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Staring at a possible $6 million deficit in 2019, the city would need to cut 60 positions if no other revenue is found. This time, police and fire departments wouldn’t be spared, City Manager Patrick Urich told a special meeting of the Peoria City Council.
He will be running Rustbelt Rising, linked here.
Comment: Delusional.
The new Indiana facility eventually will replace Daifuku Wynright’s existing Illinois manufacturing sites, according to Crain’s.
One of the ordinances outlines the user agreement, which establishes the boundaries of the presidential center site and will allow the foundation to use the park for 99 years in exchange for paying a $10 one-time fee. A second ordinance essentially details how some roadways will be adjusted.
Among the groups backing Rauner on Tuesday were the political arm of Illinois’ chapter of Associated Builders & Contractors, National Federation of Independent Businesses, Illinois Manufacturers’ Association and the Illinois Chamber of Commerce.
“Former Gov. Rod Blagojevich pushed a $10 billion pension borrowing scheme through the legislature in 2003. According to Wirepoints.com, a financial website that has reported extensively on the plan, only $1 billion has been repaid 15 years later, and the unfunded liabilities of the state’s pension funds have soared.”
Kids were already set up to pay through the noses for Chicago’s mess. Now, it’s their mouths, too.
An easy chance to earn at least a few positive footnotes in the history books.
Among Daley’s comments to Greg Hinz:
“I think (Pritzker) will work with the mayor to address the [pension] issue…. It can’t all be on the taxpayers. Everyone has to have some skin in the game.” Included in his view is labor, despite an Illinois Supreme Court ruling that overruled a pain-sharing deal outgoing Mayor Rahm Emanuel bargained. Daley said he’d start by getting all parties together, and said a negotiated constitutional amendment like one Arizona used to weaken a pension clause similar to the one Illinois has “always is a possibility.”
Comment: Terrible news. The shortage of good local coverage is already acute.
Comment: Lots of work needed there.
But the number of unprepared states grew, too, and that list includes Illinois.
“All it took was aptitude with an attitude.”
Chicago firefighters’ pension is the latest to intercept state money. Police pension may come next.
This is his chance to earn at least a few positive footnotes in the history books.
Brown’s office has been under federal investigation for its pay-to-play hiring practices and other political wheeling and dealing. Earlier this year, authorities brought charges against two former employees for buying a job and lying to a grand jury.
But won’t get off the ground until next year.
Prior to tying its water rates to the rate of inflation in 2016, Chicago had raised its rates 70 percent in a four-year span, city data show. As a result, the surrounding suburbs that buy water from Chicago and, in turn, resell that water down the line to other suburbs, often pass along those rate increases to their customers.
Opportunities long closed to Illinois residents with criminal records are beginning to open as employers seek new sources of talent and lawmakers bet that gainful employment will reduce recidivism.
Great God Almighty, please make this stop.
Yet another chapter in the dishonest way the Obamaland is being rammed through.
“A dozen years ago, five financially strapped city of Chicago pension funds invested $68 million in a shaky real estate deal put together by a former boss of President Barack Obama and a nephew of Mayor Richard M. Daley…. Not only did the pension funds not make a profit, records show they will end up losing a combined $54.2 million for the retirement plans.”
“I got another chance to live.”
Reserve your U-Haul.
Comment. This is a very good summary of what Pritzker and Rauner have said so far, but neither has offered anything close to a “plan.” Pritzker’s idea is to just pay up — pay more, sooner to the pensions — but he hasn’t said how much or where it would come from. Rauner is clinging to Cullerton’s “consideration” model which does nothing to reduce the current unfunded liability. Such a plan may be worth doing because it might reduce the growth in those liabilities, but the savings have never been backed up and the concept, at least as Cullerton proposed
With the blue state/blue city model crumbling all around them, and the implosion of models abroad past and present, it’s easy to see why the American Left would gaze with fondness across the Atlantic, thousands of miles away, to the “democratic socialism” of Scandinavia.
Within 10 days of running, three ads for Democratic women running for the Illinois State Senate – in which they called for term limits for House Speaker Michael Madigan – have been pulled from airwaves.
“The truth is we’re going bankrupt,” said Metra board member Don De Graff of south suburban Cook County.
There is one product that, for a century, has towered above all others as a symbol of choice, control and personal freedom in America: the automobile. There are more than 10 million registered vehicles in Illinois, according to the secretary of state’s office. Pritzker has ticked off a lot of their owners. And now he’s trying to walk it all back.
Comment: Hey, somebody is reading the budget that passed. “Now it is coming to light that untold millions of dollars in spending was hidden in the new state budget for legislators in both parties to designate for pork projects in their districts.”
The big policy debates happen in committee hearings and right now you can only catch them live.
“We expected this to happen this week, even before no outside bidder came forward for Tuesday’s auction of the Marriott Pere Marquette and adjoining Courtyard by Marriott. Even with a 2-for-1 deal, no one wanted a piece of this mess. Why become a walk-on player in one of Peoria’s longest, saddest soap operas?”
Comment: Aside from the observation that there are lots of bullshit jobs out there (and that’s the author’s word, not ours) this may be the dumbest article yet in support of Universal Basic Income.
Chuy wants Luis but Luis wants Chuy.
“The city is essentially tapped when it comes to covering these public safety costs. The council must decide whether to raise taxes or cut services. There’s no other way to get around this.”
Free money for everybody. No strings attached!
Plus a whopper about his nonexistent tax plan and more.
It would be unreasonable to attribute that level of departures merely to Illinois’ status as a high-tax state. Illinois has so many serious problems, mostly financial, that there are many reasons why people are checking out. But there clearly are limits to what people can — or will — stand, particularly if they feel they are not getting a bang for their tax buck.
Comment: Really poor work by WTTW. The panel consists of three progressives — Martire from the CTBA, Amanda Kass who was formerly there, and the head of the City Council’s Progressive Caucus. Few of the real issues were hit.
Comment: While Tullman is wrong about Emanuel, you gotta love this comment about the folks trying to replace him: “If it wasn’t so sad for Chicago, it would be comical watching these one-issue, nichy little nobodies gripe, posture and position themselves as hopefuls and aspirants to a position many miles beyond their abilities.”
https://www.watchdog.org/illinois/illinois-farmers-still-holding-out-for-u-s–canada/article_c2de0a32-aa6f-5753-
State Representative Helene Walsh… the wife of former congressman and current talk show host Joe Walsh… shared a Facebook message saying that progressive politics are more “insidious” than the terrorists who attacked America seventeen years ago.
Why mess with proven success?
https://www.ilnews.org/news/economy/illinois-farmers-still-holding-out-
Takeda Pharmaceuticals plans to close its U.S. headquarters in Deerfield, continuing a migration to Boston that’s been under way for several years.
Except for Connecticut and a tie with Mississippi, personal income growth has been slowest in Illinois since the start of the Great Recession.
In a brand new SEIU poll conducted by Public Policy Polling, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle leads the field with 25 percent of the vote. Preckwinkle is expected to announce Monday that she will form an exploratory committee to run in the February contest. Undecided voters check into second place in the poll, with 19 percent of voters saying they are unsure as to whom they will support. Paul Vallas is in third at 16 percent, former Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy is in fourth at 13 percent, and businessman Willie Wilson is in fifth with 10 percent of
Money talks.
Comment: What “triangulation” has Rahm showed as mayor? None. He has supported no major reform and is part of the shrill voice of the far left that took over the Democratic party.
In 1999, then-Gov. George Ryanbecame the first U.S. governor to lead a humanitarian trade mission to Cuba during the Castro regime. Sneed has now learned Ryan will return to Cuba on Monday at the personal invitation of the Cuban government and a grateful country.
A republication of our Wirepoints article.
Comment: Hinz is right on this one: “Chicago’s soon-to-be ex-CEO has practiced a particularly hard brand of political hardball during his career, be it dropping F-bombs like so much confetti, delivering a dead fish to an offending pollster or treating public opinion and political opponents as something to be manipulated and trampled on. What goes around does come around….The most stunning was from the Chicago Teachers Union, which represents the people who help train our kids to be fully functioning adults.”
Comment: We’ll summarize and save you the pain of going through this Progressive’s pretentious prose. Rahm, he thinks, didn’t spend enough.
Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle will announce plans to form an exploratory committee for a run for mayor in the coming days, a representative for Preckwinkle said on Friday. The announcement won’t be a definite yes or no about her stepping into the race, the representative said.
Preckwinkle considered a run in 2014 but dropped out, because of a “commitment to reform” within the county.
Comment: A nice picture of Sharkey raising his fist at this year’s International Socialist Organization conference is linked here.
“Is there room for someone with my views in the political conversation? Beats me. But I’m going to keep on talking.”
U.S. Rep. Peter Roskam, R-Wheaton says he intends to support what the media has dubbed “tax reform 2.0,” a measure that would make permanent and somewhat extend the individual tax cuts adopted on a partisan vote last year. Ryan told reporters he wants a vote by the end of the month, with the bill expected to make permanent a $10,000 limit on the state and local tax deduction that has clobbered some taxpayers in higher-tax states, including Illinois.
Comment: Poor Harvey. Its property tax rate is basically infinite because values are dropping towards zero. A court ordered an special property tax to fund a pension. It’s flow of state money was intercepted by pensions. Meanwhile, legislative leaders in Springfield continue to deny municipalities even the option of considering bankruptcy.
If the bad idea proceeds, it it should be linked to reforms for Chicago’s pensions that would reduce the unfunded liabilities crippling the city.
