Illinois

Veto session at a glance

By Matt Paprocki
10/22/2013
Today marks the first day of the Illinois General Assembly’s two week veto session. Veto session is held for six days every fall to allow the General Assembly to take action on bills that the governor has vetoed. Since the spring legislative session, the governor has vetoed 10 bills – only three of those bills...

TAGS: Archer Daniels Midland, CME: Chicago Mercantile Exchange, fall veto, Groupon, John Cullerton, NALCO, Navistar, Sears, tax credits

Illinois’ unemployment rate stalled at 9.2 percent

By John Klingner
10/21/2013
The delay in unemployment reports due to the federal government shutdown has not changed Illinois’ overall gloomy jobs picture. Unemployment is still high in many cities across the state. According to the latest seasonally adjusted unemployment numbers from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, half of Illinois’ Metropolitan Statistical Areas, or MSAs, had unemployment rates...

TAGS: MSA, unemployment

Emanuel pushes $0.75 cigarette tax hike for Chicago

By Benjamin VanMetre
10/21/2013
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel plans to increase the cigarette tax in Chicago by 75 cents per pack. The tax hike would increase the per-pack total to $7.42 — making Chicago the most expensive city in the nation in which to buy a pack of cigarettes. This tax hike is one of the plans Emanuel is considering to...

TAGS: Chicago, cigarette tax, Rahm Emanuel

Illinois lawmakers who have signed anti-progressive tax resolution

By Jane McEnaney
10/18/2013
As the Illinois General Assembly heads back to Springfield for veto session next week, here is a quick look at what elected officials have signed on to the Illinois Policy Institute’s legislative efforts to prevent lawmakers from amending the state’s constitution to permit a progressive income tax hike, which would increase taxes on 85 percent...

TAGS: fair tax, flat tax, graduated income tax, ILGA: Illinois General Assembly, progressive income tax

75 percent of Illinois Medicaid cases reviewed last week had eligibility errors

By Jonathan Ingram
10/18/2013
In January, the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services, or HFS, began a new project verifying eligibility for Illinois’ 2.7 million Medicaid enrollees. For years, state workers had failed to take adequate steps to ensure the people receiving Medicaid benefits were actually eligible for the program. As an Auditor General report noted, state workers failed to...

TAGS: AFSCME: American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees, HFS: Healthcare and Family Services, Medicaid

Number of Illinois union bosses earning six-figure salaries continues to grow

By Paul Kersey
10/16/2013
In Big Labor mythology, union leaders are gritty, idealistic working class people standing up to the arrogant and wealthy. In reality, running a union is big business, and a union gig can mean making a pretty good living. Illinois teachers unions can be particularly generous with compensation. In “The Labor Book,” we looked at government...

TAGS: AFSCME: American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees, IFT: Illinois Federation of Teachers, SEIU: Service Employees International Union

Illinois’ pension system lacks transparency

By Paul Kersey
10/16/2013
THE PROBLEM The story of Illinois pensions over the last 20 years is full of reforms that were supposed to put the five state-run government pension systems on sound footing, but failed once they were implemented. Despite repeated attempts at a solution, the state’s official pension debt has jumped to nearly five times what it was in 1995. Taxpayers and...

TAGS: 401(k), COGFA: Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability, COLA: cost of living adjustment, IDOI: Illinois Department of Insurance, ILGA: Illinois General Assembly, Jim Edgar, market discount rates, pensions, retirement age

ObamaCare: Rate shock in Illinois and across the nation

By Naomi Lopez Bauman
10/16/2013
One of the harsh realities of ObamaCare is that the insurance plans available under the president’s sweeping law are more expensive than insurance that is currently available. For example, a 27-year-old man living in Chicago would pay $125 per month for the lowest-cost “bronze” plan under ObamaCare. If that individual had an income of $25,000,...

TAGS: ACA: Affordable Care Act, Get Covered Illinois

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FAQ: How the federal scholarship program would help Illinois students

Illinois students could soon benefit from scholarship money to help them find a tutor, attend ACT or SAT prep sessions, pay tuition, get special education services or assist with other academic needs. That will happen in Illinois only if Gov. J.B. Pritzker lets the state’s schoolchildren benefit from the Federal Scholarship Tax Credit program, established...

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Diana Graham

Process for unionizing non-state workers raises red flags

By Paul Kersey
06/19/2014

CBS Chicago: Illinois’ highest-paid superintendent receives $400K per year to oversee 1,200 students

By Ted Dabrowski
05/02/2016