Illinois’ comeback story starts here.

Budget Solutions 2015: Keeping promises to taxpayers and turning around Illinois

The 2015 fiscal year marks a long-awaited milestone for Illinoisans: taxpayers are less than one year away from tax relief. The record 2011 income tax increase is slated to partially sunset during the 2015 fiscal year. But politicians are already crying poor as Illinois approaches the tax-hike sunset. The solutions they’ve offered up involve making...

By Benjamin VanMetre

Chicago property tax hike plan will drive away people and prosperity

Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s pension reform scheme passed through the General Assembly this week and has been moved to Gov. Pat Quinn’s desk. This plan authorizes Chicago to raise $2.25 billion in additional property taxes over the next decade. Despite this massive tax hike, the city will raise only half its legally required pension payments. Hiking...

By Michael Lucci

Countryside receives the Sunshine Award

On April 9, the City of Countryside was presented the Illinois Policy Institute’s Sunshine Award during their monthly City Council meeting. Countryside earned this award by taking the initiative to be transparent to their residents – posting vital government information online for the public to access. Scoring 93.1 percent on the Institute’s 10-Point Transparency Checklist,...

By Justin Hegy

Linda Chapa LaVia’s 14,000 reasons for crippling charter schools

A week ago, my colleague Josh Dwyer reported an exchange between state Reps. Linda Chapa LaVia and Ron Sandack. Sandack, R-Downers Grove, recently asked Chapa LaVia – when they were debating the bill in the House to end the state charter school commission – what the logic was behind crafting the bill. Chapa LaVia responded:...

By Paul Kersey

Ridesharing victory over cronyism

This session, a bill was introduced to the Illinois General Assembly that would impose draconian regulations on Uber and Lyft’s ridesharing programs. This legislation was crafted by the cab unions with the intention of drastically increasing regulation so as to maintain monopoly control over the urban transportation market. In addition to stifling the free market,...

By Matt Paprocki

Metropolitan area jobs crisis continues

Illinois’ 10 largest metropolitan areas continue to be plagued with joblessness, according to a release by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This news comes on the heels of no monthly improvement in the state jobless rate, which at 8.7 percent is 2 points higher than the national average. Illinois has the second highest jobless rate...

By Michael Lucci

Chicago property taxes: Rahm’s hikes vs. Quinn’s relief

Gov. Pat Quinn is in a bind. He’s being asked to sign a Chicago pension bill that he knows has no real reforms and no way to pay for itself. By signing the bill, Quinn will give Mayor Rahm Emanuel his blessing to raise Chicago property taxes by $750 million over five years. But that’s...

Institute responds to faith leaders advocating for higher tax rates on the middle class

On April 8, activists arrived unannounced at the Springfield office of the Illinois Policy Institute to protest our leadership in unmasking an unfair progressive tax grab. They left behind this letter. The following is our response. *** Dear Revs. Sharp, Coulter and Knox: Thank you for visiting our Springfield office earlier this week, and for...

By Jonathan Greenberg

Tell your legislators now to save UberX and Lyft in Chicago!

The taxi lobby has been trying to get Chicago to destroy ridesharing services like UberX and Lyft, but it hasn’t worked because the services are just too popular in the city. So now the taxi industry has turned to Springfield for help crushing the competition, and it looks like state legislators might be about to...

Chicago leading the pack in gas price surge

The price of gas in the U.S. is going up, and Chicago is leading the charge. NBC Chicago reported that the average U.S. price of a gallon of gasoline has risen 5 cents in the past two weeks. And Chicagoans are paying $4.18 per gallon of gas on average. That’s the highest price per gallon...

By Hilary Gowins

A progressive income tax means fewer resources for businesses to invest, grow and create jobs

A progressive income tax would hit Illinois’ businesses community hard. That’s because S corporations and most partnerships “pass-through” their income to the individual owners of those businesses, meaning their profits are taxed at the state’s personal income tax rate. That’s on top of the 1.5 percent replacement tax these businesses pay. State Sen. Don Harmon...

By Benjamin VanMetre, Erik Bauman

The truth behind the ObamaCare numbers

By any measure, the Affordable Care Act has been disastrous. But you would not know it by the administration’s fist-pumping and ball-spiking. The trumpeted headline dominating the news coverage is that the ObamaCare goal of 7 million enrollments was met. But this is horribly misleading. The reality is that the administration has, for months, refused...

By Naomi Lopez Bauman

Mayor Emanuel’s property tax hikes: $750 million is just the beginning

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s pension proposal, which is headed to Gov. Quinn’s desk, does very little to reform how Chicago’s pension systems work. Under his plan, workers and taxpayers would experience more of the same tired game, except they would be expected to contribute more to keep it afloat. But if Emanuel is going to rely...

IMRF should not be used as a model for Chicago

A key tenet of the current Chicago pension reform proposal, which is headed to Gov. Quinn’s desk, is an Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund-style funding mechanism that seeks to guarantee that pension payments are made to Chicago’s funds each year. The mechanism allows the state to divert millions of dollars away from the city and into Chicago pension...

By Benjamin VanMetre

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