In January several instances of corruption, influence peddling and mismanagement across Illinois were brought to light, from the College of DuPage’s expense-account mismanagement, to Chicago’s red-light-camera bribery case.
From the first quarter of 2001 until the second quarter of 2015, business establishment growth has been 34 percent while jobs growth has been only 1 percent.
Instead of spending reform and policies to promote economic growth, Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan proposes the same high-taxing, big-spending plans that got Illinois into its current fiscal mess.
Illinoisans handed over a larger portion of their earnings to state and local governments than did taxpayers in 45 lower-tax states in fiscal year 2012, according to a new Tax Foundation study.
The 2011 income-tax hike was supposed to address the state’s unpaid bills and ailing government-worker pensions; but five years and $31 billion in additional revenues later, Illinois’ unpaid bills are back up to 2011 levels, and the state’s government-worker pension debt has soared to $111 billion.