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...
by Kristina Rasmussen We told you about a $100K state grant to put up two informational kiosks in Springfield in a Spotlight on Spending report: $100,000 for Touch Screen Kiosks in Springfield The DCEO gave Downtown Springfield Inc. $100,000 for touch-screen kiosks to “provide information on local historic sites, restaurants, retail shops, services, hotels, recreational facilities, maps...
Download a pdf of this report and chart here. The required pension payment for Chicago city government and Chicago Public Schools will jump to $1.92 billion from $650 million between now and 2020. Current law will require local taxpayers to foot the bill. That’s a citywide per capita jump to $715 from $241. Illinois is...
Download a pdf of this report and chart here. The funding of Illinois’s Teachers’ Retirement System (TRS) has become a major obstacle for future increases in state education spending. Years of overly generous pensions and delayed funding by the Illinois legislature have left the TRS approximately $47 billion short of its obligations. Historically, the largest...
by Mark Cavers Illinois will have $8.3 billion in unpaid bills by the end of the fiscal year, a projected deficit of $1.7 billion for fiscal year 2012 and $86 billion in unpaid pension liabilities. A contributing factor to our deficits, and a major reason behind calls for higher taxes is government employee’s pay and benefits. Rather...