On Sept. 31, a panel of judges from an Illinois appellate court found that state employees were owed back pay under the contract between the state and Council 31 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, or AFSCME. This has set off celebrations at AFSCME, whose position all along was that the...
Though unemployment rates fell in August for Illinois’ major metropolitan areas, 19,000 workers dropped out of the workforce, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Because of these dropouts, the workforce shrank in every metropolitan statistical area, or MSA, except Champaign-Urbana. Workforce dropouts drive down the unemployment rate because unemployed workers who leave the workforce...
Illinois politicians have mismanaged government worker pensions for decades, creating one of the nation’s worst pension crises. Illinois’ five state pension systems collectively have only 41 cents on hand for every dollar they need to pay for future benefits. In the private sector, such a low funding level would mean bankruptcy. Even though politicians have...
People who don’t like the lawlessness displayed by the Obama administration in its implementation of the Affordable Care Act have something to celebrate. On Sept. 30, a federal court in Oklahoma ruled that the Affordable Care Act means what it says: ObamaCare insurance subsidies are only available in states that have established their own health-insurance...
A recent report from the Inspector General at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, or HHS, confirms that it will likely become harder to get access to care through Medicaid’s managed care program – a program that Illinois is using to provide care to an increasing number of Medicaid enrollees. With Medicaid enrollment...
The village of Wilmette is a leader when it comes to online transparency of local governments in Illinois. It recently became the seventh local government in Illinois to score a perfect 100 percent on the Illinois Policy Institute’s 10-Point Transparency Checklist. With nearly 7,000 local governments in Illinois, Wilmette’s score places the village in the...
Chicago’s Divvy bikes will soon be pedaled down suburban streets. On Sept. 29, Gov. Pat Quinn approved a $3 million state grant expanding the bike-share program to the suburbs of Evanston and Oak Park, while adding 50 new docking stations to Chicago’s Garfield Park, Austin, Rogers Park and West Rogers park neighborhoods. Seven hundred new...
Illinois is known for its culture of government corruption, fiscal mismanagement and cronyism. That reputation is backed up by hard statistics that say Illinois is the third most corrupt state in the country and the Chicago region is the most corrupt area in the country. Illinois’ citizens deserve better. Illinois’ government culture on the state...
Since the Great Recession ended, Illinois’ food-stamp enrollment has outpaced job creation by a ratio of nearly 2-to-1. The jobs versus food stamps comparison is a strong indicator of economic hardship. And compared to the rest of the Midwest, Illinoisans are truly feeling the pain. Since the Great Recession ended, Illinois is the only state...
Here’s an interesting argument against term limits: Government business is hard. That’s why we need politicians to hold office for a long time – so they can gain the experience they need to understand how to govern effectively. That’s effectively what Christopher Mooney, director of the institute of government and public affairs at the University...
Illinois’ active legislators will each cost the state budget about $180,000 next year.
A few weeks ago, Frank Manzo IV of the Illinois Economic Policy Institute teamed up with Robert Bruno from the University of Illinois Labor Education Program to release yet another demonstration of how sophisticated mathematical analysis can’t fix bad data. Their report, titled “Free Rider States: How Low-Wage Employment in Right to Work States is...
This article was written by Satta Sarmah and featured in Fast Company on September 26, 2014. When 30-year-old Chicago native Sheyla Jarocz talks about how a brick and mortar storefront survives in the city’s North Center neighborhood, it sounds like a lonely mission. “I’ve tried to do promotions with nearby businesses,” said Jarocz, who opened Maash Boutique two years...
Over the course of the summer, the Illinois Policy Institute has been attempting to assess how many teachers have made use of their Hudson rights – their legal right to prevent their dues from being used for union politics – and how well Hudson rights are understood in Illinois public schools. Do teachers even know...