Illinois has a Medicaid crisis. With an Obamacare Medicaid expansion program that continues to spiral out of control, newly obtained data confirm fears that the expansion program would prioritize able-bodied adults over the state’s truly vulnerable residents.
Chicago would create new transit-based super TIFs before the close of the year in order to secure federal funding, while adding more opportunities for city-run slush funds to hoard tax dollars.
Over the years, AFSCME – the state’s largest government-worker union – has amassed incredible benefits for state workers through contract negotiations with the state. When AFSCME comes to the bargaining table, it isn’t AFSCME versus the governor – it’s AFSCME versus the state taxpayer. And AFSCME holds extraordinarily more power in the process than the state taxpayers footing the bill.
Millennial out-migration from the Land of Lincoln is worse than all its neighboring states.
Since the beginning of 2015, Illinois has lost 14,100 manufacturing jobs.
New Airbnb regulations pose a serious problem for Chicagoans.
Fiscal mismanagement by Illinois politicians has resulted in mounting deficits that are hurting the state’s economy, leading to ever-higher taxes, and driving people and their income out of the state.
A repeal of the federal estate tax would make it imperative that Illinois get rid of its own state death tax to avoid losing even more residents and income to other states.
Illinois may soon be surrounded by Right-to-Work states.
With AFSCME and the state at impasse for a new contract, the governor can implement his last offer to the union. That offer includes overtime pay after employees work the market norm of 40 hours in a week – as opposed to the 37.5 hour workweeks AFSCME demanded. Adjustments to overtime pay will save the state $111 million over the term of the contract.
New IDES data show that Illinois’ overall jobs growth was weak for October. While the greater Chicago area had tepid jobs growth over the year, the rest of the state lost jobs.
Metropolitan jobs data show that from September 2015 – September 2016 the greater Chicago area is up approximately 49,000 jobs, while the rest of the state is down 6,000 jobs.
Since the end of the recession, only 5 out of Illinois’ 13 metro areas – Carbondale-Marion, Chicago, Kankakee, Lake County-Kenosha County and Springfield – have recovered all the private-sector jobs lost from the Great Recession.