Waukegan’s teachers have authorized a strike and plan to walk out April 16. The Waukegan teachers union wants a 2.25 percent pay raise, retroactively effective into last year, plus step-and-lane increases, which average 4 to 5 percent in additional increases annually. The union’s demands would cost an additional $4.8 million to taxpayers. The school board...
The Wall Street Journal’s article “Public Pension Red Alert” foreshadows more municipal bankruptcies countrywide as pension costs continue to spiral out of control. One of the cities facing the most stress nationally is Chicago. The city’s pension payments are set to jump to more than $1 billion as laws that allowed the city to skimp on pension payments...
Illinois has the highest jobless rate in the Midwest, and the third-highest in the nation. But not only that. Illinois’ jobless rate has gone up more in the last five years than any other state in the nation. Despite this dismal record, cheerleaders for the state government cite various studies to support a claim...
Why are regulators so out of touch? At a Chicago City Council committee hearing on ride-sharing services last week, taxi-industry lobbyist Matthew Daus, president of the International Association of Transportation Regulators, reportedly said that “millennials” were responsible for the rise of companies such as Lyft and Uber because they care more about “cost” than about...
Moody’s Investors Services recently cut the city of Chicago’s credit rating to Baa1 from A3 – citing pension debt as a key factor in the downgrade. Without real pension reform, a chain of credit downgrades will likely follow for Chicago’s sister governments. The Moody’s report noted that the recent passage of pension reforms for the...
More bad news is coming on the heels of the Bureau of Labor Statistics report that Illinois dropped 27,600 payroll jobs in the month of January alone. More than 1,000 workers will be laid off in comings weeks and months, according to advance notices filed by businesses to regulators. Businesses such as Accretive Health and...
Illinois policies continue to smother the job prospects for people in the state. Yesterday, the Illinois Department of Employment Security, or IDES, reported that the state lost jobs for the second month in a row. Illinois lost 27,600 payroll jobs in January, compared to 129,000 jobs gained nationally. The Illinois unemployment rate for January is...
Illinois started the New Year in the wrong direction, with businesses reporting a loss of 27,600 payroll jobs in January. The January loss makes two consecutive months of job losses. The unemployment rate declined from 8.9 percent to 8.7 percent. The number of payroll jobs today is the same as it was in November of...
The State Journal Register’s recent editorial critiquing the Illinois Policy Institute’s study, The crisis hits home: Illinois’ local pension problem, was disappointing on many fronts. The city of Springfield performed dismally in the Institute’s statewide audit, which measured ten different metrics to arrive at a comprehensive picture of a city’s fiscal health. Springfield scored worst among the state’s...
House Speaker Michael Madigan just introduced a bill to the Illinois General Assembly that appropriates $100 million to build a presidential library and museum “dedicated to the legacy of President Barack Obama.” Illinois is sitting on $7.6 billion in unpaid bills. The state’s credit rating has been downgraded five times since the largest tax hike...
The Illinois General Assembly is poised to consider a bill that looks harmless at first glance, but should be raising eyebrows across the state. House Bill 5935 is supposed to make technical changes to the state’s Medicaid programs, but in the process it affects people who are involved in a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case....
In what’s likely to be a chain of credit downgrades for some of Chicago’s sister governments, Moody’s Investors Services cut the city of Chicago’s credit rating to Baa1 from A3. That downgrade follows the rare triple-notch downgrade the city received last year from Moody’s as a result of the city’s growing and out-of-control pension debt. Excluding Detroit,...
According to the most recent Rasmussen survey, one-third of Americans believe that the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as ObamaCare, has negatively affected them personally. But that is only part of the story. A scant 14 percent believe that the law has helped them. Sold as reducing the number of the insured and lowering health-care...
An ironic piece of legislation has been proposed in the Illinois Senate. Senate Bill 3126 would reduce the corporate income tax rate from 7 percent to 3.5 percent, but also raise the minimum wage nearly 50 percent, to $12 from $8.25. Cutting corporate tax rates is a great idea in the state with the fourth-highest...