Illinois’ July unemployment rate hit 8.9 percent, up from 8.7 percent in June, the second consecutive monthly increase. Thirty-nine states have a lower unemployment rate than Illinois. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Illinois’ labor force is roughly 6.5 million people. More than half a million of them are unemployed. This is a...
Maryland stands to lose big if the government steps in to save state pension systems
In October, the federal government will begin implementing the “readmissions adjustment factor,” one of ObamaCare’s cuts to hospital reimbursement rates. New research from the Kaiser Family Foundation shows that the group hit hardest by these new cuts are safety net hospitals. According to federal data, a whopping 88 percent of hospitals in Illinois will be hit with this year’s rate cuts. By...
by Conor Durkin When politicians lose interest in reform, taxpayers “lose interest,” too. Last week Gov. Quinn’s special legislative session failed to pass a bill dealing with Illinois’ pension problems. Yet even if any measure had passed, Illinois’ massive problems would persist. The proposals debated in Springfield were far too small to make a visible...
As John Tillman noted yesterday, the last few days have been full of political melodrama as the Illinois General Assembly holds a special session that is unlikely to do more than pass a sliver of a reform — if they can even muster that. But I’d like to call attention to the role that AFSCME is...
By a vote 100-6 State Rep. Derrick Smith (D-Chicago) has been expelled from the Illinois House of Representatives.
While they only managed to pass an amendment, the House provided some memorable quotes.
Illinois’ state pension systems are barreling towards insolvency. Without a complete pension overhaul, Illinois’ five pension systems may reach their breaking point. There is only one way to prevent a collapse. Illinois must shift from defined benefit (DB) to defined contribution (DC) plans. In a DB plan, an employer pays fixed, regular pension payments over a...
The spectacle of government union members booing the best friend they ever had off the stage Wednesday at the Illinois State Fair made for entertaining video. Gov. Quinn may not have liked the boos, but he certainly understands his starring role in this fiction of a drama. Here’s the truth: the pension proposals under consideration in Springfield...
THE PROBLEM Illinois reports that it owes $83 billion to its five public pension funds. That amount represents the chronic failure of the state to fully fund its pension systems, overly generous retirement benefits for state workers, and the inability of those funds to meet their investment targets. Unfortunately, this $83 billion figure grossly understates...
Lawmakers will return to Springfield for special session Friday to consider a woefully inadequate fix to the state’s pension system. On Tuesday, the Chicago Sun-Times published comments about the pension mess from Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel: “If we do nothing throughout … our five funds, we have to raise property taxes 150 percent, and I will...
When Rhode Island saw the writing on the wall late last year, its legislature did something no one thought it could do. It passed the boldest pension reforms in the nation. A democrat-controlled state, with the second-worst funded pension system in the nation, passed a series of reforms that cut the state’s unfunded liabilities by...
Chicago has the worst entrepreneurship rate among the 15 largest metropolitan areas in the country.
Ever since the Village of Willowbrook’s participation in the Illinois Policy Institute’s Local Transparency Project, the Mayor and Board of Trustees have been interested in ways of furthering the Village’s transparency efforts.” – Garrett Hummel, Management Analyst, Village of Willowbrook. The Village of Willowbrook previously earned a transparency award from the Illinois Policy Institute for scoring an...