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Backers of a bill that would establish a 21-member Chicago school board say they are building momentum again, this time in the Illinois Senate. If the bill passes the legislature, Chicago could hold school board elections starting in 2023.
Four separate payouts were approved, totaling nearly $12 million. “We, as a body, have to change the way the police department works,” said Ald. Scott Waguespack (32nd Ward), chairman of the finance committee.
Doherty, who serves as chief of staff to Cook County Commissioner Jeff Tobolski, also worked as a sales agent for a red-light camera company that has had a contract to operate cameras in Oak Lawn since 2014, according to the charges.
Urlacher is currently serving as the mayor of Mettawa, a village in Lake County, and was appointed twice to the Illinois Civil Service Commission. He faces charges of conspiracy and running an illegal gambling business in connection with the indictment.
“Some of this funding must be held in reserve until we know the fate of the constitutional amendment that would change our tax structure to treat working families more fairly,” Gov. JB Pritzker said.
He has sympathy for the Blagojevich family, Gov. JB Pritzker said he’s more focused on the state’s challenges than what happened in 2008. “We still have politicians in this state who are on the take. We’ve got to get rid of them. We’ve got to make sure that we find them out. We’ve got to make sure they get prosecuted.”
Comment: We believe the case in favor of a constitutional amendment is even stronger than indicated in Mr. Greising’s article here. See our new article here.
Comment: Another program botched by Illinois government, in much the same way it botched pensions. As of last year, the program’s then-$846 million investment fund was more than $300 million short of the money it needed to make good on promised higher education payments for the families. Today, the program has an unfunded liability of $317 million with an even smaller investment fund of $726 million.
Following Blagojevich’s impeachment and indictment, an Illinois ethics task force traveled the state and issued a 95-page report full of reform recommendations. A decade later, Madigan’s House of Representatives has not adopted any of those reform recommendations. And Pritzker isn’t asking him to.
Pritzker’s 2021 budget accelerates Illinois’ downward slide by embracing the same policies that have driven Illinoisans out for years, while rejecting the structural reforms Illinois needs.
All attorneys general, including Illinois’ Kwame Raoul, should terminate the program and it cannot be allowed to become the norm.
“The budget that Governor Pritzker just delivered isn’t a budget for a nearly junk-rated state. It’s not a budget for a state that’s losing more people than every other place except New York. It’s not a budget for where home values are some of the lowest in the nation and not rising here like they are everywhere else. It’s not a budget for a state that has some of the highest taxes, and definitely the second highest property taxes in the nation.”
The proposed budget – with or without graduated tax revenues – includes the full $8.6 billion general revenue fund contribution to the state’s pension fund that is mandated by law.
The Policemen’s Annuity and Benefit Fund of Chicago awarded Johnson a monthly pension of more than $15,800. That annual figure represents 75% of his average salary of just over $253,000 a year during his final four years with the department.
A 2018 investigation exposed lackluster oversight and revealed how tons of recycling is diverted to garbage dumps by Waste Management, Inc., which stands to profit when contents of Blue Cart bins are sent to landfills instead of recycling centers. The BGA found the company in many cases is paid for picking up recycling it labels contaminated, and then paid again when the contaminated contents are dumped in its for-profit landfills.
The Neighborhood Opportunity Fund leverages revenue generated from development in Chicago’s downtown area to revitalize 10 commercial corridors across historically underserved Chicago neighborhoods: more than $750 million over the next three years.
Ideas Illinois has shared stories of residents who shared their personal tax story using #YourILTaxStory on social media, and calls Pritzker’s call to spend and tax more to solve the state’s financial problems a “false choice.”
In a pitch to lawmakers in Springfield on Tuesday, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot pegged the estimated revenue for a Chicago casino at $1.2 billion, a take that would funnel $940 million to the state’s capital program—but only if legislators agree to a few key adjustments.
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