The Land of Lincoln needs to end the phony math and restructure its debts and pensions. But legislative incompetence will keep the state in a death spiral.
Senate Bill 1719 would impose a 20 percent surcharge on fees earned by investment managers, but the spring legislative session ended with the Illinois House failing to call the measure for a vote.
House Bill 2977 would require both public elementary schools and high schools to include cursive instruction in their curriculums, and the plan doesn’t include how much this unfunded state mandate would cost taxpayers.
State Sen. Dan McConchie, R-Hawthorne Woods, filed legislation March 23 that would give the Illinois Comptroller’s office discretion to delay payments to lawmakers if insufficient funding exists to do so. This came just hours after a Cook County judge said lawmakers must be paid.
Proposed legislation to commemorate former President Barack Obama’s birthday as a state holiday in Illinois would have cost taxpayers nearly $20 million in state personnel expenses and lost productivity.
Through collective bargaining agreements with the state, government-worker unions require access to workers’ social security numbers – even if those workers are not members of the union. A bill protecting worker privacy recently failed to get enough votes to pass out of committee.