Illinois

Pension Systems Selling Assets to Cover Benefits

08/25/2010
by Kristina Rasmussen From Crain’s: Illinois Teachers’ Retirement System, Springfield, plans to sell $3 billion in investments, or about 10% of its $33.1 billion in assets, in the current fiscal year to pay pension benefits, according to Dave Urbanek, public information officer. The system is the fifth Illinois statewide defined benefit plan to sell off investments this...

The State Un-Fair Questions and Answers

08/24/2010
by Amanda Griffin-Johnson The Institute recently released “Spotlight on Spending #9: The State Un-Fair” reviewing the Illinois and DuQuoin State Fairs between fiscal year 2001 and fiscal year 2009. There has been some confusion about the paper, and we’d like to take a blog post to help clarify some of these questions. 1. “If you can...

Meat & Poultry Inspector Supervisors Paid $616K

08/23/2010
by Will Compernolle The Department of Agriculture for the State of Illinois paid 11 meat and poultry inspector supervisors $616,597.87 in combined total wages in the fiscal year 2008. The average meat and poultry inspector supervisor was paid an annual salary of $56,054.35 with the highest salary being $61,633. The Illinois Department of Central Management Services website...

Illinois borrows to pay unemployment benefits

08/20/2010
by Kristina Rasmussen Add this to Illinois’s debt tab. According to the State Journal-Register: Illinois has borrowed more than $2.2 billion from the federal government since July 2009 to pay unemployment benefits. Unemployment benefits are funded through withholding taxes on employers; raising those taxes in a fragile economy is a non starter.  

SEC Charges NJ — is IL Next?

08/20/2010
by Kristina Rasmussen This bit of news is creating quite a stir in certain circles: The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged the state of New Jersey Wednesday with lying and withholding information to investors in billions of dollars worth of municipal bond deals. The allegations involve $26 billion of bond offerings from 2001 to 2007 in...

Unfunded Public Pensions

08/19/2010
by Kate Piercy R. Eden Martin, president of the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago, offers some solutions to the critical pension problem facing Illinois in today’s Wall Street Journal. Martin concludes, “Public pension funds are in dire need of change, but state and local hopes for a federal bailout now stand in the way...

Spotlight on Spending #11 – Frogs, Chickens, and Fine Art

By Chris Andriesen
08/11/2010
The Problem Illinois’s dire fiscal situation continues to worsen year after year, and to turn this bad situation around it’s important to evaluate existing programs to ensure they’re necessary and effective. One such program that needs evaluation is the Environment and Nature Training Institute for Conservation Education (ENTICE) workshops from the Illinois Department of Natural...

Congress bails out the unaffordable status quo

08/11/2010
by Collin Hitt Congress approved another bailout yesterday. This one for state governments and local school districts.  The feds will print $26 billion, ostensibly to forestall 161,000 teacher layoffs.  Without getting into the details about the nationwide teacher hiring glut of the past ten years, the threat to fiscal federalism from this new ‘stimulus,’ or...

Illinois’s State Sales Tax Holiday

08/11/2010
by Ashley Muchow Another great cartoon from Scott Stantis of the Chicago Tribune. Illinois’s State Sales Tax Holiday commenced August 6th and is set to last until August 15th.  See our blog on the tax holiday and a bit more from the Tax Foundation on the political gimmick.

Will You Bail Out Pensions?

08/10/2010
by Kristina Rasmussen Dennis Byrne’s column poses some interesting questions about the Illinois state pension system — namely, if it goes belly up, will taxpayers be on the hook for paying those benefits? A new analysis prepared for the Civic Committee by the Chicago law firm Sidley Austin says “no”: The opinion acknowledges that the constitution creates a...
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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