Among those reportedly weighing bids to join the field in the February election are Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, 2011 mayoral candidate Gery Chico, city Treasurer Kurt Summers, state Comptroller Susana Mendoza, former White House chief of staff Bill Daley and GCM Grosvenor CEO Michael Sacks, Emanuel’s close friend, confidant and top campaign donor.
And Arne Duncan, the former secretary
Illinois-based Automated Industrial Machinery Inc. plans to hire 45 employees from the area, and is investing $4 million into its 52,900-square-foot location.
“Besides a much better quality of life, Tampa offers a significantly friendlier business climate than Chicago, and Tampa’s outstanding international airport makes it easy to travel for our clients around the world,” Constantine Grapas, president of AIM, said in a release.
The mayor’s surprise announcement that he won’t seek re-election extends a list of negatives that could sink the city’s chances of capturing the biggest economic development prize in a generation.
Comment: Silly idea. The one that’s currently better off than the other would never agree to it.
¡Qué heroico!
The state of Illinois has less than a month to set thousands of workers five years ahead in pay and explain how it’s going to pay them four years worth of back wages with interest, something the state may claim that it can’t afford.
The establishment business community’s traditional excuses for not acting don’t hold.
Comment: You didn’t think it was just a union, did you? CTU Vice President Jesse Sharkey said it was Lewis’ “courage” that “led the way for a political revolt” and “ultimately led to Rahm’s political undoing.”
Rahm Emanuel has been collecting cash as if he was running for re-election and now the mayor’s millions fill a campaign treasure chest that is his to use as he sees fit. He can’t use it on vacations, fancy cars or fine jewelry but there are no rules or regulations about what he can do with the money in the political world or doled out to charity.
According to state election records, his campaign committee has more than $8 million…
The union that represents thousands of Chicago hotel workers appears to be preparing for a strike it says could affect 30 city hotels.
The average monthly net rent at top-tier apartment buildings in downtown Chicago rose 5.7 percent in the second quarter from a year earlier, but another construction wave will test the market in 2019 and 2020.
“On behalf of frustrated taxpayers in Illinois — those of us still here, mumbling into the firmament — I would like to offer apology and counsel to Tennesseans. The influx of newcomers clogging your thoroughfares, the eroding of your small-town charm and the opening of deep-dish pizza parlors will not slow anytime soon.”
Nearly half of the city’s 6,999 licensed cabs are in foreclosure or idled, leading to an increasingly desperate call for regulatory intervention — including a newly floated idea to cap the number of ride-sharing licenses in Chicago — to keep taxi fleets on the streets.
This one was so easy to see coming we can only say, “Duh,” instead of our usual “Told you so.”
According to a new report by Moody’s Investors Service, Illinois’ unfunded pension liabilities equaled 601 percent of state revenues in 2017, a U.S. record.
The funding is significantly higher than rival pre-school programs– eight times the tuition of District 200’s four-day a week, half-day pre-school program ($2,205), and nine times what it costs to attend private preschool at First Presbyterian Church of Wheaton ($1,890)
Hmm. Take a guess.
Reaction to a list of recent legislation vetoed by Rauner.
After four years of a federal investigation that has produced brutal headlines about her but never any charges against her, Brown is changing her ballot name. “Dorothy A. Brown Cook” is how she is now identified on nominating petitions for mayor that her supporters began circulating this week.
First, protesters took over the Dan Ryan Expressway. Then, another group briefly took over Lake Shore Drive on a march to Wrigley Field. Now, activists want to interrupt Labor Day traffic to and from O’Hare International Airport by bringing the Kennedy Expressway to a standstill.
Chicago is looking around to hock whatever it has and borrow even more than $10 billion for its pensions.
The first step towards recovery.
Comment: Better late than never for the Tribune to wake up to this. We detailed the suicidal, impossible situation for the south suburbs three years ago here. Crain’s, too, covered it long ago. The disaster long preceded the tax break backfire discussed in this article.
Comment: “The party is over,” this says. “This is an easy math problem that, unlike the financial crisis from ten years ago, everyone can see coming.” Yeah, well, Illinois ain’t so good with easy math problems.
For every dollar DuPage County taxpayers send to Springfield, the state returns 31 cents.
Despite a real estate market with really short market times that leaves homebuyers scrambling for opportunities the Chicago area’s home prices continue to struggle to rise in line with the rest of the nation.
“It’s Harvey and Peoria today.
Who will it be tomorrow? Here’s the answer – Galesburg. Others will follow.”
A metaphor for Chicago government.
Get this: “Chief Financial Officer Carole Brown told aldermen the city may sell even more than $10 billion in pension obligation bonds if there’s enough available city revenue to support it.”
Chicago will no longer be exempted from a state law barring Illinois municipalities from imposing ticket quotas on local police departments.
We’d be so much better off if political reporters stuck to politics, which most of them understand, and stayed away from fiscal policy, which they don’t.
One thing is clear from yesterday’s Senate hearing: There is both considerable interest and concern about Gov. Rauner’s Discovery Partners Institute outside Chicago.
Presented without comment.
No mention of Chicago in this article, but “This is basically Amazon’s way of gathering a lot of information for free in a short amount of time and understanding the incentives those localities are willing to offer,” says Kasia Tarczynska, who curates the data on Amazon for Good Jobs First.
A republication of our Wirepoints article.
SB 2858/Public Act 100-1107 authorizes state Treasurer Michael Frerichs to invest up to $2 billion in funds not immediately needed for current expenditures to pay down unpaid receivables through state Comptroller Susana Mendoza’s office.
By pension actuary Elizabeth Bauer.
Comment: Oh, jeez. The concept here is from Ralph Martire and the CTBA. Just to put more money into the pensions sooner — borrowed money.
An actuary’s perspective.
A few state senators are hoping to get some details today about the $500 million that was allocated to Gov. Bruce Rauner’s planned Discovery Partners Institute, a University of Illinois research facility planned for the South Loop.
Olympia Fields — where 98 percent of black residents own their homes — tops the list. Four other towns in the top 10 nationally are South Holland, Flossmoor, Matteson and Lynwood.
August 2008. But the real lessons go beyond market timing.
Suspended for two years from the American Academy of Actuaries.
“If politicians are serious about giving homeowners property tax relief, they must stop putting off the state’s biggest policy challenge and get down to fixing Illinois’ pension crisis.”
A pension actuary’s viewpoint.
Chicago is reportedly considering a massive new bond offering designed to fund its woefully underfunded pension obligations. City leaders are reportedly briefing city aldermen ‘behind closed doors.’ The bond offering would certainly improve Chicago pension plans’ odds of passing stress tests. But it would also increase the size and risk of the city’s overall balance sheet.
Priorities. Illinois has its priorities.
Pension reform is a moral imperative. The alternative is a future in which core services are cut, taxes are raised, and pensioners risk losing what they’ve already been promised as the funds go insolvent.
Peoria County, Illinois is leading the nation in wage increases as the region experiences a manufacturing boom for American workers.
The dispute involves an obscure taxing agency known as a “special service area” or SSA, sometimes referred to as a business improvement district. SSAs were conceived as an economic development tool to allow property owners within a limited geographic area to tax themselves to provide enhanced services. But SSAs also can serve as an under-the-radar source of power and funding for local aldermen from which their allies can bestow contracts and jobs.
The Democratic nominee in the Cook County assessor’s race is voicing support for a ban on city aldermen doubling as property tax appeals attorneys, an arrangement that encourages conflicts of interest.
Pension obligation bonds like Chicago is considering violate the rationale behind the margin trading rules, making them unwise and unsafe for the very reasons we limit margin trading.
Comment: “Assuming successful interest rate arbitrage,” that is, according to Citi. Assuming it works then it will work, in other words.
Measures designed to work around the $10,000 cap have been adopted in Connecticut, New Jersey, New York and Oregon, and introduced or explored publicly by officials in California, Illinois, Maryland, Nebraska, Rhode Island, Virginia, Washington and the District of Columbia.
More than 60 sitting state representatives have received money from Madigan over the course of their careers, totaling around $15 million.
Proposed $10 billion bond would be biggest pension obligation bond ever issued by a U.S. city.
Some 323 campaign donors to Democrat Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel have also given to his friend-turned-nemesis, Republican Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner, according to an analysis of Illinois State Board of Elections records by Chicago City Wire.
For a break from the usual softball interviews, watch Mark Maxwell’s 15-minute interview of Governor Bruce Rauner. His questions largely reflect arguments made against Rauner by J.B. Pritzker and Illinois Democrats, but that’s OK — he put those arguments to Rauner clearly and demanded answers. When Rauner gave unresponsive answers Maxwell repeated his questions firmly. Pritzker must be forced to submit to the same kind of interview. He has not yet given a single, serious interview. The problem is whether there’s anybody in the Springfield press corps informed enough about right-of-center perspective to do the job, and with the guts
Comment: Surprise, surprise. A unit of CitiBank in New York says “financial engineering is potentially part of a comprehensive solution.”
Apparently unable to care for our own youths, the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) recently tried to place some of its wards (wards of the state, meaning you and me) with Indiana state social service agencies. But the Hoosiers rejected our pleas: “Sorry, Illinois, but you’re a bad payment risk.”
Chicago’s chief financial officer will sound out aldermen Thursday on the possibility of issuing $10 billion in pension obligation bonds amid widespread skepticism from municipal finance experts about Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s plan.
The federal government would provide financial help—maybe a lot of help—for O’Hare International Airport’s $9 billion gate expansion project under a plan being pushed by Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill. A proposed amendment sponsored by Duckworth and colleague Sonny Purdue, R-Ga., specifically would extend relatively low-cost federal funding to airport runway and terminal construction jobs.
