Labor unions say they are at an impasse with business groups in talks over how to resolve the remaining debt in the state’s unemployment insurance fund. The two sides now have until January to work out a deal before automatic tax hikes on businesses and benefit cuts for workers take effect.

It is hailed by many GOP governors as a way to promote what they perceive as greater fairness for all taxpayers and to attract business to their states. Yet the states that have enacted flat tax rates cross the political divide. They include Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Utah. And flat tax rates are holding their own even in states that tend to vote Democratic. Illinois voters, for instance, rejected a 2020 ballot measure to jettison the flat tax in Illinois in favor of a six-tier arrangement.

Jim Nowlan: “I continue to be confounded that the state has never done any long-term thinking. The closest we have is the 6,000 disparate bills introduced into the Legislature every two years. Crazy.”

Jim Dey: “The factors that determine the legal propriety of questions and answers involve grammar as much as law.”

“In Illinois, a Chicago plaintiffs’ firm focusing on nursing home and medical malpractice litigation says it brought 78 cases in March alone. “It’s going to be a knock-down-drag-out battle,” said Steven M. Levin, the founder and senior partner of the firm. “It’s probably going to take years to get some of these cases to trial.”

Overall, COGFA predicts $484 million in higher revenue compared to the February GOMB estimates, largely stemming from net individual income taxes and sales taxes.

While Republicans have repeatedly attacked Pritzker and Democrats over an increase in violent crime that has reached into the suburbs and other areas of the state, internal Senate Democratic polling has found that the economy and the toll of inflation at the gas pump and grocery store are the top concerns of suburbanites.

House Bill 2775 adds “source of income” to the Illinois Human Rights Act’s protections against discrimination in real estate transactions, making it a civil rights violation to refuse to consider an individual for housing solely based on their source of income. In Illinois, Chicago, Cook County, Naperville, and Urbana already have source of income fair housing ordinances.

Find statements here from C.D. Davidsmeyer, Steve McClure, Chapin Rose and Don Tracy.

Kevin Klowden, executive director of the Milken Institute’s Center for Regional Economics, says a decline in the manufacturing sector takes a large share of the blame. “A factory or an operation that exists now might only need to employ one-fifth of the people that it did a number of years ago. That has a real impact.”

Illinois holds the worst credit rating among its peers and pays the highest penalty to borrow of any state. While it’s difficult to draw a direct line from the state’s notoriety for corruption to its bottom line, investors increasingly weigh environmental, social and governance metrics when buying or shunning securities.

Senate President Don Harmon said the bill is “designed to limit the influence of money in judicial elections.” This influence was on display in 2020 with Illinois Supreme Court Justice Thomas Kilbride’s failed retention election.

Should the bill be signed into law by the governor, if a subcontractor fails to pay an employee, ends up going bankrupt or can’t pay an employee for any reason, the employee would be able to file a legal claim with the general contractor for unpaid wages and benefits. It does not include projects where a homeowner acts as their own general contractor.

The U.S. attorney’s office issued a grand jury subpoena in January to the Illinois State Board of Elections seeking records on three campaign funds controlled by Jones, according to a copy of the subpoena provided to the Tribune via an open records request.

In Illinois the average gallon of unleaded gas was $4.36 Saturday. That is two cents less than Friday and down 16 cents from last month.

Lawmakers say that the state’s 1% sales tax on groceries will be suspended through the end of the new fiscal year, and a planned increase in the state’s fuel tax, which currently sits at 39 cents per gallon, will not take effect until at least Jan. 1.

Rob Karr, of the Illinois Retail Merchants Association, notes that this type of theft is not exclusive to high-end retailers. “We’re never going to get people returning to the brick and mortar. We’re never going to get to the vitality, particularly the city of Chicago, when we have these kind of safety concerns around our city because it’s feeding other crime.”