-- Connecting the dots between our economy, government and business --
The Illinois Chapter of the Sierra Club and Friends of the Chicago River have provided notice that they intend to sue Chicago Trump International Hotel & Tower.
The Trump administration is asking the Supreme Court to let it enforce new conditions on grant funding for every “sanctuary city” except Chicago.
The Supreme Court is resolving partisan redistricting cases from Wisconsin and Maryland without ruling on the broader issue of whether electoral maps can give an unfair advantage to a political party.
The justices unanimously ruled against Wisconsin Democrats who challenged legislative districts that gave Republicans a huge edge in the state legislature. In a separate unsigned opinion, they also did not side with Maryland Republicans who objected to a single congressional district.
Independent pharmacies were unable to win protections in the recently adjourned legislative session against what they see as predatory business practices and misuse of state dollars in the state’s Medicaid managed-care program, HealthChoice Illinois.
The center will be known forever as Obamaland, a monument to little more than misuse of government power, hubris and Chicago machine control over Illinois government.
Concern that future changes to Illinois’ pension payment intercept law could interfere with a settlement remains a sticking point in negotiations among the city of Harvey, its public safety pension funds, and revenue bondholders.
The Windy City’s most powerful ward boss is in trouble for the first time thanks to his suddenly awkward business deal with the president—and the rise of a new brand of ethnic politics.
About 15,000 union members are eligible for the step increases, which are automatic raises workers receive sometime during the first decade of their careers.
As part of an effort to curtail the number of Illinois high school students leaving the state for college, the Illinois general assembly passed the AIM HIGH Grant Pilot Program, which will provide $25 million in merit-based aid to be matched by Illinois public universities.
Sales of foreclosures and short-sale homes have shrunk to a smaller piece of the Chicago-area real estate market than they’ve been at any time since the housing crisis began.
Presented without comment.
By Wirepoints’ Mark Glennon. The story has worsened since this was written. See our update linked here.
Comment: Only politicians are claiming this budget is balanced. You’d think they’d notice that nobody believes them.
Chicago Teachers Union is really no different than the evil corporations they deride (and expect to pay an employee head tax). They create shell companies to seemingly flout legal contributions limits. They use political allies and low income neighborhood groups as intermediaries to move their money around and obscure the extent of their involvement. So much effort to wash so much money clean, you’d think the CTU was unionizing laundromat operators. All this for a seat at the middle management table of middle management government.
Illinois’ relative business tax climate is continuing a fairly steep decline, even before the impact of last year’s income-tax hike is included, according to a study released today by an economic research consultancy. According to a report by Anderson Economic Group, the relative total state-and-local tax burden for a company doing business in Illinois slipped from 32nd to 35th in the latest annual ranking. And it’s down from 25th four years ago, moving the state from about in the middle to among the higher-taxation states. Notably the study is based on data from fiscal 2016, so
Nonfarm payrolls increased by +8,600 jobs over-the-month, based on preliminary data provided by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and released by IDES. The April job gain was revised down slightly from its initial report to show a smaller gain. (+2,500 jobs versus +4,700 jobs).
“Built to fail.”
Comment: The headline should by “Why politicians shouldn’t be running retirement plans.” In explaining why the city should issue a huge new general obligation bond to fund pensions, Councilman Joe Scarbeary, also an active member of the Streator Fire Department, said Berwyn’s mayor told him, “If you’re not doing it, you’re crazy. It’s free money.”
Since the Illinois comptroller has concluded that IMRF, too, has the right to intercept state money, hundreds of Illinois muncipalities may have some of that money seized.
With about a quarter of a billion dollars on the line in what the county calls a “test case” that could affect cities and counties across Illinois, Cook County has squared off in court against a coalition of trade groups representing road builders, as the two sides have asked a judge to decide whether a new Illinois state constitutional amendment negates the county’s authority to decide how to apportion its transportation tax dollars.
Yawn. Another day in Illinois news. Thorpe was accused of stealing more than $315,000 from the city of Ziegler.
A state this broke has nothing to lose. Movie rights to “The Blago Story,” naming rights for the Statehouse and maybe a few Powerball tickets.
WGN Investigates traveled to Nashville, Tennessee to catch up with Chicagoans who made the move for financial reasons. How did they know it made sense? Do they have any regrets?
Comment: Wouldn’t it be fun to write the specs for that job?
They do it to spike up pensions. The big raises are given in the final three years. Spiking, in other words, is more important to them than the penalty.
Comment: Jim Dey is among the very few Illinois journalists who has show an understanding of the depth of our problems, so it’s no surprise he’s on this topic.
Ambitious people still flock to Chicago. Between 2010 and 2016, Chicago added more people in a key demographic category than any U.S. city except New York. The number of Chicago households that have more than $100,000 annual income and are headed by a person under age 45 grew by 26,000, outpacing such economic meccas as Denver, Houston and San Francisco.
IMRF. We will be writing about the implications of this shortly.
Instead of directing their concern at the person who actually oversees CPS, U.S. Sens. Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth sent letters to U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and Illinois schools Superintendent Tony Smith expressing their alarm and requesting more data collection at federal and state levels. By threading the needle carefully, they honed in on narrow aspects of the Tribune’s investigation that touched on state and federal data collection and transparency, not CPS’ failures.
-0.9% over the past year.
The shame. The shame.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel wants to turn the screws a bit more on people who rent homes or rooms through Airbnb and other online platforms, calling for a new 2 percent fee to go toward adding shelter beds for domestic abuse victims.
The board unanimously passed a resolution Tuesday calling for the state of Wisconsin to reconsider the waiving of environmental regulations when providing various incentives for the Taiwan-based maker of liquid-crystal displays, such as those used in some flat-screen TVs, as well as other electronics.
“[State government is] handing out the perks and getting all the stardom with police officers and firefighters unions, but then they hand the dinner check to us,” said the mayor.
Riverdale, Illinois is in line to sell off its share of state income tax coming from the state of Illinois as part of an upcoming $10 million bond offering. It’s the third Illinois municipality to use the new authority given by the state last year to sell its ownership in future tax revenue to a separate entity, which will hold that money to ensure repayment of the bonds. The new structure is carefully designed to ensure that, even in bankruptcy, the bank — bondholders — gets paid no matter what the consequences. We’ve written often here criticizing this new structure.
See our Quicktake on this sale of body parts linked here.
OK, who’s the joker who had some fun making this video out of our article? Either a machine or Russians with bad English.
Illinois employers could soon get real-time notifications about fingerprinted employees who get in trouble with the law anywhere in the United States, eliminating the need for repeated background checks and raising concerns from some about accuracy and privacy.
Two new reports on home equity reveal that a number of Illinoisans, like Anderson and Percy, may be chained to to the state by a mortgage larger than their home is worth.
“While I have serious concerns about President Trump’s approach to trade talks with Canada, Prime Minister Trudeau has placed our trade relationship with Canada at risk by publicly feuding with President Trump on the world stage,” Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi said in a statement.
An armed security guard associated with staunch anti-gun and nationally known social activist, Father Michael Pfleger, was arrested on May 27 outside St. Sabina’s Roman Catholic Church on the South Side where Pfleger is a senior pastor.
A bill heading to the governor’s desk would regulate personal vehicle renters and require them to pay the same taxes as established companies like Enterprise and National. Greg Scott with the American Car Rental Association said regulations make sense.
