Sangamon County property records show Amazon bought the 31-acre site for just under $3 million earlier this year. It’s not clear when the warehouse would open or how people Amazon would be employed at the facility.

U.S. Rep. Nikki Budzinski, who previously worked in the governor’s office, said in court that she never hired anyone because they offered something of value to former Speaker Mike Madigan. “Absolutely not,” she said. “That would be wrong and we have process, we would never do that.”

IRS data shows 56 percent of Illinoisans moving out make more than $100,000, the people with the greatest capacity to leave. And they also took $8.8 billion in income with them, too, usually to lower-tax states. A lot of the outmigration comes from Chicago, which is at its lowest population since 1920.

The elimination of the general fund deficit and replenishing the state’s “rainy day” fund with $2 billion lead the list of post-pandemic improvements that should help Illinois weather a possible recession with a little less pain than the previous two, the study found.

Missouri will impose a 10 percent tax on sports betting revenue, which is below the national average of 19 percent that sportsbooks paid to states last year.

Using the actuarial (smoothed) value of assets, the total unfunded liabilities of the State systems totaled $144.3 billion on June 30, 2024. Utilizing the market value of assets, the combined unfunded liabilities of the State systems totaled $143.7 billion on June 30, 2024. The combined funded ratios based on the actuarial and market value of assets for FY 2024 were 45.8% and 46.0%, respectively. Those numbers are essentially flat over the last five years.

Jim Dey: “Budzinski is a former top aide to Gov. JB Pritzker, someone from whom (former House Speaker Mike) Madigan solicited state jobs after Pritzker was elected in 2018.”

“You come for my people, you come through me,” Pritzker told reporters last month in a warning to the incoming administration.

“Extremely frustrating. A terrible experience. A problem from the word ‘go.’ These are just some of the characterizations of the saga involving electric school buses provided to eight Maine school districts by Lion Electric, a now cash-strapped Canadian manufacturer with a production site in Illinois that was supported by the state. “These buses, which we know to be very defective, have wreaked havoc throughout the state.”