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Illinoisans pay some of the nation’s highest taxes so a “retired” former Barrington superintendent can earn a combined $532,000 a year working in Texas.
Comment: This is what Truth-In-Accounting, Wirepoints and many others have been pounding the table about for years.
Proponents of the amendment have framed it as a right-to-work ban, but labor expert Mailee Smith, with the Illinois Policy Institute, said there is more to it. “The majority of this amendment has to do with giving unchecked control to government union leaders,” Smith said. “Only a small portion of this amendment has anything to do with the right-to-work.”
This is an especially good time to act. After years of decline, Illinois is getting a boost as the national economy improves and a friendly administration showers federal money on the state. The latest credit rating upgrade shows Illinois can do better than it has. It can do right by its retirees and taxpayers if it takes advantage of this temporary upswing to attempt some commonsense reforms and set the table for a brighter future.
The amount will go in three buckets: the $700 million cost of construction, which officially kicked off Monday and is expected to take four years; $90 million for preparing artifacts, exhibits and the center’s opening; and $40 million in the first year of operating costs, according to an annual report and tax return for 2020 released this week.
The traditional workweek that drew 600,000 employees to Chicago’s commercial office buildings Monday through Friday before the pandemic will be replaced by a “three-and-two hybrid” with two days of remote work, a top mayoral aide predicted Wednesday.
Michael Fassnacht, newly-appointed CEO of the public-private job growth agency known as World Business Chicago, said the stay-at-home shutdown that forced employees to work from home — if they could — has created an appetite for remote work that will survive COVID-19 and all its variants.
Among major cities, Tacoma, Washington imposes the highest combined state and local sales tax rate, at 10.30 percent. Five other cities—Fremont, Los Angeles, and Oakland, California; Chicago, Illinois; and Seattle, Washington—are tied for the second highest rate of 10.25 percent. Birmingham, Alabama, at 10 percent, rounds out the list of major cities with a combined rate of 10 percent or higher.
Activists and local progressive officials in cities like Chicago don’t want the money used to pay down debt.
As property taxes soar, the percentage going to pensions increases even faster.
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