Comment: “CPS and City Hall “deserve credit for getting more money out of Springfield, and for getting a property tax increase without having to go to the City Council,” says Civic Federation President Laurence Msall. “But that doesn’t mean it’s enough to stabilize the pension fund.” Those things deserve “credit”?
For those unfamiliar with the concept, here is the basic background on bankruptcy-for-states.
Memo to Guv: Fire whoever wrote this and everybody responsible for your awful communications.
Comment: It’s a trend making a bad industry worse. They are already hopelessly compromised because they are selected and paid by the same unit of government they are supposed to be effectively rating.
State borrowing to finance employee pension buyouts will only fuel equity bull market, an analyst says.
Nice summary of recent financial news, but note to Bond Buyer’s Yvette Shields: The Obama Center is not his presidential library.
Comment: If you don’t know why the sky is indeed falling, you haven’t been reading Wirepoints.
“At least the lies are bipartisan this time,” Municipal Market Analytics wrote in its weekly market commentary.
The city of Chicago is sending out staffers into various communities to get municipal ID cards into the hands of undocumented immigrants, homeless people, senior citizens and others who often find it difficult obtaining a valid form of identification.
See our Quicktake on this linked here.
And the state has to borrow $1 billion to do it.
Comment: True, but taxes and things like corruption, greed, incompetent government and not getting a fair return on tax dollars aren’t just “scapegoats” as this article says.
Another profile of Dick and Liz Uihlein.
Enough. When will Democratic members — especially those who make a public show of their opposition to harassment — grow a spine? They’re all about #MeToo when it’s trendy. Just not when it actually matters.
Illinois’ fiscal year 2019 spending plan includes reforms to discourage some irresponsible spending by local governments.
Comment: This scandal, detailed by the Chicago Tribune earlier this week, should be getting national headlines but is being ignored.
How much distortion, blather and pure dishonesty can somebody cram into a ten minute interview on the state budget and pensions? An astonishing amount if it’s Illinois Senate President John Cullerton.
From an actuary, Mary Pat Campbell: “Shamtacular, one may say. And the shammiest of shamtaculars is what happened with pensions.
Central Falls, Rhode Island, filed for bankruptcy largely because of pension debt. If Illinois municipalities can’t meet or lower their pension obligations, they too could face fiscal collapse.
Chicago’s South Side will see $132 million in federal funding to separate rail lines in an effort to alleviate train congestion in the area.
Two Illinois nuclear plants are at risk of closing well before their useful lives are over. If you think you’ve heard that one before, it’s because you have. Exelon lobbied successfully in 2016 for $2.4 billion in state-ordered subsidies over a decade to keep open the company’s Clinton and Quad Cities nuclear stations.
“Children were raped and otherwise abused. Like the church, the school system seemed more concerned about protecting itself than putting the kids first. Otherwise, CPS wouldn’t have waited years to act, until the Tribune was about to publish its investigation.”
Comment: Won’t happen, but you can understand their contempt.
“At least the lies are bipartisan this time,” Municipal Market Analytics wrote in its weekly market commentary.
An investor group’s deal to buy former Tronc Chairman Michael Ferro’s entire stake in the newspaper chain has fallen through.
In April, Ferro struck the deal to sell his 25.6 percent stake in Tronc — which owns the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times and other newspapers — for $208.6 million to McCormick Media. Ferro owned the shares personally and through his Merrick Media and Merrick Venture Management entities.
Representatives Robin Kelly, Jan Schakowsky, Bobby Rush, and Danny Davis suggested the NFL is violating the players’ right to speak out on issues of racial injustice and police brutality.
Tech company with 25 employees expanding to 75.
“On hot mic, @GovRauner asks House GOP leader Jim Durkin (R-Western Springs) why he didn’t carry the stack of budget docs out for him to sign. Durkin jokes that he didn’t know if that’d be a “perp walk.” They know. They all know. Republicans and Democrats alike.
And Pritzker now says he will double whatever Rauner puts in.
Comment: Kumbaya all around on another no-reforms, SOP budget.
Comment: Jim Durkin has lost it. He says, “A lot of this was driven by the rank-and-file members who have grown frustrated — who’ve grown frustrated with the process or their lack of input or just maybe the personalities (that) got into the way of crafting a budget,” and this is a new era of weakening power of legislative leaders. In fact, rank and file had only hours to consider the 1,200 page budget. They voted for it blindly.
The problem is increasing. In 2000 about one in six Illinois students attended college outside of the state, but by 2016 that doubled to one in three students.
https://www.ilnews.org/news/state_politics/public-finance-watchdogs-proposed-budget-sets-illinois-up-to-fail/article_0095b2a8-65c9-11e8-b029-eb87f464250e.html#utm_campaign=blox&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social
A republication of our Wirepoints article.
If a satirical comedy is ever made about Illinois politics, we envision a scene in which hapless lawmakers stun themselves by actually passing an on-time budget: “I can go back to my district and I can say that we have done our job for the first time in many years,” one member marvels. Comment: That was Jim Durkin, House leader of the party supposedly representing fiscal sanity.
Democratic governor nominee J.B. Pritzker continued his record self-funding of his campaign, crossing the $100 million dollar mark with a $25 million contribution.
Comment: At least they’re beginning to deal with it instead of gloating about a phony “balanced” budget.
Illinois may soon guarantee teachers earn at least $40,000 a year, potentially drawing teachers away from Iowa.
That’s above the $33,500 minimum salary that Iowa teachers now earn.
Peoria is behind on first-quarter financial projections and struggling to cover a $5.5 million shortfall in last year’s budget.
“The reality is not good,” he said. “Revenues are not coming in as anticipated, plus you have the state holding back (sales tax) revenue.”
U.S. Rep. Randy Hultgren said he’s concerned about Wisconsin’s effect on northern Illinois’ businesses and employees.
In Kankakee, this year’s property tax bill is 5.9 percent of a home’s value, which is the effective property tax rate. The second highest among Kankakee County’s municipalities is Hopkins Park, which is 4 percent. Comment: Rates that high are unquestionably suicidal and fuel a death sprial. A rollback, not a property tax freeze, is essential.
Education Bills — And $350M More For Illinois Schools — Advance To Rauner’s Desk.
The question is whether the pension board, which includes three active and retired firefighters, allowed emotion to drive its decision. By declaring Hauber’s demise from cancer a line-of-duty death, the board risks setting a precedent for municipalities
WASHINGTON – The most recent obstacle to the summit between President Donald Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un in Singapore has been removed. As initially reported in Washington Post last week, cash-strapped North Korea expected difficulty paying for Un’s hotel during the summit, and the United States had been looking looking for a discreet way to cover the bill while saving face for Un. State Department officials, mindful of North Korean pridefulness, worked days to find funding safe from public scrutiny. “We needed a dark, dark source,” according to a department spokesman, and the president personally intervened with very
Comment: Note that the buyout, which produces the supposed savings, has to be funded by borrowing $1 billion through a bond sale. The savings are counted in the budget but the borrowing is not! What a farce.
http://illinoisreview.typepad.com/illinoisreview/2018/06/pelosi-in-chicago-to-raise-funds-for-democrat-contenders.html#more
Utterly appalling. Read every word of this.
More than a third of Chicago-area homeowners with a mortgage have so little equity in their homes that it won’t cover the cost of buying their next home. In some parts of the city’s South and West sides and south suburbs, the percentage increases to more than 50 percent.
