Kankakee County already has one of the highest average property tax rates in the country. In 2012, the Tax Foundation ranked Kankakee County as having the 79th-highest property taxes in the nation out of more than 800 of the largest counties in the U.S. Soon, Kankakee County could have one of the highest sales-tax rates...
Hudson rights are important to Illinois government employees, because under state labor law unions are entitled to collect union dues – or their functional equivalent – from every worker they represent, even if the employee does not support the union. Hudson rights mitigate the harm done by forced dues, allowing workers to opt out of...
Should a school district be allowed to use your tax dollars to promote a ballot measure that would raise sales taxes? Of course not. In fact, the Illinois State Officials and Employees Ethics Act requires all units of local government, including school boards, to adopt policies prohibiting their officials and employees from using government resources...
President Barack Obama promised that he would “not sign a [health-care] plan that adds one dime to the deficit, now or in the future, period.” But according to a new analysis by Republican members of the Senate Budget Committee, or SBC, ObamaCare is now estimated to increase the federal budget deficit by $131 billion over...
Government workers across Illinois believe they have no viable alternative to the politician-controlled pension system. They’re stuck holding on to the false hope that politicians will make good on their next set of promises, and that somehow the pension crisis will solve itself in the future. That’s why the Illinois Policy Institute launched workerfreedom.com, an...
Fourteen Illinois counties face higher sales taxes if referendums pass at the ballot box this fall. The tax is called the Illinois County School Facility Occupation Tax, or County School Facility Tax (CSFT) for short. The law authorizing the tax, which passed in 2007, allows school boards representing 51 percent of a county’s student population...
Property taxes for school districts in Champaign County have risen substantially, despite property-tax relief promises made regarding the County School Facility Sales Tax enacted in 2009. And there’s reason to believe districts across the state might suffer the same fate. In April 2009, Champaign County passed a referendum for a 1 percent increase in the...
Small businesses and innovators are the lifeblood of any economy, and Illinois needs reform to encourage them to locate in Illinois. Small businesses are responsible for two-thirds of all new jobs created in the last 20 years. The disincentives for entrepreneurs to locate in Illinois are systemic, and thus require systemic solutions. An agenda for...
Starting in July, Illinois Policy Action has conducted enhanced voter ID canvassing across 20 key districts throughout Illinois. After 37,762 house-to-house door knocks by a team of 122 canvassers, followed up by over 430,000 automated and live phone calls to those homes not reached in person, we’ve produced a powerful barometer of Illinois’ political climate....
On Sunday, the HBO comedy news program “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” took a biting yet humorous look at civil asset forfeiture – a procedure that allows police in Illinois and other states to take your property without ever convicting or even charging you with a crime. The video gives a great explanation of...
With great fanfare, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel recently announced an executive order requiring city contractors and concessionaires to pay their employees no less than $13 per hour. The move was highly touted in both the Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago Tribune, as well as a number of other publications and television news broadcasts. None of these...
Four months ago, Chicago passed an ordinance regulating the city’s burgeoning pedicab industry. What’s been the effect so far? By many accounts, business has taken a major hit. Before the ordinance, it was estimated that Chicago had as many as 400 pedicabs operating throughout the city. But since the ordinance took effect, the city has...
The Illinois Education Association, or IEA, has gotten even more wasteful, according to new LM-2 spending reports filed with the U.S. Department of Labor. IEA has a history of being a very wasteful union. In my review of union spending, I went through IEA operations spending – money that went into representation, politics and lobbying,...
Nearly 600 Illinois workers will be laid off come 2015, according to notices filed in accordance with the Workers Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, or WARN. Among the layoffs – which include 123 workers at Dixon, Illinois-based Anchor Coupling Inc.; 82 workers at plastics products-maker Pp Il LLC; and 58 workers at Jim’s Formal Wear,...