According to a federal audit released Aug. 18, Illinois’ Medicaid program routinely over-estimated the amount of funds it needed from federal coffers to the tune of nearly $1 billion from 2010 through 2012. Over that three-year period, the state would spend the Medicaid money elsewhere and was slow in repaying the federal government, costing federal...
A recent study of the business tax burden in the 50 states and District of Columbia ranks Illinois as 27th in the nation. Portrayed as being “not so bad” in the media sheds a lot of light on Illinois’ current economic position. But while Illinois ranks in the middle of the pack for business tax...
New York lawmakers have acknowledged that low costs are beneficial to businesses, and that lower taxes mean more money, which leads to growth, innovation and hiring. The proof is the state’s START-UP NY program, which provides 10-year exemptions on property, sales and state income taxes to qualified new and expanding businesses. But while START-UP NY...
Introduction It pays to work for state government. Compensation costs for state workers make up roughly one third of Illinois’ state budget. How much state workers are paid is largely decided by contracts with government employee unions, specifically Council 31 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. Since 2003, two consecutive Illinois governors – now disgraced former...
State government employees working for Illinois’ Department of Children and Family Services, or DCFS, racked up 5,002 hours of “tardy time” – instances of unexcused late arrival – in fiscal years 2012 and 2013, but were still paid for the time.1 Estimated cost to taxpayers: $180,346.44. During this same two-year span, DCFS paid out more than $11.8 million2 in...
Illinois’ labor force shrank by 17,100 people in July, according to a release from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. BLS also reported that the state’s unemployment rate fell to 6.8 percent from 7.1 percent. However, the entire decline in the July unemployment rate came as a result of workers quitting the workforce. This grim news...
Illinois government does some strange things. A case in point is how the state treats people and businesses that create jobs. Illinoisans are subject to both a death tax and a franchise tax. The death tax is a special tax on wealthy people just for the privilege of dying in the state of Illinois. This...
As the start of a new school year approaches, Illinois teachers deserve to know their rights. That includes the right to join or not join a union, and the right to support or not support union politics as the political season in Illinois heats up. Teachers unions are one of the most powerful lobbying groups...
When the Affordable Care Act, or ACA, was signed into law, three out of 10 physicians were not accepting new Medicaid patients. So to entice more physicians to participate in the Medicaid program, the federal government began temporarily paying higher reimbursements for some of primary care physicians’ routine services. But temporarily boosting a narrow subset...
Illinois gained 10,300 jobs in July, according to the Illinois Department of Employment Security, or IDES. The Quinn camp was quick to tout this number as an indicator of the administration’s success. However, by comparison Illinois only created 10,600 net new jobs in first 66 months of Quinn’s tenure. Perhaps the Quinn administration believes that...
Politicians have made a mess of Illinois’ finances, in large part through their mismanagement of state and local pension systems. With most of the state’s pension funds heading toward insolvency, it’s no surprise that politicians’ actions – from using government-worker retirements as slush funds, to trading retirement benefits in exchange for union support, to taking...
It may seem obvious that a business owner should have the right to sell their business to someone else. But in Chicago, basic property rights take a back seat to arbitrary regulation and a system of aldermanic privilege that can put those rights in the hands of a single politician. Parlour on Clark, a once-popular...
More mobile than any generation before them, millennials need retirement plans, such as 401(k)s, that are just as flexible. But if you’re a millennial looking to become a state-government worker in Illinois, you may want to look elsewhere. Mobility isn’t a priority for state officials. Illinois almost exclusively offers its government workers traditional pension plans....
The controversy surrounding Chicago’s red-light camera program just got even more interesting. A judge revealed he is dismissing tickets by the fistful while former key players in the program have been indicted on federal bribery charges. Less than two weeks after Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced that the city will be reviewing more than 16,000...