The Chicago Tribune released findings from their ongoing investigation into the city’s red-light camera program on Thursday, revealing that with the city’s transition to a new camera vendor came a “subtle but significant lowering of the threshold for yellow light times.” The new vendor, Xerox State & Local Solutions, took over the program in 2013...
Since January 2013, the Illinois General Assembly has filed 6,305 bills in the House and 3,667 bills in the Senate. These figures don’t account for the myriad amendments that are tacked on to many bills before the full legislature votes on them. With that many pieces of legislation, the average concerned citizen needs a mechanism...
Illinois’ Economic Development for a Growing Economy, or EDGE, tax credit program has been making the news from time to time during recent months, mostly in the context of discussions on how to reform Illinois taxes and grow Illinois’ economy simultaneously. The program is on the chopping block. Notably, talk of changes to the EDGE...
Contrary to popular belief, government-worker pensions are not untouchable, at least according to the federal courts. The federal judge in charge of the bankruptcy proceedings of Stockton, California, has ruled that city-worker pension debt must be treated like any other form of debt and could be adjusted under federal bankruptcy law. The ruling is a...
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, or HHS, is moving forward with a bailout of ObamaCare health-insurance exchange insurers for 2015 even though they have been told that their scheme is illegal. The Affordable Care Act, or ACA, includes provisions to pay insurers for their financial losses in the ObamaCare exchanges. Money is...
The Great Recession knocked 500,000 Illinoisans out of work from January 2008 to November 2009, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ household survey. And since then, only 200,000 Illinoisans have gone back to work. This stands as one of the country’s slowest recoveries. As a result, Illinois has 300,000 fewer people working today than...
Illinois’ second-largest college was revealed on Oct. 2 to have hidden more than $95 million in spending since 2009, according to data from American Transparency’s openthebooks.com. The waste therein has cost students and taxpayers dearly. Illegitimate spending at the College of DuPage, or COD, included $13,800 in membership dues to a private shooting club for...
Denial— a failure to acknowledge an unacceptable truth or emotion or to admit it into your consciousness, used as a defense mechanism. Illinois’ Senate Democrats launched a website called “I Like Illinois.” The explicit purpose of the site, according to their tweets, is to “counter negativity of Illinois Policy Institute.” This purpose is ironic, given...
On Oct. 2, the Lake County Federation of Teachers, or LCFT, began a public-employee union shutdown of Waukegan Unit School District 60 schools, which serve 16,138 students. In the wake of the strike, the Waukegan community is dealing with a dramatic disruption to their lives, with closed schools and parents struggling to find childcare and...
If someone made fun of you on Twitter, how would you respond? If you’re Peoria, Illinois, Mayor Jim Ardis, you just pressure the police to raid the prankster’s home; and apparently the courts will back you up. Back in March, Jon Daniel of Peoria created the Twitter account “@peoriamayor” from which he sent out a...
As the state of Illinois moves deeper into budgetary crisis, the people of Illinois are depending upon government leaders to confront serious fiscal challenges with maturity, wisdom, courage and responsibility. The character exhibited by our governor and legislative leaders in this crisis will determine the trajectory of our state for years to come. Focus on...
The U.S. hit a major milestone in September. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics household survey, the number of Americans working has finally surpassed pre-recession levels. In addition, the national jobless rate fell to 5.9 percent to 6.1 percent. The number of Illinoisans working, however, is far from recovery. There are now 220,000 more...
Chicago officials announced Wednesday that dozens of drivers will receive refunds from the city for wrongfully issued red-light camera tickets. But thousands more were left in the dark regarding the cause of their tickets and the overall soundness of the city’s red-light camera program, which has been mired in scandal for months. The city reviewed...
Here’s what Waukegan High School student Kyra Lyons had to say to CBS Chicago on the subject of the Waukegan public-school teacher strike: “Neither of them are doing anything to help the students. It’s just about money and what they want.” Kyra is a perceptive young woman. The Lake County Federation of Teachers, which has...