At the end of 2017, a little more than 34 percent of Chicago-area homeowners with a mortgage either had negative equity, meaning they owed more than the house was worth, or were in the “effective negative equity” range, which means they have a thin slice of equity in the
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.
A day of phone calls by Barack Obama to his Hollywood buddies. That’s probably all it would have taken.
The narrative itself is the lie, keeping voters in the dark.
We warned you about this when the bill was introduced, calling it “dog chasing tail,” but “shell game” works, too. However, we haven’t had a chance to review the details of changes the legislature has made, and will do so soon.
Comment: This needs a thorough review by an honest actuary, so we are unable to comment on it yet. However, actuaries we’ve spoken to before were, in general, very negative on buyouts as a method of pension reform. That’s primarily because of adverse selection issues — very sick individuals tend to take the buyout, which distorts the assumptions in the remaining pool.
“You can actually see the financial consequences that have to be borne by local citizens as a result of newspaper closures.”
Chicago hired three clout-heavy companies in 2010, the waning days of Mayor Richard M. Daley’s administration, to operate city-owned waste-transfer facilities, a way station for recyclables and trash.
The competitively bid deal — which, according to city officials, was awarded to companies with the best, though not necessarily the least-expensive, proposals — was supposed to be for three years and cost taxpayers no more than $79.4 million.
Eight years later, after Daley successor Mayor Rahm Emanuel has repeatedly extended the contracts without seeking competitive bids from other companies, the cost to taxpayers has ballooned by $65 million.
Comment: And another squandered messaging opportunity in this lame press release.
Comment: Lou Lang? Nah, can’t be. Just yesterday he was so giddy about passage of the ERA in Illinois, which he sponsored.
Comment: Over a thousand pages presented to those who voted only hours ago. It will take days if not months to uncover all the that’s hidden, but we know this: No structural reforms are in it or accompanied it of any significance.
Comment: That headline should be “General Assembly passes another unfunded mandate for locals.” Senate has approved it to, so it goes to Rauner now.
Even as the Illinois General Assembly puts the final touches on what would be the state’s first truly bipartisan annual budget in years, a major bond-rating agency is strongly suggesting the roughly $38.5 billion spending plan is inadequate and leaves the state an “an inflection point,” in which fixed costs could become “extremely difficult to manage.”
Between 2010 and 2016, the city of Chicago gained more households in a key category—total income of more than $100,000 with the head of household under age 45—than any city in the country except for far larger New York, according to newly analyzed U.S. Census Bureau data.
Northwest Suburban High School District 214’s spending was the highest among 93 suburban schools that combined paid more than $2.2 million to the Illinois Association of School Boards, Illinois Association of School Administrators, Illinois Principals Association and Illinois Association of School Business Officials.
Yes, teen labor force participation has fallen by 16 percentage points since 1990. Over the same period, though, employment rates of older workers and noncitizens without a high school degree also decreased. This is true not only in Illinois, but across the nation. These facts indicate that competition from older workers or low-skilled immigrant workers cannot fully explain declining teen employment.
In the first of two actions, the White House announced that Trump has decided to impose tariffs on $50 billion worth of Chinese imports. Tariffs could drive up the cost of up to 836 cars that are to be assembled at a factory at 135th and Torrence because some of the material and parts for the trains will be imported from China.
The other development came late last week when the House Appropriations Committee voted to include in a transportation funding bill a ban on purchasing rail cars from entities owned, directed or operated by China.
“Why are Illinois taxes so high? How about addressing that problem instead of reaching for the deduction Band-Aid?”
Details and a budget vote could be today.
Is precedent being set to force a race to intercept? And a “credit negative” warning for all Illinois towns and cities.
More on the census data released last week.
“Progress Chicago.” Yeah, right.
Disgraced former Chicago Public Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett, now in prison for a kickback scheme involving millions of dollars in school contracts, accepted lavish meals at some of the city’s priciest restaurants from a CPS vendor whose investors included Deborah Quazzo, who at the time was a Mayor Rahm Emanuel appointee to the Chicago Board of Education.
Comment: From the central planning and industrial policy fans on the Crain’s editorial board.
Comment: Important as these three things are, you’d think maybe Illinois’ imminent collapse would have been listed first.
“Unleash those troops not to instill fear, but as the insignia of urban civility and order. Do it not just to save black and Hispanic lives. Do it because it is the moral thing to do. All lives matter. You are in a position to save them.”
By RTA Chairman Kirk Dillard.
Good breakdown in the local numbers and comparisons from the most recent census data.
“There’s not one manufacturing plant in Wisconsin, not one dairy farm, not one resort that can hire enough people,” said Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
A court-appointed administrator on Monday began sending emails to users who resided in Illinois for at least 60 consecutive days between June 7, 2011, and mid-April of this year, explaining that they could be parties to a class-action lawsuit
Comment: Yes, like, say $14 billion worth. That was the actual loss in the general fund as reported in the most recent financial statement.
And why that’s important — to Kankakee and some other cities losing population.
We’re middling.
While the Land of Lincoln continues to lose people on its side of the Mississippi River in the region, the Iowa side of the border has been growing.
While [Chicago’s] disrespect for the Constitution was egregious enough, [its] further abuse of the judicial process is causing even more widespread harm.
The nationwide injunction issued by federal courts means that hundreds of millions of grant dollars are being withheld from law enforcement agencies which comply willingly with immigration laws. Because of its nationwide scope, the injunction purports to settle the law for the entire United States. This aggrandizement of power deprives other courts the opportunity to decide the issue for themselves
It’s due to a rating criteria change and not a change in circumstances, but the result is a five-notch downgrade.
It’s not like we’re short of money or anything. $63 million for 24,000 employees.
By the end of June, the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule on Janus v. AFSCME Council 31, a case that indirectly takes up the future of public unions in Illinois. Will the court effectively clip the wings of labor power, or will it protect the unions’ financial clout? That question only begins to address the stakes.
The lawsuit appears viable, thanks to the state’s own admissions, but there’s no way to pay it.
Although federal law restricts the cultivation of hemp for commercial use, the U.S. imports an estimated $300 million in hemp products and materials each year, according to the National Hemp Association. The market for hemp is projected to grow over the next few years, breaking $2 billion by 2020, with high demand for hemp from farmers, brewers, processors and even clothing designers.
“We avoid rather than confront, accept rather than change. We won’t see another 200 years if this continues.”
Well, at least we don’t have this.
Comment: Having long ignored state pension and fiscal issues, FT now decides they are a systemic risk. “Insolvency of any of the US states could hit federal stability.”
Dick Uihlein.
Yeah! Small, but we’ll take it.
A tax on retirement income and an expanded sales tax.
Greg Hinz: “Sources in both parties and both chambers, and a source close to Rauner, all tell me the same thing: Real progress has been made by negotiators from the four caucuses, known as ‘budgeteers.’ That progress has been affirmed by relatively tranquil if incomplete negotiations between the four legislative leaders and Rauner.”
Chicago’s new fiscal impact requirement can help rationalize significant future financial decisions for the city of Chicago. However, the process has the potential for being a tool of deception, and it will require critical and external independent scrutiny in the years ahead.
The full complaint in this lawsuit demanding an immediate $7.2 billion is linked in the article. See our own article on this linked here.
Some Illinois towns could lose broad home rule taxing authority as the state’s population continues to decline, a possibility that could ease local taxes and further squeeze municipal budgets.
