The last four years have been dreadful for the people of Illinois. Some 45,000 people left the state between July 2017 and July 2018, the fifth straight year of population loss. In the battle between Gov. Bruce Rauner and Speaker Mike Madigan, we became collateral damage. Now that we have a new
A tax policy expert says he fundamentally disagrees with Mayor Rahm Emanuel that Illinois lawmakers must amend the state’s constitution to address the city’s looming pension crisis.
While it may be the only way to eliminate automatic annual 3 percent increases in what pension payouts,
Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Wednesday morning presented City Council with his road map to confront Chicago’s pension obligations. That plan includes amending the Illinois Constitution to allow changes to pension benefits, specifically those calling for an annual 3 percent cost-of-living adjustment, or COLA; introducing the Fund Stabilization Bonds Ordinance, legislation that Emanuel compares to refinancing a mortgage; and using revenue from legalized recreational marijuana and a Chicago-owned casino to pay directly into those pension payments.
Fitch has previously noted that issuance of POBs is generally neutral to negative for an issuer’s credit quality. If POB proceeds are deposited with a pension trust, while actuarial contributions continue to flow uninterrupted from annual budgetary resources, the issuance of POBs offsets unfunded liability and has little immediate impact on the issuer’s overall long-term liability burden.
CTBA agrees that using POBs to “offset an annual pension contribution”—ie, to replace funding that would normally be coming from tax revenue—is irresponsible. That was one of the upshots of our Crain’s editorial in August.
But I think it’s not right to say the POBs in the reamortization plan are “offsetting an annual pension contribution.” Those POBs are *in addition to* the amounts paid with tax revenue as scheduled under current law. In other words, CTBA’s reamortization plan doesn’t create false savings by substituting tax-funded spending with debt-funded spending; it uses all of the POB proceeds to directly increase contributions to the pension systems as a bridge to the level-dollar amortization contributions.
As he heads into an election year, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is proposing big school spending and he’s painting a rosy picture of the school system’s financial outlook. But here are five things that taxpayers, school staff, and parents should know about the budget before it is set in stone:
“The district, without a doubt, is on firmer footing than it was 18 months ago, but they’re not out of woods yet,” said Bobby Otter, budget director for the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability. “When you look at the overall picture (the $7.58 budget), they’re still running a deficit. This
Thanks to a new, statewide funding formula, DeKalb School District 428 schools should see more revenue for the upcoming year.
At Tuesday’s district board meeting, Cynthia Carpenter, director of business and finance, presented a 2018-19 operating budget update. The district anticipates
Statistics show 87 of Kankakee County’s current and retired educators pulled in six figures last year, with slightly more than half of them pension recipients. In Kankakee School District 111, the county’s biggest district, 16 of the 30 current retired educators are making more than $100,000.
Illinois budget impasse came to an end nearly one year ago when lawmakers on July 6, 2017, approved a 12-month spending plan. They followed up just weeks ago with another budget approval to cover the year that starts Sunday. And while there is general agreement that having a budget is better
Illinois' African-American unemployment rate is higher than that of any other state in the nation.
And Illinois has been among the states with the highest black unemployment rate nearly every quarter since 2016.
"Nobody's been left behind more than African-American workers. And