Illinois

College Retirees vs. Colleges: SURS’ Costs to Surpass All other Higher Education Spending

By Collin Hitt
05/27/2011
Policy makers struggling to protect higher education appropriations may be surprised to learn this fact: The total cost of the State Universities Retirement System (SURS) in 2012 will exceed the amount of general funds appropriated to all other higher education agencies and institutions. Years of overly generous pensions and delayed funding by the Illinois legislature...

Why Tax the Rich Isn’t the Answer on Pensions

05/27/2011
by Mark Cavers Rather than coming to the table to try and help save their members’ pensions, union officials seem content to vilify the wealthy in Illinois. Yesterday, while discussing the pension reform bill in committee, the head of AFSCME argued that all we need to do is raise taxes on the rich and our pension problem...

Failing to Pass Pension Reform Will Hurt State Recruitment, Retention

05/27/2011
by Kristina Rasmussen Echoing the sentiments of former Gov. Jim Edgar, state rep Daniel Biss made the argument that pension reform will hurt state government employee recruitment in a committee hearing yesterday. From the Tribune’s editorial: Then there’s Daniel Biss, a freshman Democrat from Evanston. In blather-rich questions and a pre-vote soliloquy, he illogically twisted his proclaimed...

Pension Reform, Illinois’s Future

05/26/2011
(UPDATED: action in House pension committee. See below) by Collin Hitt A bold proposal to reform government employee pensions has been put forward, Senate Bill 512. It is the broadest and best legislation yet introduced by legislative leaders hoping to address the long term debt, and insolvency, of Illinois’s public employee pension funds. Illinois taxpayers...

Of Coffers and Kiosks: Where Are Your Tax Dollars Being Spent?

05/25/2011
by Alex Miller Today, businesses and jobs are leaving Illinois, thousands of students are trapped in underperforming schools, and the state unemployment rate is 8.7 percent.  In such conditions, Democrats and Republicans alike should be calling on their state government to be responsible in determining where to allocate scarce state resources. Yet, during this present malaise of economic...

Government Monopolized Education Is Ineffective

05/25/2011
by Sameer Warraich New leadership is set to take control over Chicago Public Schools, and parents and students are pondering whether these new policy makers will be successful in reforming Chicago’s public school system. With a deficit that exceeds $720 million, CPS is in dire need of reformers who can simultaneously reduce costs while increasing the...

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...
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Taxed out: 10 reforms to stop Illinois from losing people and jobs

Illinois’ tax code stands in the way of the state’s economic competitiveness. The combination of high tax burdens and a poor tax structure contributes to the loss of jobs and investment to other states. From a place of former economic dominance, Illinois now ranks 45th in gross state product (GSP) growth over the past decade...

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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