U.S. Census numbers released Thursday show the population of Freeport, Collinsville and Harvey fell below 25,000. That’s the threshold for automatic home-rule status.
It was a raucous scene at Chicago’s City Council Wednesday, when aldermen greenlighted plans for the Obama Presidential Center on the South Side but delayed a vote on almost everything else on their agenda before abruptly ending their monthly meeting.
Rush Limbaugh has an article posted today saying the Federal Reserve in Chicago is instituting that new statewide property tax. Uh-uh.
“The message is very clear. Speak out against the Speaker and people loyal to him will come after you.”
Ten Cook County towns and a central Illinois city are suing pharmaceutical companies and a trio of suburban doctors, claiming they contributed to the opioid epidemic that has claimed local lives and drained government coffers.
The suit, filed Wednesday morning in Cook County Circuit Court, is similar to those brought earlier by Chicago, Cook County and the collar counties.
Harvey, Illinois, revenue bondholders won a partial victory this week when the state comptroller concluded they will continue to get first crack on local home rule sales tax collections.
But the comptroller’s ruling sets a precedent that is worrisome for many other local bondholders around the state who fear they will fall behind pension funds in competition for a limited pot of revenue.”
Holders of the Harvey’s $6 million Hotel-Motel Sales Tax Revenue Bonds issued in 2008 will continue to receive the city’s home rule taxes collected on its behalf by the state — likely enough to cover debt service.
Twenty-two school districts filed a lawsuit against the State of Illinois. They want $7.2 billion and they want it now.
When a new employee is fingerprinted for a job in Illinois, the employer receives a snapshot of their criminal record, and they receive notifications for any future run-ins with the law in the state. But lawmakers are considering a proposal that would also allow employers to be notified of convictions that happen across state lines.
Under the new version, instead of paying taxes and losing some deductions as per the law enacted by the GOP Congress and President Donald Trump, taxpayers would be allowed to donate to “charitable funds” set up to benefit state and local school districts and municipalities. Donors would get a tax credit worth 90 percent of the donation that would be used to offset their state income or local property tax liability, and because federal law does not limit charitable deductions, the donation would be fully deductible, not capped at $10,000.
At least 72 hours prior to a City Council vote, they’ll have their own “fiscal impact statement” that outlines in advance the “immediate impact,” the impact on the “reasonably foreseeable” future, and the “long-range” effect on city finances.
We’ve got Stage 4 apathy disease in Illinois.
A recent audit of the Cook County Health and Hospitals System and its billing practices found that poorly trained employees and paperwork errors caused the system to lose at least $165 million in potential revenue over a three-year period. That’s a lot of dough. But you wouldn’t know it by the collective shoulder shrug from Cook County officials and taxpayers.
Comment: No surprise, actually. See our Quicktake linked here on how the state set itself up for this.
I hate to say I told you so but, no, wait. Who am I kidding?
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It was bought back in 2011 for only $33 million.
Across Lake View Township, whose boundaries encompass more than just the neighborhood called Lakeview, the median assessment rose by more than 31 percent for houses, townhouses and rental buildings with six units or fewer. For condos, the increase was just under 29 percent. The increases are smaller in Rogers Park: 18.2 percent for houses and others, and 20 percent for condos.
Years after the Great Recession ended, total real estate values in Cook County are still lagging, down more than $100 billion from their prior peak, according to a report being released today by the Civic Federation. Their report is linked here.
Pritzker and Madigan must get specific. How much and who pays?
Comment: A skirmish in the coming war: bondholders versus pensions versus taxpayers versus service recipients.
Add it to the stuff-that-doesn’t-work list.
Comment: We’ve been using 206 data published by CoreLogic’s data that show IL is highest at 2.67%, but really not much of a difference. ATTOM apparently gets its data from CoreLogic.
The willful negligence of floating past the most serious challenges facing Illinois is repeating itself. No one should be surprised. The Illinois legislature is an avoidance expert. Fed-up residents respond by fleeing the state in alarming droves. State universities struggle to attract and keep students. Property taxes remain among the highest in the country.
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The action-packed hearing featured dueling protests and seven hours of public testimony
Illinois had the lowest growth in the region.
Joseph Coli’s Chicago firm, Illinois Advocates LLC, was paid more than $300,000 by two Teamsters Local 710 funds during the three years his now-indicted father was the labor group’s appointed trustee, U.S. Labor Department records show.
No longer are McMansions, white picket fences and sprawling square footage topping suburban buyers’ most-wanted list. Instead, proximity to a suburb’s downtown and easy access to restaurants, schools and parks are priorities. For many, walkable suburbs reign supreme.
As people drive more fuel efficient vehicles, they aren’t pumping as many gallons, which means fewer dollars for local governments.
Comment: Union work rules first, public safety second.
Illinois Families Targeted by Out Of State Patient Brokers
Parasites aren’t the ones fleeing.
Thank the authors of the study. They helped prove the case that the establishment that wrecked us can’t fix us and that our problems are colossal.
Once Carson’s department stores and other Bon-Ton Stores-owned entities in Illinois liquidate by the end of summer, some 3,514 associates will be out of work. That number does not include at least 330 other jobs that were shed earlier this winter, when Bon-Ton Stores closed seven locations in Illinois months before declaring bankruptcy.
Comment: Thanks in large part to the bailout by state taxpayers.
Comment: This is a dangers bill that will terrify employers. State Sen. Kwame Raoul’s bill would greatly expand the Attorney General’s ability to go after businesses for potentially breaking labor laws, a duty of Rauner’s Department of Labor. Rauner vetoed the bill because he said it would “inappropriately create opportunities for conflict and competition.”
And taxpayers are forced to fund the group promoting the bill, according to this article!
See our Quicktake linked here on the dishonesty in this article.
Shameless dishonesty.
Author Joe Cahill wants both deletion of pension protection and authorization for a progressive income tax.
Like we wrote before, it’s happening in Illinois. Many places on many fronts. This is just a small one.
Rauner’s director of the Governor’s Office of Management and Budget Hans Zigmund told a Senate Appropriations committee Wednesday that the governor’s proposed budget for the coming fiscal year has a 10 percent reduction in the Local Government Distributive Fund, or LGDF, something that would save the state $131 million.
Comment: This really doesn’t matter. What’s done is done. The focus should be on what to do now.
Comment: This is a detailed article on why the idea will fail as a legal matter. We’ve been telling you that for years, repeatedly.
Circuit Judge Kathleen Pantle agreed with the Chicago Tribune that Emanuel and his office violated the state’s open records act by belatedly releasing the emails, handing the newspaper a victory in its ongoing court battle over the mayor’s use of personal devices and accounts to conduct the public’s business.
In addition, the judge opened the door to having Emanuel testify about whether he and his office failed to preserve texts and emails on his personal phones and accounts in violation of another state law relating to the preservation of government records.
“Widespread issues in the system’s bureaucracy — from mistakes during patient scheduling and registration to billing lapses.”
“We see some potential for broad use of the intercept mechanism given chronic underfunding among a substantial share of the state’s approximately 656 suburban and downstate public-safety pension plans,” the report states. “Should use of the intercept law become commonplace, it could cause significant credit pressures across a sector that has already struggled to effectively deal with rising pension costs.”
The 2011 law, which directs the state to seize income tax, sales tax and other money that should go to a municipality and redirect it to pensions.
A radio interview on this with Sheilah Weinberg, President of Truth in Accounting, linked here.
