General Electric will move its corporate headquarters and 800 jobs to Boston, Mass., from Fairfield, Conn., noting its concerns about Chicago’s government-worker pension debt in its rejection of the Windy City.
Illinois has the lowest credit rating among the 50 states, forcing taxpayers to pay hundreds of millions of dollars more in borrowing costs than residents of states in better fiscal condition.
Illinois could have saved a cumulative $3.5 billion had AFSCME salaries simply grown at the rate of inflation since 2004.
Donna Arduin is an Illinois Policy Institute senior fellow and a partner at Arduin, Laffer & Moore Econometrics, a group that advises federal, state and municipal leaders, as well as political candidates and private-sector clients, on economic, fiscal and state policies.
On Jan. 11, lawyers for the plaintiffs in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association will argue before the U.S. Supreme Court that the First Amendment prohibits the government from forcing its employees to pay union fees.
Illinois’ manufacturing job losses accelerated in 2015, while most neighboring and Great Lakes states continued to post gains in factory jobs.
AFSCME's demands would cost Illinois taxpayers an additional $3 billion over the course of the contract.
Illinois’ monthslong budget gridlock, $111 billion in government-worker pension debt, and more than a decade of unbalanced budgets have resulted in credit downgrades for Illinois and the highest borrowing costs of any state in the nation.
Without a strike fund, AFSCME – which represents 60,000 state workers in Illinois – has avoided a strike. But since the union announced that the governor has walked way from contract talks, a strike could be on the horizon.
Enjoy Life Foods plans to move its lone Illinois manufacturing facility and up to 150 jobs to southern Indiana this year.
Not only are city officials making Chicagoans pay more for services that aren't working, they are making them shoulder the highest tax burden in the state.
Nearly 70,000 Illinois children have incarcerated parents who will need to be able to support their families after serving their sentences.