by Amanda Griffin-Johnson According the 2010 ALEC-Laffer State Economic Competitiveness Index, Michigan ranks 50th for economic performance, 50th for personal income growth per capital, and 50th for job growth. Detroit has lost half of it’s population since 1950 and was the 2009 “murder capital.” Is this the time or place for new light rail construction? From Reason.tv: The Motor City...

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...

The Problem Around this time each year, Illinois residents start making plans to attend the DuQuoin and Illinois State Fairs. But these state fairs are costing taxpayers much more than their ticket prices suggest. These two state fairs have a long record of their expenditures far outweighing their revenues. Between fiscal years 2001 and 2009,...

The Problem Although facing a serious budget deficit, Illinois legislators remain among the best compensated in the nation. Today, Illinois state representatives and senators earn a base salary of $67,836—the fifth-highest legislator salary in the country. Only California, Michigan, New York and Pennsylvania pay their legislators more. Illinois state representatives and senators earn around 47...

by Heather Wilhelm When people say they’re going to “the Big House,” they usually mean a football stadium in Ann Arbor, Michigan…or a jail. But prisoners across the country recently gave the latter interpretation of the phrase a whole new meaning, as discovered this week.  “Nearly 1,300 prison inmates wrongly received more than $9 million in...