A bit of history to keep in mind when you see former Governor Jim Edgar pontificating about our fiscal and pension problems.
Nice to have a budget surplus to distribute, eh?
“When the mostly sleep-walking citizenry begins howling in great numbers, the well-pensioned politicians will bring out the WMD they carefully hid in the 1970 constitution and fire a salvo of the rule of law into the taxpayers. The well-pensioned judges will enforce the strike, and any unruly protests by survivors will be squelched by the remaining well-pensioned police. The conflict of interests apparent in this Third World arrangement are blinding, but they will be ignored.”
Did Hillary give him that line?
The group claims the developers of the center have pulled a “bait and switch,” saying the center will not be a true presidential library because it will not hold the archive of President Barack Obama.
The United State’s Supreme Court on Monday opened the door for legal sports betting in the states when it struck down a 1992 law that banned sports books pretty much anywhere outside of Nevada.
By Wirepoints’ Mark Glennon.
Comment: Inexcusable. Reporters must force him to say what he stands for. How much revenue does HE think needs to be raised and how? What will he negotiate for?
SB 2838, as it has been amended, now provides that recruiting firms cannot be used to hire substitute teachers during a teacher strike. If the school doesn’t have enough teachers to continue educating students during a strike – tough luck.
In other words, a pro-student bill was converted into a pro-union bill that hinders educational opportunities for students during teacher strikes.
“The Russians attacked Illinois, and now authorities vow to protect the state.”
To you who think the establishment narrative about Illinois and its crisis is flawed, we have some good news. Our alternative viewpoint is being heard. Just in the last couple days, over 700,000 readers have clicked to our articles here and on sites that republish us. More importantly, we’re getting our work picked up more and more by the regular media. That’s why we’re here — we want to be a source for facts and numbers that aren’t getting reported or reflected in policy. We’re always happy to share our research and commentary with politicians, reporters and editorialists, whether they’re
Chicago’s parking meter system raked in $134.2 million last year, putting private investors on pace to recoup their entire $1.16 billion investment by 2021 with 62 years to go in the lease, the latest annual audit shows. Four underground, city-owned parking garages took in $34 million in 2017, while the privatized Chicago Skyway generated $99.9 million in cash, separate audits of those assets show.
Not a penny of those revenues, once a mainstay for city government, went to ease the avalanche of tax increases imposed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel to solve
Since January 2016, Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan’s political campaign has spent more than $700,000 to purchase tickets to Chicago Cubs, White Sox and Bulls games.
Our own story on this is linked here. And check out the survey Crain’s has on whether you’d like to pay this tax. Thrilled, no doubt.
They’ve hired 25 recruiters in Chicago who are poised to add hundreds of employees in the Windy City.
A study by a psych prof may not provide the best answers on this, but judge for yourself.
“Why not simply tax the rich, redistribute their wealth to everyone else, and eliminate many of the unsexy economic obstacles to sexual flourishing?”
Read the comments. Even in far left Oak Park, people are close to grabbing the pitchforks.
Colleagues call him a true progressive in the Bernie Sanders style.
Wirepoints research cited in this article. The various pieces of research we have done on this are linked here.
Thanks the Tribune for referencing Wirepoints‘ research. And the Tribune is right: “These communities and others need to recognize they simply won’t survive without bold reform. Change or die.”
200 jobs.
Comment: Another unfunded mandate from Springfield for municipalities. They just don’t get it.
The future of Illinois higher education, particularly at its public universities, is at stake as the state grapples with how to hang on to homegrown students and attract more from other states to bolster income at a time when the U.S. population of high school graduates is contracting.
“There is nothing on the state Legislature’s agenda that demonstrates top state officials have any interest in taking action.”
Sure we’re corrupt and broke, but at least we’re having a blast. In your face, Wisconsin, Indiana and all the rest of you neighbors.
Comment: Of course it’s not the ultimate solution, but it should be done. It will help.
While 2017 was a strong year for Midwestern startup exits in general, a deeper analysis demonstrates that Chicago in particular is among the nation’s leading cities for top exits and IPOs over the past five years. This indicates the city has evolved and is now presenting a recurring pattern of startup successes that drive attractive venture returns.
A republication of our Wirepoints story. 880K pageviews and counting
Redistricting reform may be popular with the public, but the two politicians who most control the Illinois Legislature—House Speaker Michael Madigan and Senate President John Cullerton—never let the referendum proposal come to a vote.
Over a million readers have now clicked on this story here and in various republications across the country.
https://www.spreaker.com/user/9809126/mark-glennon
All told, a third of the nation’s major metropolitan areas are now losing more white-collar jobs than blue-collar ones.
The finances of governments in Illinois — from the state down to local governments — are a disaster. No government leader I’ve ever spoken with has a clue how big the bill for routine maintenance actually is. And these people are not clueless as in dumb; they are clueless as in they really don’t know. Nobody is accurately tracking this stuff.
Comment: Most annoying thing in the world. And State Sen. Napoleon Harris, D-Harvey, said “I drive in the left-hand lane all the way here.” But Wisconsin drivers are the worst on this. Camp in the woods, not in the left lane!
https://prairiestatewire.com/stories/511411896-ives-foretells-bleak-bankruptcy-future-for-illinois-municipalities
“having difficulties with making fuel purchases at the current time.”
Comment: What tripe. History will ridicule him. Daley, more than anybody, broke Chicago.
Comment: This is about consolidating the 600-plus local police and fire pensions in Illinois. That’s definitely a good idea as long as it’s administrative consolidation and does not mix liabilities among funds.
“Now that Madigan’s got his own billionaire, he’s going to ensure the system stays intact….”
“In 2015, my first year as an Illinois representative, I repeatedly stood up and asked Majority Leader Barbara Flynn Currie why we don’t first determine how much taxpayer money we have to spend before we start spending it. My questions were brushed aside with flippant answers along the lines of ‘We’ll do that when we actually do a budget.'”
Judges are demanding that lawyers tell their clients that their other debts might not get paid, but their lawyers will.
Comment: The biggest job engine for Norther Illinoisans in memory getting sued over ozone.
Even as the state is set to pay $8.5 billion to the five retirement systems in 2019, it’s still not enough. Unfunded liabilities keep growing. And the 2019 contribution is more than three times the state’s payment a decade earlier: Illinois paid $2.8 billion to pensions in 2009. By 2045, the projected contribution will be $19.6 billion, according to a March report, based on actuarial valuations.
“Well, here’s the new/old news — Illinois is still rated by Chief Executive magazine as almost the worst state in the nation to do business.”
Comment: After all, who could be more qualified to dictate a down-to-the-minute mandate than the Illinois General Assembly?
lllinois’ 3 million Medicaid users will soon have more access to mental health and substance abuse treatments.
Officials in Washington, D.C. ok’d a new state program that sets aside about $2 billion in Medicaid funds for the services.
Apologies for a link to an old story from 2013 accidentally posted re the GOP chairmanship, which we have removed.
“Just starting somebody at [$35,000] and then changing them to [$40,000] could mean a half a million dollars just in that one person’s pension,” Rooney, R-Palatine, said. “We can’t be working in that direction.”
Because the department of approximately 30 firefighters is unionized — a rarity for a part-time department, according to Fisher and Denson — its workers receive benefits and good salaries, which the mayor said has made sustaining it difficult.
