By Hilary Gowins
06/19/2013
Tucked in during the Illinois General Assembly’s special session to discuss the state’s pension crisis was a proposal to give a corporate giant a special tax break. According to the State Journal-Register, OfficeMax Inc. is asking the state of Illinois for tax breaks to keep the company’s headquarters in-state after the office supply chain’s merger with...
By Benjamin VanMetre
06/19/2013
Chicago Public Schools pension payment will increase by roughly $400 million due to the expiration of a temporary “pension holiday.” Local lawmakers knew this was coming but did nothing to prepare for the increased payment. The good news is there is a simple, responsible way to cut more than 30 percent of the increased pension...
By Benjamin VanMetre
06/14/2013
The Illinois General Assembly is gearing up for a special session to discuss pensions next week because of lawmakers’ reform inaction during the recent spring session, which resulted in back-to-back credit rating downgrades. The debate during session will likely be over which of two plans will solve Illinois’ crisis – House Speaker Mike Madigan’s proposal or the one...
by Paul Kersey Last year the Illinois General Assembly decided that up to 3,580 supervisors in state government would not be subject to unionization. Passing this legislation, dubbed the “management bill,” meant that Illinois would restore a well-established principle of labor law – that supervisors need to be strictly accountable to policymakers and the people...
by Ben VanMetre Illinois has a spending problem. State government spending has grown at three times the rate of inflation since 1990. Despite Illinois’ existing balanced budget requirement, the state hasn’t had a balanced budget since 2001. That’s because political leadership in Illinois has been ignoring the basics of good public policy for decades. Lawmakers had the...
By Brian Costin
06/03/2013
If your goal is to fight public corruption, where should Illinois’ capital be? That’s essentially the question asked in a recent Huffington Post article, which examined the results of two studies on the correlation between the remoteness of state capitals and public corruption. The surprising answer is Morris, a city of 13,636. Morris is also...
By Benjamin VanMetre
06/01/2013
Just a few months ago, the big education news in Illinois was Gov. Pat Quinn’s proposed $400 million cut to the General State Aid for Education budget – the state’s single-largest education expenditure. This article in the Chicago Tribune captured the frantic pleas of school boards, administrators and teachers at the time: Roger Eddy, a former state...
by Ted Dabrowski and Paul Schumacher In 2011, when Illinois legislators passed the largest income tax increase in the state’s history, they promised to roll back the increase beginning in 2015. “We have some temporary tax increases that are designed to pay our bills, get Illinois back on fiscal sound footing and make sure that our state...
By Benjamin VanMetre
05/31/2013
The Illinois General Assembly increased spending to more than $35.4 billion, up approximately $2 billion from what was approved for the current fiscal year. The budget handouts being passed around the Statehouse describe this as an “honest budget,” the same language Gov. Pat Quinn used when he proposed his version of a budget back in March....
By Jane McEnaney
05/31/2013
Health care On Memorial Day, the Illinois General Assembly passed Senate Bill 26, which drastically expands the state’s Medicaid program and is one of the key provisions of implementing ObamaCare. During yesterday’s Senate floor debate, state Sen. Heather Steans, D-Chicago, presented the bill that appropriates the funds for fiscal year 2014’s human services budget. Steans admitted that the...
