is also an issue that virtually everyone can understand. For example, Cook County’s budget is...
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, or BLS, reported Thursday that Illinois’ unemployment rate rose to 9.2 percent in June from 9.1 percent in May. Illinois still has the nation’s second-highest unemployment rate, a ranking it has held since March. Only Nevada has a higher unemployment rate at 9.6 percent. BLS also reported Illinois’ nonfarm payrolls increased by...
A mother's struggle to keep SEIU away from her finances and out of her home.