“At this stage of the Amazon game, we shouldn’t be willing to accept runner-up status. Chicago should be in it to win it, and the prospect of that many jobs paying $100,000 or more—not to mention Amazon’s endorsement of Chicago as a great place to do business—is worth investment beyond the $2.25 billion incentive package that Emanuel, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle and Gov. Bruce Rauner have dangled before the Seattle tech colossus.”
The challenges come as Evanston deals with decreasing property tax revenue, increasing employee and pension costs, anticipated bond debt to pay for capital improvements around town and costs to rebuild the Robert Crown Community Center, among other factors, staff has said.
Comment: Big salute to former Rockford Mayor Larry Morrisey.
In 2012, the Emanuel administration awarded a contract to K-Five Construction Corp., the low bidder to do asphalt work at O’Hare and Midway airports that was supposed to cover three years and cost no more than $16.7 million. Nearly six years later, K-Five is still on the job. Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration has extended the contract five times and tacked on additional duties eight times — each time without requiring new competitive bidding to see whether someone else might do the same work at a lower cost. So far, the additional cost to the city agency is roughly $20 million.
Comment: Read the whole thing. This is sickening.
The practice is known as PIN slamming, and involves two Property Index Numbers to be linked to one home. It may not always be disclosed in closing documents.
“The concerns, however, are not unreasonable,” and many other communities are asking the question.
A bipartisan coalition of mayors from throughout suburban Chicago have kicked off a drive to prevent further cuts in state aid to their municipalities.
Uniting under the banner ProtectMyTown.us, the mayors—from groups in DuPage and Will counties, plus the western, southwestern and southern suburbs—have a website that encourages residents to email Rauner and their local lawmakers to oppose the cuts.
An upcoming U.S. Supreme Court decision could mark a new era of freedom for government workers in Illinois – and across the nation.
“Another day in the life of the poster city for one-party Democrat rule, where pensions eat up taxes and incompetence is rewarded.”
Pensions versus bondholders versus residents.
Columnist Mary Schmich: “Some of the sidewalks are nice too.” Sheesh.
Proponents of a higher graduated-rate income tax in Illinois have urged looking to neighboring states for ideas. This isn’t a bad idea. Just what are Illinois’ neighbors doing on taxes?
They’re taxing less, for starters. In Illinois, state and local taxes account for 9.3 percent of state income. The state and local taxes in Illinois’ six neighboring states account, in aggregate, for 8.0 percent of the income of those states.
As more retail chains shut down, cities across Illinois figure out what to do with millions of square feet of empty space.
“I am sick of this bullshit assertion that politics and high taxes are forcing people to leave Illinois for ‘better’ states,” wrote the executive director of SEIU on Facebook Monday.
“Just looking at the data”? OK, let’s.
A new report from the union-backed Center for Tax and Budget Accountability, or CTBA, is calling for Illinois to impose a progressive income tax. The center claims state lawmakers can have their cake and eat it too: a tax cut for a vast majority of residents, better economic growth and more revenue for the state. Those ideas have been echoed repeatedly by Democratic gubernatorial candidate J.B. Pritzker. But these claims are too good to be true, and rely on state lawmakers who have proven all too willing to squeeze taxpayers for revenue at every opportunity.
Our own article about this new report from Moody’s and the pension intercept is linked here.
“Rarely has a question so puny blocked the path toward fixing a problem so great. The Republicans who are asking the Democrats to produce the estimate are acting as if the budget process can’t get started until a highly hypothetical forecast comes in. They do so ignoring the fact that, forecast or not, the legislature blows its budget anyway.”
It’s usually a mistake to question House Speaker Michael Madigan’s political judgement, but that sure seems appropriate on this one. Below is a video Democrats are circulating to support a progressive income tax amendment. It uses the same theme as J.B. Pritzker, that “millionaires and billionaires” are the target. My sense is that most voters at each end of the spectrum have this one figured out. You see it in comments most everywhere from the left and right. They know it’s just another tax increase that will hasten the exodus from Illinois. They also know Pritzker and Madigan haven’t put
A good idea (for a change).
“Here’s Mendoza’s problem: Everything gets couched in those “blame Rauner” terms. That debt period is the governor’s tenure in Springfield.”
A Wirepoints reprint.
That’s the gloomy picture that emerges from data on 187 ZIP codes in the Chicago metropolitan area compiled by the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Home Price Indices exclusively for Crain’s. Of them, 23 had passed their previous peak by the end of 2017, and one, in Oak Park, finished 2017 with home values level with their old peak.
Comment: Kudos to Crain’s for publishing this author, Hillary Gowens. She’s superb.
“A progressive levy would essentially be a blank check, signed by the taxpayer and handed over to the state legislature—a dangerous proposition anywhere, but especially in a state in which three-quarters of residents say they don’t have confidence in the state government.”
Comment: We’re told effort now underway in the General Assembly to cut the Comptroller’s intercept authority to 1/4 of the required yearly pension payment.
A new analysis of Census Bureau data says Evanston ranks seventh of nearly 600 cities in the United States in the share of housing cost represented by property taxes.
Comment: Gutsy, Kristen McQueary, gutsy.
With this new delay, it will take the city as much time to build the flyover as it took to construct the Channel Tunnel, or the “Chunnel,” which is the underwater passageway connecting England and France. That project was hailed as one of the “Seven Wonders of the Modern World” by the American Society of Civil Engineers.
See our Quicktake on this linked here.
I’m trying hard to swear less about our lawmakers in action but, man, it’s hard.
A reminder how badly out of sync we have fallen.
“It’s all driven by political survival and political expediency, so there is no long-term planning. There’s no attempt to really make decisions that put you at risk, because everything is subordinated to the political process, and everything is subordinated to the political objective, which is to maintain survival.”
Illinois’ metro areas shed 3,600 jobs in March
“If there ever was a wake-up call of how deep we are in the abyss, this is it.“
The financial crisis for owners of independent and small-chain pharmacies has accelerated since the April 1 expansion of the state’s Medicaid managed-care program to all 102 Illinois counties, according to the Illinois Pharmacists Association.
We’ll have our analysis of it soon.
Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner abolished 19 state boards this month. Nearly half of them had never even met.
Comment: Like having your car seized when you’ve done nothing wrong. “The Chicago Police Department does this because the city has big budget problems and has turned to fees, fines and auto sales to make ends meet.” See our own article about that linked here.
Comment: The study is by the union-backed CTBA. Wirepoints will review it and comment on it soon.
Citing Wirepoints’ Ted Dabrowski.
Those who can least afford it are getting hammered to pay up for a broke city.
The lack of access is more painful in light of the populist rationale behind former Mayor Richard M. Daley’s infamous 2003
A reprint of our Wirepoints story.
After a years-long stretch in which the city’s economy substantially outpaced that of the state, Illinois’ economic malaise appears to have spread inside the Chicago city limits. New data indicate employment growth in the city has flatlined, with only 510 more private-sector jobs in the city than in the same period a year ago and the
“This month we’ve been publishing stories of Illinois residents who left the state in their rearview mirrors…. The stories hit a
https://www.civicfed.org/civic-federation/blog/short-term-liabilities-increase-city-chicago-and-cook-county
“Thumbs down to Democrats for again electing Michael Madigan as the chairman of the Democratic Party of Illinois.”
“These people pay a lot in Illinois taxes. Rank-and-file taxpayers should be trying to keep them rather than sending them to Texas, Nevada, Florida and other states that don’t tax income. High-income earners help pay for the state services that the General Assembly loves to approve but not fund.”
