States that don’t have an income tax manage to stay out of the red, and many are even operating with budget surpluses. Texas, for example, currently foresees and $8.8 billion surplus over its current two-year budget cycle.

Moody’s is set to require states and local governments to use more transparent and realistic accounting rules when they report their true pension obligations. And that means Illinois’ debt and underfunding numbers will skyrocket.

For governments like the ones in Stockton and Illinois, government worker pension plans need ambitious investment returns of nearly 8 percent year in and year out to fund the overly generous benefits officials have handed out

The price of Illinois’ bad behavior continues to go up.

Too bad Puerto Rico isn’t a state. If it were, Puerto Rico, and not Illinois, would have the nation’s worst-funded pension system and the country’s worst credit rating.

To tax-hungry politicians, the Internet is like California in 1849 — a vast expanse of untapped wealth.

With nearly 300,000 residents, Stockton is the largest city in the United States to declare bankruptcy. It is also one of several California cities to file for bankruptcy due to the recession and skyrocketing government worker pension costs.

AFP-Illinois, the Illinois chapter of Americans for Prosperity, is gearing up for the April 9 consolidated local elections. The group recently launched a new website designed to inform Illinois residents of local referendums that could cause their taxes to go up and are urging people to fight local tax hikes. In a recent newsletter announcing the initiative for...

Late last year California passed a bill that implemented what some would like to call “sweeping government worker pension reforms.”