The long-promised e-filing platform is supposed to make the courts more efficient and accessible, but the system is confusing, unreliable and error-ridden, the
The latest, goofy “fact-check” is out from the Better Government Association through its partnership with the Chicago Sun-Times and PolitiFact.
Rauner has signed into law a pair of bills aimed at curbing Illinois’ brain drain that’s resulted in sharp enrollment declines at the state’s public universities and community colleges.
Comment: No story with this but none needed. It’s perfect.
“If only politicians and CPS officials would heed parents who refuse to send their children to dying schools.”
Not only is Rauner projected to lose to Democrat J.B. Pritzker, Republican candidates for the General Assembly are on increasingly rocky footing. Small but meaningful gains Republicans made to eliminate Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan’s supermajority in 2016 could be reversed. Will the media now refer to Illinois’ Democratic Party as Pritzker’s Democratic Party, as they have Rauner’s Republican Party? They should. It is.
Hoodline
Revisionist history notwithstanding, Cabrini-Green more than deserved its reputation for crime and squalor.
A recent survey conducted by Thumbtack, an online services company, interviewed more than 7,500 entrepreneurs and small business owners from across the nation, to score each state on its level of business-friendliness. And Illinois came out in the back of the pack – placing 50th most friendly among the 50 states.
In the rarefied air of the 10th floor of the Lake County Building, some lawmakers must have been lacking oxygen the other day. That’s the only conclusion one can reach after County Board members voted to put a meaningless tax question on the November ballot.
A nice summary of electronic and data privacy issues and laws in Illinois.
Michael Avenatti, the TV-ready lawyer representing Stormy Daniels in her legal battle with Donald Trump, began his political career as a trainee in what is now one of the least sympathetic places in Democratic politics: as an opposition researcher for the Clinton machine.
While often regarded as a duplicative and unnecessary unit of government, former township employees in Illinois have banked more than $273 million in pension benefits since 1998.
Here’s the link: https://informationportal.igchicago.org/
Because you get sued for lying to bondholders but not to voters.
Maybe over $1 billion? Easy.
The city may try to paper over its pension woes with new debt.
Comment: All true as far as this article goes, but how can you write this with no mention at all of the city and state financial issues? Still, our sources indicate Chicago is indeed on Amazon’s short list of sorts. Let’s hope (subject to seeing the full details of what taxpayers would have to pay) it’s true.
Comment: If somebody can name even one Democrat in the Illinois General Assembly who has worked to help business and employers, please name them and state why.
“Emanuel and every candidate on the ballot in 2019 should be on the hot seat regarding this question: Why should an elected alderman continue to act as a program administrator, in the dark, on an issue as expensive and important as workers’ comp? And why should he (or anyone) operate outside the watchful eye of an inspector general?”
Comment: We wrote earlier that, while the human aspect of this tragedy is paramount, the financial liability of CPS is also a major concern. This new report certainly appears to significantly increase the likelihood that CPS will face massive liabilities. We will write again on that soon.
Comment: Rahm must need a larger pool of campaign contributors.
Vallas flatly predicted that the $1 billion project would never get built because of concerns ranging from environmental impacts, regulatory approvals and financing costs to what lies underground and Musk’s unproven, low-cost, high-speed tunneling technology.
Perspective from a border city.
Nippon Sharyo announced Thursday that it would be closing its Rochelle plant at the end of this month after a failure to deliver 130 bi-level Amtrak passenger cars for Illinois and California.
Finally.
Comment: Why not play social justice warrior with pension money? After all, if returns fall short, taxpayers have to make up the difference.
“Rauner needs to stand up for the nearly one million sole proprietors, veto HB 2624 and give residents of Illinois access to affordable health insurance that never materialized under the Affordable Care Act.”
Workers at dozens of the city’s top hotels — including the Palmer House and Sheraton Grand Chicago — voted on Wednesday to authorize a strike later this month as they fight for a new collective bargaining agreement. The employees will hit the picket lines if a new deal is not struck by Aug. 31, after Unite Here Local 1 members voted “overwhelmingly” — more than 90 percent — in favor of a potential strike, a union source said late Wednesday.
Thirty-one hotels, most of them downtown, would be affected by the work stoppage. The exact number of hotel employees potentially
Comment: Surprise, surprise. Ralph Martire of the public union backed CTBA is quite fond of the idea of running up another $10 billion of debt to be used to shore up public pensions. And note that he wants to make sure that’s in addition to the new ramp up in scheduled pension contributions, for which the city has still offered no plan source of money.
Comment: Sell off ownership of future income to pay down some pension debt. That’s the concept.
The bottom line is pretty simple. The center should not be in Jackson Park and taxpayers shouldn’t be contributing a dime.
Pension actuary: “The example of Illinois and Chicago make me very dubious that we can rely on states to follow through on whatever commitments they make with respect to funding their pension promises from year to year. Whether that’s by simply not making required contributions, or developing delusionally-optimistic contribution schedules, the temptation is simply too great to borrow from future generations in ways that are hidden and conform, on paper, to balanced-budget requirements.”
Gov. Bruce Rauner signed bills into law last weekend meant to address the state’s teacher shortage. But according to the Illinois Education Association, he left out one key piece of legislation that would do more than any other to add teachers statewide by guaranteeing them a minimum salary of $40,000.
See our own story linked here on this and other developments on the Obama Center.
$500 cash to low-income families with no strings attached.
By the Executive Director of the IL Democratic Party: “Make no mistake: Everything we value as Illinoisans, and the things that make our state and country strong, are in jeopardy.”
Employees at 30 Chicago hotels will take a strike authorization vote Wednesday that threatens to ground — at least temporarily — the golden goose that is the local tourism industry.
Comment: As we reported earlier here, that could blow a $700 to $900 million hole in the state budget.
Research at the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute — located at Southern Illinois University, no less — says otherwise.
Millions of dollars in public funds intended to redevelop the hotel seem to have vanished into thin air. Instead of luring visitors to an attractive hotel and conference center, the structure is now being reduced to rubble.
A response to our Wirepoints research. We disagree, and see a counterpoint linked here in Forbes by another author.
Comment: Decades overdue.
Comment: We wrote just last week about how this CooK County lawsuit could set the precedent for blowing a hole of $700 to $900 million in the state budget.
Comment: Meanwhile, the state is considering lifting the cap on tort claims against the state to $3 million.
With New York adopting tough new laws and moving toward a minimum wage for drivers, two aldermen here want Chicago to follow along. Expect a huge fight.
Pleasant Hill Healthcare is planning to close Sept. 1, mostly driven by the backlog in Medicaid payments related to the state’s delayed decisions on eligibility.
Originally signed into law in 2013, the Illinois Water Systems Viability Act allows private water companies to buy out water utilities and spread the costs across its existing ratepayers. The bill renews the act’s amendments for another 10 years and removes a limit on the size of water systems that private companies can buy.
llinois lawmakers were close to sending their version of a SALT cap workaround to Gov. Bruce Rauner earlier this year but the bill stalled. The proposed legislation would have set up a charitable foundation, the Illinois Education Excellence Fund, and treat donations to it as a tax write-off. This plan would allow a filer to get around the new $10,000 federal cap of state and local taxes.
The sponsor said via email that he still will try to get it passed when lawmakers return to Springfield this November.
The Illinois General Assembly has passed a law that will award 20% of contracts by certain government agencies to women and minority-owned businesses.
“There’s little precedent for what’s happening in Chicago, and no clear path out. Illinois doesn’t let cities file for federal bankruptcy protection, and that’s unlikely to change because the municipal unions that have so much political power in the Land of Lincoln hate bankruptcy, where contracts can be busted and pension debt cancelled. Still, as economist Herb Stein famously observed, ‘If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.’ But when, and how?”
What cities are best positioned to shoulder additional responsibilities as federal leaders seek to cut the federal budget and workforce and reduce regulatory authority in Washington? Not Chicago, says Brookings.
Several prominent pension funds, including the California State Teachers Retirement System and the Chicago Teachers Pension Fund, are evaluating their investments in private prisons.
“News that top lieutenants of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel are toying with a $10 billion pension obligation bond issue to alleviate the swelling, so to speak, is reminiscent of what happened when ol’ Doc Blago peddled a similar miracle cure back in 2003.”
The Chicago City Council is considering an ordinance that would punish employers who don’t have crystal balls. It’s a boneheaded proposal. Are you a boss? Do you manage people? Do you run a business? Pay attention.
The ordinance would require Chicago employers to post work schedules for their employees at least two weeks in advance. Employers would be required to pay their employees for at least one hour extra if the schedule changed or work was added or subtracted. Companies also could face fines of $500 for each employee affected in each pay period if they fail to comply. If
An agency that’s provided air support to law enforcement agencies across northern Illinois for 15 years is all but defunct and relinquishing its fleet of helicopters due to a lack of funding.
The political class in Illinois has an entitlement mentality, and not just those at the top of the political heap.
The mindset goes all the way down to the lowliest party patronage worker.
How else does one explain the recent lawsuit filed by eight workers who were illegally hired at the Illinois Department of Transportation, fired after the extent of the patronage conspiracy was disclosed and now are suing the state because they want their old jobs back?
“Someday, the train is going to stop. We may all be better off if it stops sooner than later.”
The motion was filed as part of an existing lawsuit against the city of Chicago and Chicago Park District. The lawsuit, filed on May 14, aims to prevent the use of Jackson Park for the Obama Center complex. The new motion will be the subject of a hearing on Aug. 14.