“Since losing the Democratic Party primary for Cook County assessor last month, Andrea Raila has said she was robbed of a real chance at winning. She sued the election authorities who temporarily disqualified her from the race — not for a do-over, she says, but because she merely wanted some measure of justice. Judging by a newly unearthed letter her lawyer sent last month, Raila also was willing to end her reform-themed campaign in exchange for something far more tangible. Namely, money.”
Comment: See our earlier article linked here on the many questions that need to be answered about this idea.
You’d think Springfield is intent on a strategy of repetition inspired by a record of success.
See our own comment linked here on the full scope of this.
“Democrats in Springfield are pushing legislation that would require public school districts to pay teachers a minimum salary of $40,000. Sounds righteous , right?”
It now goes back to the Circuit Court for a hearing on a request for a preliminary injunction.
SPECIAL REPORT: Why Illinois needs a spending cap
The path to budget certainty is clear. A spending cap would force Illinois to live within its means. Families across Illinois do this every day. They don’t have a choice. Regular people can’t continually bust their budgets. The bill eventually comes due. It’s past time for politicians to play by the same set of rules.
Any day now, Mayor Rahm Emanuel, already Mayor Zorro as he seeks Hispanic votes with his sanctuary city policy, will don his cape and mask once again to unveil the controversial CityKey ID card.
If you’re not into economics or following our pension crisis, this is a primer on one key matter.
Also in big trouble are Connecticut and Illinois, where the overall state and local tax burden (especially property taxes) is so onerous that high-income residents will feel the burn now that they can’t deduct these costs on their federal returns. Blue states will lose millions of people in the years to come—and they aren’t ready.
“New York, Los Angeles, Chicago — the places where power and capital have traditionally congregated — have become so over-regulated, so overpriced and mismanaged, and so morally bankrupt and soft on crime that people are leaving in droves.”
The Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority voted Tuesday to sell a painting by Chicago artist Kerry James Marshall, estimated at $8 million to $12 million, at a Sotheby’s auction next month. The MPEA purchased the monumental canvas “Past Times” for $25,000 in 1997,
Despite that momentum, major doubts remain about whether such a provision would be upheld by the IRS. Specifically, some financial experts say, establishing a system in which Illinois taxpayers would donate to a charity supporting local public schools and, in exchange, get a credit on state income taxes that would be fully deductible on their federal returns is a little too cute to make it past the tax agency.
But now, a Chicago tax law expert who has researched the issue says he’s concluded conventional wisdom is wrong, and the proposed workaround “might just work.”
With a 66 percent increase in opioid-related ER visits in Illinois last year, the number of children who will require protective services could grow by as much as 20 percent. While their parents receive medical treatment, undergo rehab or receive parental skills training, these children will need the state of Illinois to care for them.
Yet they will be coming into a system severely strained by the pressure of high employee turnover tied to rock-bottom wages and disinvestment by our state. Private social service agencies across Illinois report that employees are leaving at a rate of 42 percent,
Comment: Long overdue. The administration and lack of transparent, current financial reporting on local pensions is appalling.
A bill in the Illinois Senate could axe the state’s first-ever tax credit scholarship program.
Ives said she plans to tour the state raising awareness of issues such as pensions and fiscal responsibility, and campaigning for fellow Republican candidates in an effort to win a majority in the state House of Representatives.
During the impasse, tax revenue came in and bills were incurred just as they did when there was a budget. The impasse made no difference.
“I haven’t come to a final decision,” he said Monday.
Just to clarify so you hard cores don’t start hoping somebody you don’t like might be sick, this is about a rhino, not a RINO.
Comment: But the real theme was the absence of any ideas to fix it, beyond tinkering on the edges and a silly idea of a state property tax. One exception was the segment by Jim Spiotto, a municipal bankruptcy expert, who talked about that.
Another $800 million for the state.
“While most states exercised fiscal restraint, Illinois, the lowest rated U.S. state, bucked the trend last year by increasing its debt 16 percent, Moody’s said. That wasn’t because it was investing in infrastructure.”
“No state has defaulted on its general obligation bonds since Arkansas in 1933. Illinois may be challenging this notion. While its debt is technically rated as investment grade, its bonds currently trade in line with noninvestment grade or junk municipal debt.”
Comment: Under 20,000 of them. And it’s important to remember that many of those are one-timers or only occasional big earners. The person who sells the family business, real estate developer that starves for years and hits it big ever so often, founders and option holders in tech companies, farmers who sell the land they’ve owned for decades…. Not all of them are as wealthy as they may seem.
In other news, no word on any counter proposal on the budget Rauner submitted.
But average prices rose and time-to-sell dropped.
When Illinois returns to the bond market this week, its legacy of protracted fights over the budget will cast a costly shadow.
Switching to a subscription model.
Legislation to expand Illinois’ sales tax for online shopping recently passed the Senate. But it faces several more hurdles before it could become law.
The measure would require more out-of-state businesses to tax internet sales to Illinois resident. But its implementation depends on a case now before the U. S. Supreme Court, challenging a similar law in South Dakota.
Wirepoints’ research cited here.
The City of Chicago filed separate suits last month against the cash-strapped communities of Dolton and Robbins, alleging the towns had violated past contracts, repayment agreements and the law by making unauthorized transfers of millions of dollars from water fund accounts into their general funds.
There just aren’t enough high earners to shoulder all the bills that Pritzker wants to send them under his vague progressive tax proposal.
Comment: “It’s a fifth-grade math problem,” said the former Kankakee mayor. True, but that’s why it’s too challenging for Illinois to understand so politicians are ignoring it.
Under Illinois law, towns that miss required pension contributions risk state intervention. In 2016, Round Lake Park paid less than 40 percent of its required pension contribution.
So our confidence is not high regarding the ability of our 177 micromanagers in the Illinois state capitol to focus on anything important, again, this year. Important, say, like a state budget, or pension reform, or reducing government, or paying $8.5 billion in overdue bills.
Here’s recent evidence of them sticking their noses everywhere but in their own House, and Senate.
Wonderful audio clips of former Mayor of Chicago Richard M Daley, who history will record as the individual most responsible for Chicago’s collapse.
Sale-leaseback. That’s the idea behind the $2 billion offer the Chicago real estate investors made this month to the cash-strapped state of Connecticut and its capital city of Hartford to buy a slew of government-owned buildings—from libraries to offices to transit-related properties—and lease them back on long-term deals with escalating rent.
Comment. They’re not stupid: “A new study finds there has been a rise in the number of wealthy households renting in the Chicago area even as the overall rental market has cooled.”
Comment: This is actually just a move to slash the governor’s staff budget by about 50%.
Drawn by new state requirements and incentives, renewable energy developers are staking out turf on the rural fringes of the Chicago area and beyond, looking to build dozens of solar farms to feed the electric grids of Commonwealth Edison and other utilities.
“Bulldozed through” in classic Springfield fashion.
Community activist Ja’Mal Green is joining the growing pool of challengers to Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel. A recognizable figure in Chicago’s Black Lives Matter movement, Green has been a longtime Emanuel critic.
