Illinois’ lawmakers often blame unions for the Illinois General Assembly’s inability to pass real pension reform. “The unions will never allow it” is the common chorus when it comes to proposing bold reforms like those recently passed in Oklahoma, which put nearly all new state workers on 401(k)-style plans, or those passed in many other...
Illinoisans cross the border to become Hoosiers at a stunning rate. Illinois had a net loss of 4,100 people and $76 million of annual income to Indiana in 2010 alone, the most recent year of Internal Revenue Service data. That’s because for every three people who left Indiana for Illinois, four left Illinois for Indiana. Illinois’ losses to Indiana are...
Illinois’ unemployment rate fell to 7.5 percent from 7.9 percent month-over-month, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ most recent household survey. But there’s no reason to celebrate. Payroll jobs shrank by 2,600, with a loss of 5,400 private-sector jobs and an increase of 2,800 government jobs. The decline in the unemployment rate was driven...
State workers, retirees and public-sector unions groups have filed various lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of Senate Bill 1, the state pension reform bill signed into law by Gov. Pat Quinn in December 2013. The top pensioner of those suing the state will receive $2.4 million in pension benefits over the course of his retirement. That...
Temporary tax hikes notoriously stick around longer than planned. Pennsylvania passed a 10 percent tax on alcohol to pay for damage from a flood in 1936. The state continued to levy the tax after the flood damage was paid for. Today the rate is 18 percent. But lawmakers across the country have been better at...
Illinois is a party to a landmark federal lawsuit, Harris v. Quinn. In this case, the state has been forced to defend before the U.S. Supreme Court its decision to permit the unionization of people who are not state workers. The people in question participate in a state-administered Medicaid program that allows them to provide...
If you have any doubt that political cronyism isn’t alive and well in Illinois, look no further than an ObamaCare scandal that broke late last week. Investigations by the Associated Press and Crain’s found that a subcontractor to a $33 million ObamaCare grant was billing at $282 per hour. Turns out the subcontractor is owned...
It’s hard to make a living as a Chicago taxi driver. A recent study showed that Chicago drivers make an average of just $5.40 an hour, far below minimum wage, and just over $20,000 per year. Some cab drivers have tried to change this by suing the city of Chicago. They argue that because the...
A Chicago business owner was told that his nickname – “Mike” – was “too ghetto” to be in the name of his own store. Mike Sharma was told by the University Village Association, or UVA, that his store’s intended name, “Mike’s Wine and Spirits,” wasn’t classy enough for the Little Italy neighborhood. As part of...
In January 2011, the governors of Wisconsin and Illinois took office for their first elected terms. They set their states on two very different paths: one that led to recovery, and one that led to further decline. Gov. Pat Quinn saw a hole in pension funding, so he raised income taxes on all Illinoisans by...
The 2014 Thumbtack.com Small Business Friendliness Survey asked 13,000 small businesses across the U.S. to grade the friendliness of their state and locality. Illinois businesses gave the Land of Lincoln an F. Ever the golden child, Chicago earned a D+. These grades are unacceptable. Illinois’ small businesses are sounding the alarm for what’s causing Illinois’...
Today is the submission deadline for proposals to the Barack Obama Foundation, the organization tasked with accepting bids from various contenders vying for Obama’s future presidential library and museum. The competition as it stands is between Hawaii, New York and Illinois; where President Obama was born, where he received his undergraduate degree and where he...
Get Covered Illinois has been hit by two scandals in as many days. A recent Associated Press (AP) investigation into a $33 million federal grant to promote ObamaCare in Illinois revealed that “More than 90 people, including executives from the firm and its subcontractors, billed at least $270 an hour for salary and overhead during...
The drumbeat for eliminating the Affordable Care Act’s employer mandate is getting louder. And it is under attack from both sides of the political aisle, according to The Washington Post. The real question is, especially given new opposition from the law’s own supporters: Can it survive? A briefing paper released by the Urban Institute and...