Lawyers for the city and park district told the court in a June 28 brief that the lawsuit was “premature” because the City Council had not yet enacted an ordinance authorizing the work or approved terms of the construction with the Obama Foundation. A judge put a stay
“Chicago may spend between [up to $200 million] each year in WC payouts … Burke ‘hides’ all WC payments/reserves and budgets either in the numerous City of Chicago departments or wherever he feels best,” Eugene Keefe, a partner at Keefe, Campbell, Biery & Associates, said.
“It’s not hard to speculate about the potential legal challenges that might occur over the sale of another core revenue stream for the benefit of ‘wealthy bondholders’ should the POB be issued, not perform as speculated, and more money is needed to fund constitutionally-protected pensions and maintain basic services,” the report says.
In the second quarter of 2018, 18 percent of Illinois’ homes were considered seriously underwater, or mortgaged for more than 25 percent of the potential sale price of the house. That’s according to ATTOM Data Solutions’ report released Thursday. That’s higher than it has been since 2016. In some of Chicago’s western suburbs, more than 70 percent of homeowners owe 25 percent more than the price their home would sell for.
“All of this adds up to a large, complex problem crying out for leadership. Young people on the South and West sides of Chicago aren’t getting the equal opportunity they deserve as hundreds are killed or maimed. I was born in the South Side of Chicago, and it is painful to see my city become truly violent once again. Without major changes, the killing will continue.”
J.B. Pritzker backs an idea that has been popular among some activists, where gentrification and rising rents go hand in hand. If the Chicago businessman becomes governor, expect the matter to gain a lot of momentum in Springfield.
A lawsuit pending against Cook Country that could cost the county as much as $250 million might well set the precedent for similar exposure to the State of Illinois of $700 to $900 million.
The arrogance of power.
Northwestern University ambitiously has bolstered research capabilities, hired top faculty and increased student aid in recent years, but the school also took its eye off mounting expenses. In a candid memo to staff this month, the university—consistently ranked one of the best academically in the country—said it expects a budget shortfall this year and next.
Comment: For another way they went awry see our earlier article linked here.
A lesson in why those accused of sexual harassment should get due process before guilt is assumed.
See our Quicktake linked here on this and similar exposure to the State of Illinois.
For years, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has been staunchly opposed to allowing video gambling machines at bars and restaurants in the city, hoping instead to land approval for one big downtown casino.
But unregulated devices that look and work almost exactly like video poker machines are popping up in places all over Chicago.
By actuary Mary Pat Campbell.
“For the near term, our city needs military troops to guard streets in the most dangerous areas…. Longer term, we desperately need school choice and aggressive urban enterprise zones to encourage investment in the most blighted neighborhoods of the west and south sides.”
State agencies can no longer pile rules and regulations onto Illinois businesses without first taking into account their economic effects.
Earlier this year, when investigative reporters at the Tribune began gathering information about sexual assault and abuse within Chicago Public Schools, they hit a cement wall. CPS stalled requests for public records for months and relented only when the Tribune threatened to sue.
Using data from the American Moving and Storage Association’s database of more than 150,000 out-of-state relocations in 2017, Illinois was the only state that saw more than twice the households leave than arrive, posting 14,147 departures and 6,833 arrivals.
The city’s most violent weekend so far this year prompted Mayor Rahm Emanuel and police Supt. Eddie Johnson on Monday to ask Chicagoans to stop pointing frustrated fingers at police officers and start pointing them at gunmen who are pulling triggers.
A majority of city council members are telling Mayor Rahm Emanuel to form a task force to look into Universal Basic Income programs, which is essentially a periodic check from the government with no strings attached. Giving each a $500 check every month would cost about $12.6 billion annually. Chicago’s annual budget for fiscal 2018 was $8.6 billion.
Comment: The reason why Dan Proft’s papers exist is to counter the Democratic bias persistent in so much of Illinois media. That includes Rich Miller, though he is far more clever than most.
Comment: They need to stop focusing on petty, gotchya issues, and keep politics out if it, which has crept into some of their “fact checks.”
“We’re hungry here for more substantive discussions about your plans for the next four years. We want specifics. About jobs. About education funding. About fixing what’s wrong.”
Nhaayt bad.
Comment: Note their longer term goals.
Comment: If you think you can entirely escape pension obligations by leaving, think again. Property taxes for pensions are an exit tax, coming straight out of what you’ll get when you sell your home.
Grubhub is now the top performer among local publicly traded companies over the past 12 months as it expands its restaurant delivery business and beats financial forecasts.
Last week, Chicago released its Annual Financial Analysis and held a major conference for the municipal bond community.
While the state of Illinois continues down the road to financial Armageddon and political oblivion represented by its sick status quo, other more successful states continue to shake things up.
A few weeks ago, Ohio voters approved a plan to de-politicize the legislative redistricting process by stripping legislators of the legal authority to draw their own state House and Senate district maps.
Last week, the Michigan Supreme Court approved a November vote on a proposed amendment to the state’s Constitution that would establish a bipartisan 13-member commission to draw the state’s political map
Saying governments are different from labor unions and other private organizations, a north suburban village and an organization that lobbies on behalf of Illinois city and village governments has asked a federal judge to dismiss a union-backed lawsuit asserting the rights of union members are violated by local governments which use tax money to fund lobbyists to seek reforms opposed by unions.
Comment: One credit card to another.
Erhard Chorlé, a partner at Pedersen & Houpt here, was nominated earlier this week to be chairman of the Railroad Retirement Board, whose headquarters are on the Near North Side. The job is full-time and pays $170,400, according to congressional sources.
Pensions. “Yes, pensions were underfunded. But that’s because state lawmakers overpromised.”
Comment: This is one of Rahm’s shameless political stunts. It was designed knowing that voters don’t know the difference between millions and billions (the scope of the refunds is trivial) and there’s no sense to how it works (some homeowners have been stunned to learn their tax bill was reduced to zero).
Comment: “Pension funding” means notorious pension obligation bonds. The idea here would be to sell off future income once again to secure the bonds.
Who decides what to pay city staffers following on-the-job injuries? It’s the Finance Committee of the City Council. And, as virtually everyone knows, it shouldn’t be.
Although the cost per reconviction has risen, the report finds a decline in recidivism in the state since 2015. Because fewer crimes are being committed, the authors estimate that the cumulative cost of recidivism in Illinois over the next five years will be $13 billion, more than 20 percent lower than the $16.7 billion five-year estimate in the 2015 study.
Comment: “A structural deficit that stood at $635 million in 2011 has been reduced to $97.9 million, Chicago’s smallest in a decade,” says the article. Never mind what the actual financials or anything closer to reality say. We’ll be giving the details.
Comment: A more balanced look than you’ve seen in silly headlines in the local press.
Brown “personally hired” each of the 2,300 employees under her command, and collected payments of $10,000 per job through campaign contributions, business loans and even a free trip to India, according to affidavits in an investigation of former Brown deputy Beena Patel.
But, per the disclaimer, don’t pay much attention to this.
Comment: We will be taking our own look at Chicago’s annual financial analysis, on which this is based.
“They’re working on it.”
Chicago and other major metros face black Americans’ departure for the suburbs and the south
“CPS is too big, too corrupt, and too insulated to reform itself,” state Rep. Jeanne Ives (R-Wheaton), a long-time critic of bloat and poor performance in the schools, told Chicago City Wire. “It is one of two school districts that should actually be broken up into smaller districts because the bureaucracy is unaccountable.”
Just released. We will be reading it.
A new report that assesses the risks to investors of buying in markets burdened by public pension and budget problems. The report, by real estate research firm Green Street Advisors, raises alarm bells about the Chicago market, giving it the worst “fiscal health” score among top U.S. metropolitan areas.
Green Street also says Chicago appears to be on the same path as Detroit, a former fiscal basket case that recently emerged from bankruptcy.
The crookedest guys in the room.
A new report out today from the Illinois Policy Institute concludes that the cost of worker pensions is soaking up a larger and larger share of your property taxes, on average 45 cents of every extra dollar levied by school districts, city halls and other local government statewide between 1996 and 2016.
A study released this week by the Social IMPACT Research Center at Heartland Alliance placed more than half of the state’s 102 counties on a poverty watch list.
Includes responses to the WSJ editorial, “Why Your Pension is Doomed, that was based on Wirepoints research.
Shameless dishonesty.
We have a city government that continually makes it less attractive for employers to consider places like South Works. Mandatory wages and time off, the plastic bag tax and layered regulations, along with high sales and property taxes and workers’ comp costs — even as neighboring states implement policies attractive to job providers — exacerbate the economic disparities “progressives” supposedly are trying to reduce.
What we need instead is a complete rethinking of city government’s relationship with the private sector.
Comment: Long, long overdue.
“Pension liabilities so high that they can never be erased.”
“There hasn’t been any progress made,” said Dick Ingram, the executive director of the Illinois Teachers’ Retirement System, the state’s largest pension. “It’s a case of the numbers have gotten so big that nobody really honestly knows what to do.”
“Metropolitan regions that move away from the idea that everyone has to have a car will have a decisive edge down the road. Chicago has made strides with bike sharing, and car sharing in all of its stripes looks just as promising. Any legislation that inhibits that potential is headed the wrong way.”
“We want 30 percent affordable housing with a property tax freeze, independent monitoring of local jobs, support for neighborhood schools and a community trust fund to support these initiatives,” said the crowd in another call-and-response.
Perhaps the lack of specifics is the byproduct of two extremely wealthy, self-funded candidates facing off. Rauner and Pritzker don’t need to “earn” free media coverage with policy rollouts and press conferences…. What are your grand plans for the next four years? The voters of Illinois need to hear them.
Rather than end the practice, many school districts continued to spike salaries and stuck their own local taxpayers with the bill.
