by Kristina Rasmussen Governor Pat Quinn is spending more of your money to study the feasibility of “high speed” rail lines in Illinois. Not daunted by the $8 billion budget deficit he’s failed to balance, yesterday the governor announced $1.25 million to study high speed rail between Chicago and Champaign. Over a billion dollars are already pouring into...
by Aon Hussain The Illinois Policy Institute’s Local Transparency Project aims to conduct a transparency audit of every taxing body in the state. Allowing citizens to attain information about government contracts, expenditures and municipal officials gives the public opportunities to highlight wasteful spending, prevent corruption, and improve the democratic system. Realizing the benefits of increased transparency, legislators...
by Sameer Warraich A recent news headline on Housing Action Illinois’ website reads: “Recession over, but poor renters still at risk of homelessness” After proposed state budget cuts for shelters, Housing Action Illinois has advocated maintaining federal and state funding for affordable housing programs. The ultimate irony, however, is that government intervention in the housing market has...
by Aon Hussain Want to save Illinois taxpayers some green and earn a little bit of your own? Instead of asking citizens to play the lottery, the State of Illinois is ready to give regular citizens big cash prizes if they come up with some fruitful ideas to save the state some bucks. The Illinois...
by Collin Hitt The General Assembly has adjourned for the summer. A budget was passed that contained real cuts, but it was still too big. Significant school reform sits on the governor’s desk. Illinois government will be more transparent. And yet so much more remains to be done. Here are the highlights of the spring...
Policy makers struggling to protect higher education appropriations may be surprised to learn this fact: The total cost of the State Universities Retirement System (SURS) in 2012 will exceed the amount of general funds appropriated to all other higher education agencies and institutions. Years of overly generous pensions and delayed funding by the Illinois legislature...
by Mark Cavers Rather than coming to the table to try and help save their members’ pensions, union officials seem content to vilify the wealthy in Illinois. Yesterday, while discussing the pension reform bill in committee, the head of AFSCME argued that all we need to do is raise taxes on the rich and our pension problem...
by Kristina Rasmussen Echoing the sentiments of former Gov. Jim Edgar, state rep Daniel Biss made the argument that pension reform will hurt state government employee recruitment in a committee hearing yesterday. From the Tribune’s editorial: Then there’s Daniel Biss, a freshman Democrat from Evanston. In blather-rich questions and a pre-vote soliloquy, he illogically twisted his proclaimed...
Collin Hitt, the Institute’s Senior Director of Government Affairs, gives an update on S.B. 512 from just outside the Capitol Building on the afternoon of Friday, May 27. The bill, which would reform public employee pensions going forward, passed out of committee yesterday and could see a vote in the House very soon.
(UPDATED: action in House pension committee. See below) by Collin Hitt A bold proposal to reform government employee pensions has been put forward, Senate Bill 512. It is the broadest and best legislation yet introduced by legislative leaders hoping to address the long term debt, and insolvency, of Illinois’s public employee pension funds. Illinois taxpayers...
by Alex Miller Today, businesses and jobs are leaving Illinois, thousands of students are trapped in underperforming schools, and the state unemployment rate is 8.7 percent. In such conditions, Democrats and Republicans alike should be calling on their state government to be responsible in determining where to allocate scarce state resources. Yet, during this present malaise of economic...
by Sameer Warraich New leadership is set to take control over Chicago Public Schools, and parents and students are pondering whether these new policy makers will be successful in reforming Chicago’s public school system. With a deficit that exceeds $720 million, CPS is in dire need of reformers who can simultaneously reduce costs while increasing the...
by Amanda Griffin-Johnson In December, the Menard Correctional Center became infamous after theBelleville News-Democrat revealed almost $10 million in workers’ compensation paid out to more than half the staff of the facility. The high incident of workers’ compensation claims have prompted multiple investigations at the federal and state level, and the increased scrutiny of the claims has resulted in...
Did you know that the average state government worker earns 23 percent more than the average Illinoisan? State workers receive about 1.5 times the benefits and have been promised generous pensions when they retire. Broken down, taxpayer by taxpayer, it takes 21 private sector workers to fund just one government job. Watch the Institute’s web-film...