Onerous regulations drag down Skokie businesses trying to stay afloat and provide job opportunities for residents who need them.

The number of Cook County municipalities that have opted out of both ordinances has climbed to 107.

Municipal leaders have expressed concerns about the anti-competitive, job-killing effects of Cook County’s minimum wage increases and new sick leave law and are using home rule authority to exempt their communities from the requirements.

Calls for a minimum-wage hike nationwide and in Illinois are increasingly met with businesses’ use of technology to cut costs.

The northwest suburb of Barrington passed an ordinance to allow local businesses to forgo Cook County’s minimum wage hike, which has the potential to be devastating for jobs in the county.

Chicago City Council claims that over 400,000 workers in Chicago will get pay hikes. What lawmakers should be studying is how many tens of thousands of those workers are going to be unnecessarily thrown out of work the next time the economy slows down, property taxes go up or a new technology comes along that can replace human labor.

The Illinois General Assembly is currently considering a dramatic increase in the state’s minimum wage.