“The bubble is bursting right now in Illinois and in CA, PA, MA, CT, NJ, NY, and all other big Blue states. California alone has a half-trillion-dollar unfunded pension liability. The financial mechanics are the same and cannot be stopped.”
A similar protest to shut down Lake Shore Drive is scheduled for next month.
Comment: States like IL and CN pay more in federal taxes, and therefore deserve a federal pension bailout. That’s the argument here. Good luck with that.
Comment: It’s surprising Blago hasn’t started to sing loudly about all the dirt he no doubt has on IL Dems, in an effort to earn his way to pardon as Trump might see it.
Comment: No, it’s not about transparency. Where the salaries are charged is open information. That’s why everybody has it. Allocations to different departments have gone on for decades because that’s appropriate — governors’ staffs devote particular portions of their time to the business of particular departments. Rauner may or may not have done that correctly, but that is a separate issue. This is just another Mendoza stunt.
The federal review is intended to evaluate and, if needed, mitigate any adverse effects from the project. A federal decision on just a timetable for the federal review process includes meetings about potential mitigation measures in the fall of 2018, with a memo of agreement not to be finalized until early 2019.
The probe has examined whether Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc., SBGI -0.19% Tribune Media Co. and other independent TV station owners coordinated efforts when their ad sales teams communicated with each other about their performance, potentially leading to higher rates for TV commercials, one of the people said.
Comment: We’ve been saying “insurmountable,” but “irretrievable” will do. His Op-Ed in the Washington Post on this is linked here.
Citing desperate times, the Illinois Racing Board moved ahead Thursday with plans to introduce a form of video gambling at horse racing tracks. The board agreed to develop a set of rules to govern “historical horse racing” at the racetracks — despite questions about whether the latest proposed expansion of gambling in Illinois could be introduced without approval by state lawmakers.
A continuation of the Tribune’s outstanding series of special reports on Chicago public schools.
Chicago-area residents would be able to invest in bonds to pay for $500,000 of ward-level projects that locals would vote on, under a plan an alderman envisions helping increase local involvement in how public money gets spent.
Northwest Side Ald. Gilbert Villegas, 36th, says “It could be like participatory budgeting, where residents attend a meeting with their alderman to discuss different possible projects — say a playground, street repaving or a baseball field for a school — and then they vote online on which one they want to fund.”
No mention of Illinois, of course.
Tollway officials told a state Senate committee that they would “set the record straight” about questions of transparency, favoritism and conflicts of interest, but at best their appearance Tuesday was just, to quote Democratic Sen. Laura Murphy, of Des Plaines, “a start.”
Illinois’ entire U.S. House delegation is asking federal officials for a briefing about election security, given that the state was a “major target” of Russian hackers in the 2016 election.
llinois soybean farmers caught in the middle of President Donald Trump’s trade war with China might see some short-term relief from $12 billion in aid announced Tuesday, but they’re still worried about losing their best customer.
The roughly $6 billion operating budget for Chicago Public Schools would mark a nearly $285 million spending increase from last year, and includes about $60 million in extra funding for schools to help cover unionized teacher salary increases.
Nearly a third of property taxes now collected by City Hall go into 143 special taxing districts controlled by Mayor Rahm Emanuel and aldermen, according to a new report by Cook County Clerk David Orr.
Orr said a record-high $660 million poured into tax-increment financing funds last year, which was more than 31 percent of the $2.1 billion-plus that city government collected. The veteran clerk called the percentage “stunning.”
How Illinois State Rep. Mark Batinick – typically known as a reformer – ended up legitimizing a slick, kick-the-can pension repayment scheme sponsored by the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability is baffling.
Batinick added distortions to an already phony pension plan offered by the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability. That’s right, a Republican is using the union-backed CTBA as his foundation.
In a statement, state Sen. Sam McCann, a Republican running for governor on the Conservative Party line, announced that he has filed legislation to reverse the $180 million appropriation on grounds that there are better uses for the money than dropping it on a “high-profile luxury project.”
The agreement, which apportions previously withheld and future tax revenues between the involved parties until the city’s debts are paid in full, resembles an interim pact reached last month as Harvey scrambled to make payroll and pay for essential services.
According to a new report by Truth in Accounting, Chicago’s debt burden is a little more than $45,000 per taxpayer. That’s much less than the city of New York. But if you add the burden from all of the other units of government, Chicago schools, the park district, and many more, the total taxpayer burden is $125,000, much more than the Big Apple.
The median assumed rate of return held by 130 public pension funds tracked by Wilshire Consulting dropped in 2017 to 7.25%.
Yet the 10-year annualized median was just 5.57%.
Illinois income inequality tops national average, but Lincoln among most equal U.S. cities
Here in Illinois, a teacher hired before 2011, who worked continuously after graduating college, is eligible for retirement, at a 75% pay replacement increasing at a compounded rate of 3% per year, at the age of 56. This is a benefit level that, even in the days of generous private-sector traditional defined benefit pensions, would have been exceedingly generous.
A twenty-fold increase in the cap on tort claims against the state is on Rauner’s desk.
Avenues for state oversight for cities with financial difficulties have limited utility in the face of massive pension debt and have almost never been invoked since Springfield passed them into law in 1990.
Taking a page from the Rev. Michael Pfleger, a group of community activists plans to shut down a stretch of North Lake Shore Drive as part of an anti-violence march that will end at Wrigley Field next week. About 4 p.m. Aug. 2, groups that include the Coalition for a New Chicago and Violence Interrupters plan to march on Lake Shore Drive near Belmont Avenue and then proceed to Wrigley Field
The proposed amendment to the GOP Cook County bylaws would allow Democrats to serve as Republican ward committeemen.
Facebook has added a huge office in the Loop, in a deal that could give the company room to expand to at least 2,000 employees in Chicago. The social media giant has leased 263,000 square feet in the recently completed 35-story tower at 151 N. Franklin St., Facebook spokesman Jamil Walker said Monday.
Comment: Hmm. Any similarities with Cook County?
Comment: Nonsense. An additional $2.4 billion wouldn’t even get us to the point of covering the additional interest that accrues on just the state’s unfunded liability. The hole would grow indefinitely. This requires a full rebuttal.
By a pension actuary: “To be more, precise, it’s not the primary cause. Rather, a study by Wirepoints made available on their website yesterday points to a far more troubling cause: the value of promised benefits has skyrocketed in the years since 2003, both in absolute terms and relative to measures such as those states’ GDP growth.”
“How can Sun Belt cities learn from what Chicago got right and wrong?”
“Get out of here with this talk about how paying more for a bloated and corrupt government is a good thing for the economy. If the truth about that false statement weren’t so depressing, I’d laugh at its absurdity.
“The truth is that while a special class of workers in Illinois has been insulated from harsh economic realities, the rest of the state hasn’t. Between 2005 and 2014, AFSCME worker salaries grew five times faster than Illinois worker earnings and at twice the rate of inflation.
The proposal by Commissioner Jesus “Chuy” Garcia would establish a Consensus Revenue Forecasting Commission that, much like the Congressional Budget Office and a new unit recently established by the Chicago City Council, would issue regular revenue projections and notably “be responsible for evaluating” any tax proposed by the president or commissioners.
The Illinois State Board of Investment for years relied on an 8.5% assumed return rate for its state-employee retirement plan. In 2016 it dropped to 7%, one of many reasons it now has just 35% of what it needs to pay for future benefits.
“If we were still 8.5% it might be 50% or 60%—it would appear to be a lot better,” said Illinois State Board of Investment Chair Marc Levine. But it would be total nonsense because you still owe the same amount of money. You’re just fudging on the accounting.”
Comment: Pritzker’s “plan” is just pay them. Yet he has offered no numbers on how we could possibly pay for that or for his new social programs. Rauner’s “consideration” plan won’t save much, if anything, and would probably be struck down by the courts.
Comment: And there’s more coming. Stay tuned.
Comment: Utter nonsense, for reasons that will be apparent to those following the pension crisis. We’ll do an article elaborating, however.
Illinois State Board of Investments’ Marc Levine
Comment: The looting of Illinois continues unabated.
In a novel analysis, the Illinois-based policy outfit Wirepoints compared the growth of state pension liabilities relative to state GDP and fund assets. Most studies have examined “unfunded” pension liabilities, which is the difference between current assets and the present value of owed benefits. But this obfuscates the excessive pension promises that politicians have made.
To you and others who offer nothing beyond name-calling, put up or shut up. And as for any call for us to be banned from township meetings or anywhere else, drop dead.
A damning state auditor general report released Thursday found systemic failures in Illinois’ licensing and oversight of thousands of taxpayer-funded group homes for adults with disabilities, problems first exposed in a 2016 Tribune investigation that documented substandard conditions and widespread harm.
“The state’s stable outlook is in line with expectations that, despite continued under-funding of pension liabilities, any credit deterioration in the next two years will not affect the state’s finances, economy, or overall liabilities to an extent sufficient to warrant a lower rating,” Moody’s wrote. Translation: Bonds won’t actually default in the next few year, and we don’t really give a crap about anything beyond that. And this being an election year, we need to suck up a bit to keep those who pay us happy.
Illinois is in a state of denial. The public realizes there are grave problems with government finance in Illinois but is largely unaware of the extent of those problems. At the same time, elected officials, at least most of them, recognize the bleak circumstances but are too concerned about the November elections to level with the voters.
Senate Bill 2638 would allow local governments to file annual reports to the Illinois Comptroller based off cash accounting. Truth In Accounting Research Director Bill Bergman said that’s different from accrual accounting, the standard that all publicly traded U.S. companies are required to use.
