In a rarely seen move, Illinois’ Crystal Lake School District 47 has decided to post its recently negotiated contract online – for the public to view – before the union and district hold a vote on it. Unfortunately in Illinois, contract negotiations are often completely hidden from the public until the whole process is completed....
The Institute's Executive Vice President Kristina Rasmussen was quoted in an editorial published by the Northwest Herald which evaluated the Governor's budget in comparison to Budget Solutions 2013, an annual alternative to the Governor's state budget.
by Kristina Rasmussen As Illinois’s service sector grows (accounting for 32 percent of Illinois’s economy in 1977 and 48 percent in 2009), so has the desire to tax it. In 2009, the Illinois Senate tried to expand the state sales tax to a number of services (chimney sweeps, animal shelters, interior design services, and so on),...
Chicago’s $1.15 billion projected budget gap is the latest in a decades-long string of structural deficits. Making Chicago’s high taxes worse is not the solution.