Illinois law requires the governor to propose a budget balanced with existing revenues. To do so, Gov. J.B. Pritzker proposes cutting aid owed local governments, raiding the road fund, letting health insurance costs pile up and withholding taxpayers’ refunds.

The case against Helm revolves around an unnamed construction company that sought approval from the Illinois Department of Transportation that year “for signalization and roadwork” in East Dundee in 2017.

“All three large categories — individual income tax; corporate income taxes and sales taxes — are trending upward,” Revenue Department Director David Harris said after briefing the House Revenue and Finance Committee.

The nonpartisan Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability-sponsored report “State of Illinois Forecast Report” by Moody’s Investors Service was released in late February and discussed this week in Springfield. The theme of the report was that Illinois has been in the “late-cycle expansion” phase of the economic cycle.

There is no statewide system to track how many people are in jail and for how long, for example, or how quickly judges clear their docket.

Comment: Why just students? Why not, oh, perhaps legislators? And make it mandatory.

“[This house] is all I have. It’s my net worth. It’s who I am. The stress, the sleepless nights. It never goes away. I just turned 66 yesterday and I can’t even think about retiring.”

Republicans on Tuesday used a statehouse news conference to call the Illinois Property Tax Relief Task Force a “sham,” a “failure,” a “facade” and an effort to push for increased sales and income taxes rather than property tax relief.

The Rockford City Council on Monday decided to settle the lawsuits, which it will fund by selling bonds because the city didn’t have insurance for that liability at the time, the Rockford Register Star reported.

“Brown’s administration has been notorious for the slow pace of modernizing how the clerk’s office collects, keeps and distributes court case files, and for the federal investigations that have dogged Brown and the office, resulting in two former employees getting convicted but no charges against her.”

Consolidating Illinois’ nearly 7,000 units of local government could help provide local property tax relief. One bill aims to consolidate mosquito abatement districts.

Among other items, this bill “improves referendum transparency and residents’ access to information by requiring that 30 days before a referendum, the school district must send each person of voting age information that clearly explains the costs of passing the referendum.”

Each year, for the past 15 years, when the Housewares Show is over, a handful of charities that gets to solicit donations of wares from vendors. One group estimates that its sale of the donated goods not claimed by its clients net it about $75,000.