“Effectively it’s a way to kick the can down the road and accrual accounting, in theory, should help you recognize those expenses at the time they occurred, not when the cash goes out,” Bergman said.
The Harvey, Illinois, City Council will consider a settlement agreement with its public safety pension funds that would resolve a state diversion of funds the fiscally distressed Chicago suburb has warned threatens its ability to keep the lights on and meet payroll.
“The settlement saves Harvey from a de facto bankruptcy,” said Harvey’s lead attorney, Bob Fioretti of Roth Fioretti LLC. Parties to the settlement include holders of $6 million of revenue bonds secured by hotel-motel and sales taxes
Some good news: The State of Illinois collected over $900 million more in revenues than previously forecast in the budget year that just ended, apparently resulting in a lower than expected year-end backlog of unpaid bills.
“Janus was a potential lifeline for Illinois. Making Missouri’s job market less attractive by killing Prop A might be a lifeline for those of us still here in southwestern Illinois.”
The Janus decision in June was good news for the litigants in the 2014 Harris case, whose claim for damages has been pending under the new title Riffey v Rauner. The day after the high court decided Janus, it sent Riffey to the lower court for reconsideration “in light of Janus.” Riffey seeks to recover $32 million in pre-Harris payments to a single Service Employees International Union local in Illinois. Five days later, PPE workers in Washington state filed a lawsuit, Schumacher v. Inslee, seeking refunds from another SEIU local. A third blow to PPE unions came July 12. The
Seven of 10 able-bodied recipients of taxpayer-funded healthcare in Illinois say they don’t have jobs. “They’re taking dollars out of those state budgets that could go to people who don’t have the opportunity to work,” said Victoria Eardley, a research fellow with FGA and co-author of the study. “And now we find out that they’re not working.”
Oprah Winfrey, a close friend of former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle, and one of the most successful entertainment executives in the world, has donated at least $1 million to the Obama Foundation, according to records posted on Monday. The donation was expected, given her relationship with the Obamas, her historic role in the Obama election in 2008, their Chicago connections and her interest in the Obama Presidential Center, with its centerpiece museum.
Comment: Huge implications if the plaintiffs win this, and they sure appear to be right on the facts.
The new analysis, produced by the Metropolitan Planning Council, found that the Loop, the Near North Side and the Near West Side added 65,000 new jobs between the start of 2010 and the end of 2015, with the number of jobs in those three areas totaling 715,000 as of 2015.
Yet the number of those jobs held by residents who live in majority-black communities on the South and West sides dropped. During the five-year period, the number of employees working downtown who were living in those communities shrunk by nearly 1,500. Residents of these communities made up only 10.6 percent
James Spiotto, managing director of Chapman Strategic Advisors LLC, called for a four-pronged approach that includes congressional legislation to create a new federal bankruptcy court that would handle only insolvent public pension systems. Spiotto’s plan assumes that a state or municipality has raised its taxes to the limit and all efforts at a consensual agreement with labor unions have been exhausted.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration was accused Tuesday of illegally assessing fines and penalties against “hundreds of thousands” of Chicago motorists by exceeding a $250 maximum established by state law. The Illinois General Assembly established the $250 ceiling for both fines and late fees in exchange for shifting vehicle violations from the courts to city hearing officers, where the burden of proof is lower. But a lawsuit filed Tuesday accuses the city of ignoring that cap for years on more than a dozen vehicle-related violations.
Rahm: “You know, in the intelligence world there’s a term called case officer. I think we met Donald Trump’s case officer: President Putin. We all saw it,” the mayor said. “You can play that tape fast, you can play that tape slow. We just saw what we needed to see.”
To give Chicago’s entire population of 2.7 million a check for $500 per month would cost $1.35 Billion per month, or $16.2 billion per year. Considering the city’s $71 billion debt load – of which around $40 billion is pension debt, UBI would add nearly 23% per year to that ticking time bombs.
The University of Illinois is paying $7,500 to the Chicago-area alum who made T-shirts that said “Make Illinois Great Again” on the back and had a drawing of Chief Illiniwek on the front.
In the first half of 2018, the Chicago area had the second-highest number of properties in some stage of foreclosure among the 20 biggest U.S. metro areas, according to Attom Data Solutions. Chicago also was second in the bigger group of 219 cities.
Congress should consider creation of a special federal bankruptcy court to help states and localities deal with insolvent public pension systems, says James Spiotto, managing director of Chapman Strategic Advisors.
Which leads to some peculiar outcomes, such as that reported at Wirepoints, in which the pension plan for the city of Chicago almost-magically is in a better financial position this year than last, not because of an increase in contributions or a decrease in benefits owed, but because o a new schedule of contributions which intends, by means of increases each year in the future — which may or may not actually happen — to arrive at a funding level sufficient to shed the lower discount rate requirement.
Does this sort of manipulation sound
Comment: It won’t happen, but the level of support within the city council for a pilot program shows how wacko today’s left has become.
You who fund our universities do so with trust that intellectuals will act in your interest and reflect your pro-American values. You are wrong. Your hard work has been financing people who think they are better than your crass materialism, who think that you (but not they) are complicit in an evil system (capitalism).
Withdraw your support and leave them to fund themselves. Let them pit their wares on the free market, where they will be left homeless. The world you desired no longer exists in our universities. It lies elsewhere, in a philosophic system waiting to be discovered or
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Rep. Christian Mitchell will replace Timothy Mapes, who stepped down from the post and from his job as chief of staff to House Speaker Michael Madigan amid sexual harassment allegations.
Mitchell will be the first African-American to serve in the position. In a statement Tuesday Mitchell says he looks forward to working to assure Democratic victories this fall and “charting a new and inclusive path forward for our party.”
James Spiotto is a nationally recognized legal expert on insolvency. At an upcoming Brookings Institute conference on municipal finance, he will be delivering a significant new paper, with an appropriately long title: “When Needed Public Pension Reforms Fail or Appear to Be Legally Impossible, What Then? Are Unbalanced Budgets, Deficits and Government Collapse the Only Answer.” The paper is linked here. It’s for legal and policy wonks, but it’s important, primarily because it lays out the case for why and how the federal government and federal courts can and should play a role in solving state and local fiscal crises,
Retiring as president and CEO of the Illinois Manufacturers’ Association is Greg Baise, a longtime pillar of the corporate and political establishment who has been involved in almost every major election and issue in state politics since he worked for then-Gov. Jim Thompson in the 1980s.
Baise will continue to run Xpress Professional Services, a for-profit subsidiary of IMA that performs direct mail, TV ad production and other chores for political candidates, and which operates the well-known We Ask America polling operation.
Baise, 66, will be succeeded by IMA Vice President and COO Mark Denzler,
Centreville, IL, tops the list as ranked by 24/7 Wall St., a partner of USA Today, using the annual estimates made by the U.S. Census Bureau. The ranking was because Centreville had four stats that are worthy of despair.
From 2010 through 2016, Chicago financed $486 million of the $936 million in cop-related settlements, judgments and legal expenses over that time—a little over half—with bonds. In 2016, for the first time in years, the city covered the entirety of the $116 million in legal costs without resorting to debt. In 2017, the city issued $274 million in taxable bonds due in 12 years and six months, at an interest rate topping 7 percent. Most of that—$225 million—is covering the cost of judgments and settlements
Penny Pritzker has developed a taste for tech. The former Hyatt executive, who was U.S. commerce secretary for four years under President Barack Obama, is investing in tech companies through her Chicago-based investment firm, PSP Partners. She also has been one of the leaders marshaling corporate support for Chicago’s bid for Amazon’s HQ2 and now is teaming up with software entrepreneur Chris Gladwin to draft a blueprint to lift the city’s standing among the nation’s top tech hubs.
Assuming things are better doesn’t make things better.
By Wirepoints’ Mark Glennon.
The leading figure in the effort to bring more honesty to actuarial reporting on pensions.
The western Chicago suburb of Forest Park became the fifth Illinois community since early last year to suffer a multi-level rating cut from Moody’s Investors Service with pension strains cited a key factor.
“Not many actuaries receive obituaries in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal.”
Who knew?
Moody’s Investors raised the bond rating for the Chicago Public Schools one notch higher — from B3 to B2 — but still deep into junk status.
The rating agency also affirmed Chicago’s Ba1 rating, also junk, but revised the outlook from negative to stable.
By using unrealistic interest rates for these buyouts, policymakers are concealing just how severe their financial situation is. For a given buyout option, the terms should reflect the true funded status of the pension plan. Applying more realistic interest rates to Illinois’ recent buyout options reveals that their situation is so bad that being completely transparent with beneficiaries would require significantly cutting lump-sums. It is not surprising that policymakers have decided to go with less honest interest rates
Comment: Hold off on any judgement here. The city apparently changed some assumptions about the pensions, and it remains to be determined how much of the supposed improvement is real. We are in the process of looking at that.
Take heart. Excellence is everywhere.
Among the resolutions pushed by the AFT: single-payer health care, free college and opposition to the Dakota Access pipeline, support for “anti-war groups,” removal of the U.S.’s Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system in South Korea and more.
The union’s Berkeley affiliate wants President Trump’s “immediate resignation or removal.”
Buried among the facts and figures in the Justice Department’s recent book-length report on the failings of the Chicago Police Department was a telling statistic: The rate of suicide among CPD officers is 60 percent higher than other departments across the U.S.
Just posted today, this is the annual Comprehensive Annual Financial Report. We and others will be digging in. The bottom line: A loss of $938 million. We and others will be digging in more closely.
