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The Bond Buyer’s report on the criminal fraud charges filed against the former superintendent of a suburban Chicago school district accusing him of using bond proceeds to inflate the apparent fiscal health of Lincoln-Way Community High School District 210.
Comment: Thank God! She’s among the biggest frauds in Illinois. She has managed to maintain an image as some sort of high minded, Hyde Park progressive, which she was decades ago, but in fact a total sellout, and nothing more than Michael Madigan’s chief lieutenant in the Illinois House.
Read Thursday’s WBEZ article on what they correctly call the “down payment” we’ll be making this year under the new school funding bill. Most people probably think the bill was just about fairness in how state dollars get allocated because that’s what its supporters always talk about. Changes inn that formula indeed were long overdue. What’s been overlooked is that the bill also calls for massive new spending. WBEZ details how many districts will be deemed underfunded and what they will be expecting. 60% of districts are underfunded today. That won’t be fixed by the additional $350 million authorized under
See why this should make you nervous in the quicktake comments linked here.
Comment: It will be interesting to see if there is an SEC action also — on the related bonds.
Comment: Exactly. The bill isn’t just about fairly distributing state dollars, which is fine. It’s a huge spending increase in a budget that is already unbalanced. See our more detailed comments in our quicktake on this linked here.
Englehart has more than 30 years’ experience in public relations and teaches crisis communications at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism. He will continue to teach one class at the school while he works as a state employee.
Comment: Excellent.
Over the past fiscal year, the state collected $300.5 million in tax revenue from 26,873 video gaming machines.
The federal indictment alleges Wyllie hid the “true financial health” of Lincoln-Way High School District 210 by misusing bond funds and said he fraudulently used school district funds for personal projects, including Superdog, a dog-training school he built.
The Census Bureau today released its numbers on household income for 2016. Nationwide, median household income increased a respectable 2.4%. For Illinois, the increase was 1.4%. Numbers for other states are reproduced in the chart linked here. As you can see there, our neighboring states didn’t do so well, either. Nor did energy producing states. Household income growth is perhaps the key measure of how we are doing, provided growth is shared fairly. “Inclusive growth” is the term I like as a goal. And the Census Bureau included data on how that growth is being shared. It’s called the Gini
This would be Metra’s fourth fare hike in as many years, if approved by its board. The commuter rail service is proposing raising fares by 25 cents on one-way tickets, increasing the costs of 10-ride and monthly fares between 4.1 percent and 12.6 percent, and eliminating the monthly reduced fare pass for seniors and the disabled. Metra also plans yet-to-be-specified service cuts to help cover a projected $45 million deficit.
Clearly, Illinois and Chicago have a lot to sweep under the rug should Amazon come knocking.
But lawmakers should know this: Efforts to reform the state’s business climate would be a win for residents regardless of whether the dot-com giant comes to town.
Comment: Socialists who believe in open borders and are obsessed with identity politics.
The three-year initiative by the nation’s largest bank is its second-biggest commitment to a single city, following an infusion of $150 million into Detroit. It amounts to a 50 percent increase in JPMorgan Chase’s philanthropic contributions in Chicago. The bank typically has invested $8 million to $9 million annually.
Illinois, which has been hindered by its state constitution from reducing retirement benefits to cut pension costs, had the biggest unfunded liability in fiscal 2016 equal to 487 percent of its revenue versus a median of 82 percent for all states. Alaska came in second at 443 percent of revenue, followed by Connecticut at 285 percent.
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