Illinois

CMS Fights Workers’ Compensation FOIA Request

05/24/2011
by Amanda Griffin-Johnson In December, the Menard Correctional Center became infamous after theBelleville News-Democrat revealed almost $10 million in workers’ compensation paid out to more than half the staff of the facility. The high incident of workers’ compensation claims have prompted multiple investigations at the federal and state level, and the increased scrutiny of the claims has resulted in...

WeAre21.org – 21 Workers to Fund 1 State Government Job

05/21/2011
Did you know that the average state government worker earns 23 percent more than the average Illinoisan? State workers receive about 1.5 times the benefits and have been promised generous pensions when they retire. Broken down, taxpayer by taxpayer, it takes 21 private sector workers to fund just one government job. Watch the Institute’s web-film...

Pension Costs Will Hit Home: Charting Illinois’s Pension Crisis

05/18/2011
Download a pdf of this report and chart here. The required pension payment for Chicago city government and Chicago Public Schools will jump to $1.92 billion from $650 million between now and 2020. Current law will require local taxpayers to foot the bill. That’s a citywide per capita jump to $715 from $241. Illinois is...

Illinois’s $100,000 Plus Workforce: Strong and Growing

05/16/2011
by Mark Cavers Illinois will have $8.3 billion in unpaid bills by the end of the fiscal year, a projected deficit of $1.7 billion for fiscal year 2012 and $86 billion in unpaid pension liabilities. A contributing factor to our deficits, and a major reason behind calls for higher taxes is government employee’s pay and benefits. Rather...

Defusing the Pension Bomb: A Proposal to Save Illinois

By Chris Andriesen
05/11/2011
The Problem Illinois hasn’t saved enough money to fund the pensions promised to government employees who are in or near retirement. Official estimates calculate Illinois’s unfunded pension liability at $86 billion, while other academic studies put the real problem north of $210 billion. Bold action is needed to balance the state’s pension funds while keeping...

What Voters Want – Pension Reform: Charting Illinois’s Pension Crisis

05/11/2011
A January poll asked likely Illinois voters how the state should address its increasing pension payment. Sixty-four percent of respondents said that benefits for current public employees should be reformed to work within the state’s financial constraints. Earlier this year, lawmakers passed a record 67 percent tax hike. At the time, taxpayers were told the...

Illinois is the third worst place to do business in the United States

05/09/2011
by Mark Cavers Last week a Chief Executive Magazine survey of 556 CEOs ranked Illinois as the third worst place to do business in the United States. Put another way, over 500 of the leaders who are making company’s decisions on where to invest, hire more employees, and expand or contract operations would opt to go almost anywhere in...

What’s Going on Next Door?

05/04/2011
by Mark Cavers Last week, Indiana’s Governor, Mitch Daniels, released a recap of the previous legislative session and touted a number of successes for the residents of Indiana. Here in Illinois, our legislators are now faced with many of the same opportunities that Indiana took advantage of over the past few months. Lets take a quick look...

Pension U: Charting Illinois’s Pension Crisis

05/04/2011
Download a pdf of this report and chart here. If Illinois continues on its current path, the amount of money that state government spends on the State Universities Retirement System, or SURS, will eclipse the amount of general funds given to public universities and community colleges. The graphic below demonstrates how the rising costs of...
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Fighting poverty with employment: Chicago block clubs

Leaders of these organizations on the South and West sides connect residents to jobs and engage youth to build safer neighborhoods.

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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