We do indeed. Wirepoints, too. This is the most challenging, deliberately opaque part of our pension crisis. In Illinois, for public workers, they are constitutionally guarantied along with pension benefits. Over $50 billion of obligations are entirely unfunded just for state pensioners. From the article: “EB liabilities are perhaps the greatest single under-reported and under-scrutinized unfunded liability within our state and municipal employee retirement systems.”
Comment: With no indication whatsoever how it could be paid for, it’s a naked election year stunt by Rahm.
Comment: This is a big issue. It’s a racket — lawyers often taking excessive referral fees on title insurance, driving up the cost.
Pritzker and Korecki. Quite a duo.
A spokesman for Chief Judge Timothy Evans’ office says Cook County Circuit Judge Joseph Claps has been reassigned to “nonjudicial duties” pending a meeting of court’s executive committee.
Illinois Auditor General Frank Mautino is under federal investigation, won’t testify to the elections board and can’t run for office again because his now defunct campaign committee hasn’t paid a fine for wrong doing.
Illinois was among the states where the Obama rule allowed Medicaid money to be skimmed for union dues.
And just a reminder: We collect articles from all sides on this site.
As minimum wage increases take hold across the U.S. — with Chicago and Los Angeles two of the latest big cities to implement hikes — restaurants may be among the hardest-hit businesses. They’re already facing reduced foot traffic and a worker shortage, and the rising labor costs could mean higher bills for that slowing trickle of diners.
A republication of our Wirepoints article.
“As Ted Dabrowski pointed out in a recent Wirepoints piece, one should hardly expect the unions to roll over and play dead. If nothing else, the SCOTUS decision may serve as a rallying cry for Illinois’ public employees and their Democratic Party allies and, perhaps, solidify their support for J.B. Pritzker, the Democratic candidate for Governor.”
It showed that just 31 percent said they would vote to re-elect Emanuel. When respondents were asked to choose between Emanuel and someone new — without mentioning a specific alternative — 62 percent of those surveyed said they wanted to try someone else.
When Emanuel was pitted against “a number of announced and likely candidates in the race,” his numbers went up only to 34 percent — statistically insignificant, given the poll’s margin of error of 3.5 percentage points.
Chicago’s habit of floating bonds to pay for the annual cost of police-related payouts was spotlighted in a report issued last month with the provocative title, “Police Brutality Bonds,” by Action Center on Race & the Economy.
The group, which focused on the practices of several cities but spotlighted Chicago, estimates Chicago will spend more than $1 billion to service the debt on about $700 million in cop-related settlements and judgments incurred since 2010.
Comment: This is silly. The investment was made during the Obama Administration and Rauner wasn’t even at GTCR, the firm that made the investment, at the time it was made. Nor do we know whether the money involved is material. According to the article, we only know it’s more than $5,000.
In a scathing letter to Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration, the non-profit Jackson Park Watch has detailed the many ways that the proposed Obama Center violates portions of America’s most important environmental protection law.
The Civic Federation believes that significant changes to pension benefits should not be enacted without detailed actuarial impact studies that are made available to the public.
Emanuel’s self-described main goal: Saving a $1.3 billion deal between the CTA and a Chinese firm to assemble new el cars on the Southeast Side, a deal that’s threatened as the U.S. and China engage in a growing round of tariffs and counter-tariffs.
For more than 100 years, Granite City has defined itself as a hardworking mill town, a place where young people eager to cement a solid financial future without a college degree have to look no further than the dirt and iron and fire of the local steel plant, which stretches over 2 square miles. The opportunity afforded by the plant came to a halt at the end of 2015, when the plant idled production, laying off 2,000 people. But the first blast furnace now has been restarted and U.S. Steel is filling 800 jobs at the mill.
Rahm ducks question on where the money will come from.
According to a number of regional harbormasters, occupancy at marinas took a major dip in the aftermath of the 2008 Great Recession.
“A misguided protest in Chicago blames the city’s rampant violent crime on inadequate social spending.”
The irresistible force is hitting the immovable object. Just as the state is effectively bankrupt, municipalities throughout Illinois will be confronting that unfortunate reality. It’s tempting to say that Peoria’s problems represent the canary in the coal mine. But the canary checked out a long time ago. Peoria represents a coal miner succumbing to a financial threat too long ignored.
At Bradley Elementary School District 61, six of the nine educators pulling in six figures are pensioners.
Comment: Our ace attorney general no doubt will be on this.
A republication of our Wirepoints article.
U.S. District Court Judge Christopher R. Cooper ruled that Pruitt, a former Oklahoma attorney general, violated the Clean Air Act by allowing Illinois, Alabama and Mississippi to omit ethical standards from each state’s federally mandated plans to reduce lung-damaging smog and soot pollution.
Other states have laws on the books intended to ensure front-line enforcers of clean air regulations represent the public interest rather than industry priorities. But Illinois has repeatedly failed to ensure similar conflict-of-interest rules apply to top officials at the state EPA, according to documents filed by three environmental groups behind the lawsuit that prompted Cooper’s ruling.
Presented without comment.
A bill that would keep insurance providers from adding or removing a drug from a customer’s coverage plan mid-year is now on Gov. Bruce Rauner’s desk.
The 50 cities where the most people are moving away from can primarily be found in the Northeast, Midwest, and West Coast, particularly in states like Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, and New York. Among the cities where people are leaving in droves are places such as Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis, New York, and Los Angeles. Chicago No. 1.
By State Senator David McSweeney.
But the veracity of their claim is being called in question by a series of investigations over the years that have accused the system of inflating graduation rates.
Yes, but don’t blame the Founders or their vision of government.
“For employees that work for local government, those union members make 35% more,” said Rep. Jan Schakowsky. Comment: Um, Jan, isn’t that the problem?
Long lines and confusion marked the opening hours of electronic filing for civil cases at the Daley Center on Monday as Cook County Circuit Court Clerk Dorothy Brown rolled out the new system in time to meet an Illinois Supreme Court deadline.
Limiting pensionable salary increases to 3% per year is too little for them.
Complaints have dogged Lincoln Towing for decades. The company has been accused of removing cars from places it shouldn’t and causing high dollar damage to some vehicles in the process.
Presented without comment.
Demand for downtown office space was so strong in the second quarter that a massive, entirely empty new building opened and the vacancy rate barely moved.
Comment: From the article, “Anything to do with Obama, people all over the world want to be part of what he represented and how he made them feel.” No worries. Taxpayers across America will experience that by funding the Obama Center. See our article linked here.
Wirepoints has learned that at least $139 million — 80% of the public funding for the center — almost certainly will be reimbursed by the federal government.
In late 2011, Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration gave a no-bid, five-year deal for $115 million to a politically connected partnership to operate and maintain O’Hare Airport’s in-house transit system — the People Mover.
Nearly seven years later, that partnership, called AOR Transit Joint Venture, is still on the job. That’s after being handed more duties, without competitive bidding, that have helped bring it an extra $58 million, records show.
A day after overturning the legal precedent that allowed public sector unions to use the state to grab a share of non-union workers’ paychecks, the U.S. Supreme Court has ordered a federal appeals court in Chicago to use its ruling to take another look at his decision forbidding a group of home caregivers from suing a labor union to claw back some of the $32 million in similar fees the state had taken from the caregivers and paid to the union.
Centreville, Illinois, is tucked between an airport, rail lines and interstates in the Metro East. For the second time in as many years, 24/7 Wall St. has named it the poorest town in America. It took the top spot from Macon, Mississippi, in 2017.
Comment: We told you they were “toast” years ago.
Comment: Big salute to Jason Huebert, director of litigation for the Liberty Justice Center, a public-interest law firm in Chicago, and Bill Messenger of the National Right to Work Legal Foundation.
The increasingly left-wing politics of leading U.S. cities clashes with the aspirations of middle-class residents.
The board’s 78-page response says “Breuder oversaw an era of waste, fraud and abuse” that “caused real harm to the college and, in many cases, direct benefits to Breuder and those close to him.”
As part of a five-year plan to increase the minimum wage to $13 per hour by 2019, Chicago’s new $12 minimum wage takes effect July 1. Since 2014, the wage has steadily risen from the Illinois minimum of $8.25 to $11 per hour.
And comments from other Illinois Senate Democrats on the Janus decision.
The abusive accrual of sick and vacation time is a problem at all levels of government. Chicago Public Schools paid upward of $100,000 each to more than 300 principals and administrators between 2006 and 2011 as they left the system. Outgoing schools CEO Arne Duncan cashed out more than $50,000 in unused vacation time in 2009. Jody Weis, who served as Chicago police superintendent for three years, left with a $76,000 payout.
Chicago is among the cities seeing steep a decline.
Enraged union leaders and Democratic Party leaders tried to take political advantage of the decision they described as a union-weakening effort that will hurt the middle class. Pritzker accused Rauner of using the Supreme Court to “attack working families.” Chicago Teachers Union leader Jesse Sharkey said despite the ruling, “we’re going to advocate for what’s just.”
“The Supreme Court, the Supreme Court be damned,” Sharkey said.
The search took nine months to complete. The benchmark is for at least half of the subcontractors to be diverse suppliers with set asides for racial minorities and women, veterans, the disabled, ex-offenders and LGBTQ individuals.
As a champion of gay marriage and a fierce protector of a woman’s right to choose, Emanuel says he appreciates the swing vote that Kennedy provided on those crucial issues. But, the mayor maintained that Kennedy’s overall 30-year record on the nation’s highest court is not a record to be duplicated. It’s a record to be condemned.
The new budget becomes effective Sunday.
Comment: This is potentially big. The nation’s highest court Thursday granted a request to take up the Illinois case Riffey v. Rauner, which seeks a refund of $32 million in agency fees from more than 80,000 personal assistants without their permission.
