State Representative Jim Durkin (R-Western Springs) wielded his position as Minority Leader to push legislation that would create more work for law firms like his by encouraging municipal government entities to go further into debt through the issuance of more bonds — protecting bondholders over taxpayers, along the way.

https://www.wglt.org/post/rep-brady-very-difficult-job-awaits-new-property-tax-task-force#stream/0

Rather than banking pension systems’ rising surpluses in flush years, elected leaders in California, Illinois, New Jersey, South Carolina, and elsewhere expanded worker benefits—promising that financial markets could underwrite the new costs.

Comment: Of all the BGA’s idiotic fact checks we’ve covered here, this may be the dumbest, trying to capture the entire climate debate in a single article and asserting any conclusion as a fact. And her conclusion, for what it’s worth, is that Congressman Sean Casten’s claim is “mostly true” that most climate scientists agree the planet will face an irreversible ‘worst case scenario’ if climate change isn’t tackled within the decade.

When Illinois legislators promised a ban on “golden parachutes,” they promised more than they have delivered.

In a stunning blow to worker privacy, the state agreed to hand over workers’ personal information to AFSCME, including their sex, personal cellphone numbers and personal email addresses, with no limit on how the union uses employee information and with no regard to whether the employee is even an AFSCME member.

“We could very well be looking at 100% of our property taxes going to police and fire pensions and still not totally address the problem,” the mayor said. “The unfunded part (of pensions) is blowing up. The ability for any of us to get to a 90% funding ratio by 2040 is impossible.”

Peoria is hardly alone in this concern.