For nearly 35 years, Larry Ortega has run his popular horse-drawn carriage business, Chicago Horse and Carriage Ltd. And for all the time he has been in business, Ortega and his staff have operated without a major incident, and demand continues to boom. But an ordinance proposed by Chicago Alderman Ed Burke would put an...
Illinois’ 2011 income tax hike helped put the brakes on the state’s private-sector jobs recovery. According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Illinois’ monthly job creation has slowed down since the 2011 tax hike. Meanwhile, the rest of the country has accelerated its jobs growth. The Great Recession began in January 2008, and...
It’s no secret that Chicago is in a pension crisis and deeply in debt. Most of that debt comes from the city’s pensions, but health insurance and long-term debt are also a significant part of Chicago’s fiscal shortfall. In total, Chicago residents are officially on the hook for $63.2 billion in government pensions, health insurance...
After months of hounding by Illinois legislators, the Illinois State Board of Education has finally released a preliminary analysis of Senate Bill 16, a proposed education funding bill that completely transforms how the state distributes money to local districts. Proponents of the bill say the bill makes education funding more equitable. But, as many suburban...
CEOs of major U.S. corporations went on record in Chief Executive Magazine’s “2014 Best and Worst States for Business.” Business leaders pulled no punches in their description of Illinois, going so far as to compare doing business in Illinois to doing business in a third-world country. The publication ranked Illinois at the bottom of the...
It’s already been widely reported that the Chicago City Council voted to ban the sale of plastic bags in city. Alderman Joe Moreno, a main sponsor of the ordinance, wrote in the Chicago Tribune that plastic bags are “one of the most destructive, offensive and wasteful products ever created.” This is a difficult claim to...
Half the Illinoisans surveyed in a recent Gallup poll said they’d like to move to another state. This attitude isn’t a new trend. Between 1995 and 2009, the state lost on a net basis more than 806,000 people to out-migration. As Illinois lost residents, it also lost out on a net of $26 billion in taxable...
Illinois is bracing to lose another 776 jobs in the next few months. OfficeMax Inc. reported that it will lay off 137 workers in Ottawa. Naperville-based OfficeMax Inc. and Office Depot Inc., based in Boca Raton, Fla., merged in late 2013, and the company chose to locate its headquarters in Florida – not Illinois. Last...
While the president and his political allies have been celebrating ObamaCare’s “success,” not everyone is sharing this sentiment. In fact, most people are now taking the opposite view. According to a recent Pew Research Center/USA TODAY survey, more Americans disapprove of the Affordable Care Act now than when the law was enacted. Americans, now that...
In a House Energy and Commerce Oversight and Investigations subcommittee hearing this morning, a major health insurance trade association representative testified that the administration is reporting inflated enrollment numbers. According to their testimony: “Duplicate enrollments: Because of the challenges that surfaced with the launch of the Exchanges in October 2013, some consumers were advised to create a new account and enroll...
A little known, but important, provision in the Affordable Care Act, or ACA, is turning into a major point of contention between some policymakers and insurers participating in the ObamaCare exchanges. The ACA includes provisions to pay insurers for their financial losses in the ObamaCare exchanges. In response to lawmaker and public pressure, the federal...
Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin has filed suit in federal court “to make Congress live by the letter of the health-care law it imposed on the rest of America.” He now has support from dozens of his Congressional colleagues, as well as a growing number of supporters across the country, to make congressmen participate...
Before ObamaCare, there was RomneyCare, the Massachusetts model upon which ObamaCare was built. This week, Massachusetts announced that it is scrapping its failed state-funded exchange website. The state will simultaneously merge with the federal healthcare.gov site and attempt to build another state exchange website before open enrollment season for 2015 coverage which begins in the...
April was a very busy month for public corruption stories in Illinois. In total, there were 45 different public corruption-related news stories in just 30 days. A full list of those stories can be found here. Here are the April inductees to the Illinois Hall of Shame: 5. The city of Chicago spent more than...