85 percent of property tax money now goes to pay city pensioners.
“Background Friendly! No Drug Test.”
The Justice Department announced the ban last year, but Chicago sued, saying that even though it has banned enforcement of immigration laws, it should still get federal funding. A federal District Court judge ruled in favor of the city and blocked the Justice Department from applying the sanctuary criterion to its grant policy. Now, a federal appeals court has narrowed the Chicago decision, saying the local District Court’s ban on federal funding using sanctuary policies could not be enforced nationwide.
Comment: Quite a few articles like this coming out from politicians opposed to public funding.
Comment: An utterly irrational argument by Greg Hinz. He says the Janus decision wasn’t about free speech but was all about politics, about giving one political party and its ideology and its beliefs a leg up on the other. But that’s exactly the point. It was about compelling political speech.
Comment: Sure, it’s a political stunt, but it’s an important one. The sponsor is House minority leader Jim Durkin who hasn’t exactly been a champion of bold reforms. Maybe he’s waking up.
“Horrific.”
Comment: The looting of Illinois will be at its most egregious as those most responsible head for the exits.
In a testament to the booming national economy, the number of Illinois homes that are being introduced into the foreclosure process fell 10 percent since May of last year, according to a report by real estate market research firm Attom Data Solutions.
“Figures released last week by Cook County Clerk David Orr reveal that the suburbs of Ford Heights, Park Forest and Riverdale have the highest average tax rates in Cook County. This is nothing new. These are poor south suburban communities that have been economically ravished for decades by the property tax structure of this state.
Ofo and LimeBike told the Tribune that Chicago is the only city that has required the rentals to be capable of being locked to a physical object.
NSA and AT&T maps point to the Chicago facility as being one of the “peering” hubs, which process internet traffic as part of the NSA surveillance program
“Breathtaking in its scope and audacity…. This outrage cannot be allowed to stand. Former President Obama should call a halt to his plan. Rather than serving as a monument to his memory, it would represent a permanent stain on his reputation.” Comment: Sounds familiar. But that’s OK. Nice to know we’re reaching people.
Muni investors aren’t banking on November’s Illinois election to cure the state’s deep fiscal wounds. That was the assessment offered by several local buyside representatives who participated in a panel discussion at The Bond Buyer’s Midwest Municipal Market Conference.
Jessica Melugin, associate director at the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Center for Technology and Innovation, predicted small businesses would soon be at the mercy of more than 10,000 unique taxing districts that would be nearly impossible to track without help.
Automatic annual tax increases in whatever-it-takes amounts to fund all our pensions? Good luck.
New census data released yesterday show Illinois had a net loss of more than 270,000 prime working-age adults (ages 25-54) over the last decade, with 85 percent of that loss attributable to outmigration rather than mortality.
“Earlier in Rauner’s first term as an elected official, there were questions about whether he was so idealistic that he couldn’t strike a political deal. This year, Rauner was so eager to get a deal, he threw his political agenda overboard.”
If you’re being bled dry by taxes in Illinois — or in the 21 other states with powerful public-sector unions — you’ll want to pay attention to the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday.
And if you’re among the many thousands who’ve already fled or are thinking about running from this corrupt and broken state in the continuing mass taxpayer exodus, you might be interested as well. Because on Monday, the high court is expected to decide a critically important workers’ rights case: Janus v. AFSCME.
A Tribune review of city records shows that the number of affordable residences built is running below City Hall projections by some measures, and the fees paid by many developers to fund affordable housing have been mostly steered away from gentrifying neighborhoods. Comment: We laid out the plain facts showing this program to be a failure three years ago, but we were ignored.
Large swaths of Central America are battlegrounds for mafias wrestling over lucrative smuggling routes for U.S.-bound heroin and cocaine from South America. Many of those routes lead right here to Chicago, which has emerged as a major hub for the distribution of cocaine, heroin and marijuana.
Illinois’ 2018 adopted pension measures were not as clearly defined, Fitch said. The lowest-rated U.S. state established a bond-financed buyout program for current and former public employees it expects to yield $423 million in savings for the fiscal 2019 budget.
“Notably, the timing of rollout will be lengthy and the precise fiscal impact will only be known upon conclusion of the program and could vary significantly from the initial estimates,” Fitch said.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel came to know David Pecker through working on a deal during the time Emanuel was working at an investment firm. Pecker, chairman and CEO of The National Enquirer parent, reportedly was subpoenaed by federal authorities in New York as part of their investigation of President Donald Trump’s longtime lawyer Michael D. Cohen.
An interesting history. And it’s accurate.
Comment: No, there’s actually not a solution offered here. See our critique of this article linked here.
Comment: Why bother?
According to a recent Capitol Fax/We Ask America poll, Democrat J.B. Pritzker leads Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner in the race for governor by nine points, 36-27, with 26 percent choosing an unnamed third-party candidate and 11 percent undecided.
Anticipating today’s 5-4 ruling, the Illinois General Assembly actually included $150 million in new revenues from this source in its recently adopted fiscal 2019 state budget—and that’s a partial “intentionally conservative” figure, according to Illinois Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Andy Manar, D-Bunker Hill. Other estimates run as high as $626 million a year or more, depending on how well collections go, according to a U.S. General Accounting Office study cited by Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill.
“A lot of this is coming to a head,” Skillicorn said. “You are going to see Springfield politicians talk about pension reform. But it’s going to be something to kick the can down the road. They are going to find a way to extend the obligation out a little longer. I think that is a joke.”
And it’s ascending in Chicago and much of Illinois.
Comment: Bend over, Illinois. Anticipating this decision, Illinois already passed the legislation requiring out of state retailers to withhold sales taxes the state can collect. Further explained here.
To qualify for the low-interest loans, developers must sign a 15-year commitment to make 20 percent of the units they create affordable. That means to qualify to live in those units, a family of four could have an annual income no higher than $39,500, or 50 percent of the median income in that area.
Like the overall population of Chicago and Cook County, the number of milllennials in Cook County is falling, data shows. The county lost 20,093 residents in 2017, including an estimated 3,182 aged 25 to 29, census data show.
Detrivitorous. Positively, indubitably detrivitorous.
Chicago Treasurer Kurt Summers is working to implement environmental, social and governance investing, in a city on the brink of bankruptcy. The Summers proposal weighs societal impact over the value of the pension funds, which conflicts with the fiduciary duty to generate the highest possible returns for pensioners. This de facto divestment from higher-performing stock to less profitable holdings is unwise and risky for any public fund, but especially one as weak and unfunded as Chicago.
Average tax bills for single-family homes in the south suburbs were $247.39 higher in 2016 than in 2017 — an increase of about 5 percent — while those in the north suburbs went up around $213, or 3 percent, during that period, according to the Cook County clerk. And homeowners in the city saw their bills increase by nearly $110, or 3 percent.
On average, the 2017 property tax bill for a home with a market value of $200,000 would be $3,579 in Chicago, $4,593 in the north suburbs and $5,867 for a south suburban home.
Comment: People who understand this are furious. Our stories on it and their republications have received hundreds of thousands of pageviews. See our most recent article on it linked here.
The owner of a home in the city determined to be worth $224,500 will pay a bit more than $4,100 in total taxes this year — an increase of about $110, or 2.75 percent more than last year.
That same homeowner last year saw an increase of $363, which was a 10 percent hike. The rising tax bills in both years were primarily the result of Mayor Rahm Emanuel increasing property taxes to shore up pension funds for city workers and public school teachers.
“We demand that J.B. Pritzker, the Democratic candidate for governor of Illinois, pay his organizing fellows,” says a petition circulated by a group called the Campaign Workers Guild. It goes on: As the pro-labor candidate in this race, it just doesn’t add up that J.B. doesn’t pay his student workers. Even Republican Governor Bruce Rauner, J.B.’s opponent and one of the most anti-union governors in the country, pays his interns…. We demand that J.B. uphold his campaign’s values by paying his fellows a fair wage of $15 an hour. A $15/hour minimum wage is indeed a core item Pritzker campaigns
“Somebody’s got some explaining to do,” said a former museum board member. “We really don’t have any serious accounting of how much they raise every year and how much they spend,” he added, saying he thinks it’s reached the level of a scandal.
Declaring that her presence on the bench is “prohibited by the Illinois Constitution,” the state’s Judicial Inquiry Board sought Tuesday to have Cook County Judge Jessica Arong O’Brien suspended without pay from her job.
She continues to be paid as a Cook County judge but does no judicial work, records show.
He’s keeping it, every penny! That’s the response—the cleaned-up response—from Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s campaign to calls for him to return the $50,000 campaign contribution he received from tech exec Elon Musk three years ago now that Musk’s Boring Company has been selected for the high-profile but somewhat controversial task of creating 12-minute express transit service between the Loop and O’Hare International Airport.
Comment: It’s not just Chicago taxpayers. All US taxpayers will be paying much of this because up to 70% of the state money is to be reimbursed by the federal government. The First Amendment issue is enormous. This article is a republication of our Wirepoints story.
Rising home values are nudging more Chicago-area homeowners to tap the equity in their homes via lines of credit. In the first quarter of 2018, about 22 percent of home loans in the Chicago area were home equity lines of credit, according to Attom Data Solutions, a property information firm based in Irvine, Calif. That is, more than one of every five home loans issued was a home equity line. It was the first time the figure was over 20 percent since the last quarter of 2008.
A republication of our Wirepoints story. We corrected their headline. It’s not just Chicago taxpayers paying that amount, it’s Illinois’ and the rest of the nation’s.
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