Comment. She sounds quite qualified for Chicago government: “She has been investigated by the county inspector general, county prosecutors and federal prosecutors on ethics matters, a real estate deal, allegations of kickbacks and a loan made to a goat meat company she owns…. But Brown also brings some ethical baggage to the race, including accepting cash birthday gifts from employees and charging workers a fee to participate in a dress-down day…. Brown and her husband also got entangled in a questionable real estate deal that county prosecutors began to investigate in 2014…. Recently, federal investigators revealed through court filings that
Comment: We need fair maps, but come on. The effect wouldn’t show up in policy changes for years. It won’t save us.
Businesses that have been operating for two years and have at least 25 employees must either create their own retirement plan or participate in Secure Choice. Employers aren’t required to contribute to the program or pay a fee to participate.
Frerichs says employees will automatically have 5 percent of their income put into a savings account, but that percentage can be changed. Employees may also opt out of the program.
Candance Chow, who lives in Evanston, was a candidate for the 17th House District in the March Democratic primary election.
“Blaming everybody is the same as blaming nobody.”
Unsustainable and Unaffordable Public Pensions Cannot be Solved by Raising Taxes or the Passage of Time, but There are Some Practical Solutions.
Comment: We’ll be reviewing this and similar proposals, and look forward to the discussion.
Comments: Illinois Democrats want another budget impasse, which is why they haven’t responded to Rauner’s proposed budget. They’re banking on their ability to blame the impasse entirely on Rauner, as they did last time.
Comment: She’s the worst combination of quack populist and Machine hack.
Carson’s will shut down its department stores by late summer after more than 160 years in operation.
Why are we posting this, you aske? Because one of our readers said it made her think of Toni Preckwinkle’s elecion as Cook County Democratic Chair.
The U.S. Supreme Court wrestled yesterday with whether Amazon and its peers have rendered a 26-year-old decision obsolete. It’s worth remembering that the precedent being challenged—retailers without a physical presence in a state don’t have to collect sales taxes from customers—resulted from a lawsuit brought by a Chicago-area company. Quill in Quill v. North Dakota is a company based in Lincolnshire that sold office supplies by mail.
https://chicagotonight.wttw.com/2018/04/18/toronto-s-troubled-airport-express-train-could-be-cautionary-tale-chicago
The case illustrates how bureaucracy in Cook County can slow investigations for years. Hota repaid the money last year — more than three years after he resigned amid the inspector general’s investigation. He has not been charged with a crime nor disciplined by the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation.
Comment: “The appeals court did not offer an explanation or reasoning for its decision to apply the restraining order.” Welcome to Illinois courts.
We wrote about this in our article linked here. “Affinity groups” is what they call segregated meetings.
“So what’s better: unions running state government or so-called hicks running state government?”
Comment: Can’t wait to see the opinion and the grounds. The statute seems clear.
It’s simple division. Divide the dollar size of our problems by the number of high earners. The numbers are preposterous.
Comment: We think the numbers are worse than indicated here, as reflected in our recent report.
State Sen. Napoleon Harris, D-Harvey, said he is considering introducing a measure amending the state law that requires the Illinois comptroller’s office to seize a municipality’s tax revenues when a community is delinquent funding pensions.
State Rep. Jeanne Ives, R-Wheaton, who traveled out of her district Monday to weigh in on Harvey’s pension crisis at City its Hall, held up the south suburb as an example of what could happen in towns across the state if pension reform isn’t enacted.
A House bill that would allow communities to consolidate local township governments has earned support from both parties – and the opposition of township officials.
The measure also requires prevailing wage to be paid at privately funded refineries.
Two weeks before Amazon executives pulled into Indianapolis on their tour of possible HQ2 cities, the state of Indiana decided to exclude internet-delivered software from sales tax. In Chicago, the public outrage among tech companies has receded into a resentment that still boils just below the surface. “The cloud tax is a thorn in the side for many Chicago tech companies and small businesses alike,” says Fred Hoch, executive chairman of the Illinois Technology Association, a trade group for tech companies. “It should go away. Indiana is thinking progressively.”
Comment: Allowing the option of Chapter 9 bankruptcy to Illinois towns and cities that might benefit is long overdue.
Illinois Treasurer Michael Frerichs is getting national headlines today on a matter he has no business whatsoever dabbling in — a matter on which he has no oversight and no accountability.
Facebook is still potentially on the hook for fines under a unique Illinois law of $1,000 to $5,000 each time a person’s image is used without permission.
Comment: This kind of thing doesn’t help U of I’s already declining application numbers.
By Wirepoints’ Mark Glennon
More in a series by the Tribune.
Comment: But Dems, Pritzker and CTBA assure us that people don’t move because of taxes, so you needn’t worry a bit.
Senator Harmon passed a measure out of committee Wednesday to create safe zones for immigration enforcement in Illinois.
An actuary looks at Wirepoints’ work on Harvey and what it means for our pension crisis.
Chicago scored a major win April 9, but it barely registered with most local business leaders. The triumph was Novartis’ eye-popping $8.7 billion buyout of a largely unknown startup called AveXis.
By coming to the Chicago area, AveXis was well-positioned to tap into a deep well of local biotech talent, not only at the laboratory level but in the executive suite as well, thanks to the likes of pharma giants Abbott, AbbVie and Baxter International, health care startups run by serial entrepreneurs such as Glen Tullman and Eric Lefkofsky, and world-class researchers at Northwestern University and
A spending cap would provide a magic number to lawmakers – a set amount of money they can spend in a given year. No more, no less.
But according to STR, a major hotel data and analytics firm, Chicago’s growth in visitors and hotel occupancy in the first quarter is not unique to the city.
Cook County officials who decide the outcome of property tax appeals accepted more than half a million dollars in campaign donations from law firms and other businesses that help challenge tax bills, far more than permitted under a county ethics ordinance, records obtained by the Tribune reveal.
Yet another unfunded mandate. The bill doesn’t provide any additional funding to do so.
Comment: Stupid.
Presented without comment.
Tap water in 3 of every 10 homes sampled had lead concentrations above 5 parts per billion, the maximum allowed in bottled water by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Comment: Smart. Very smart.
From the union-backed Center for Tax and Budget Accountability
Comment: No, the option of full Chapter 9 bankruptcy is what’s needed. Harvey and many other municipalities are far beyond the need for oversight alone. Their debt must be reduced in a fair, rational process, which means Chapter 9.
Comment: This is about California, but we warned about these dangers last year when the same program sailed through the General Assembly and was signed by Governor Rauner. See our article linked here.
Comment: That is, more towns and cities will be seized to pay for pensions. It’s happening.
Comment: Lame.
By Wirepoints‘ Mark Glennon. For the other side, see the article by AFSME’s Roberta Lynch linked here.
By Roberta Lynch of AFSCME. For the other side, see the article by Wirepoints’ Mark Glennon linked here.
State lawmakers are nearing a key test on whether Illinois will follow the lead of California, New York and other states and enact legislation designed to let Illinois taxpayers avoid a new cap on deducting state and local taxes on their federal income tax return.
Awaiting a final vote in the House is a bill that would give taxpayers a credit against state income-tax liability for contributions to a new state-chartered charity that would be used to support public grade and high schools in the state.
Virtue signalling never ends.
Comment: Don’t laugh. Socialists may well fill the void if and when The Machine collapses.
Eight Wall Street and regional banks and broker-dealers have been accused in a whistleblower suit of “widespread fraud and collusion” in connection with remarketing the variable rate demand obligations of state and local issuers in Illinois.
They see what I see: Soaring taxes at the state and local levels, crumbling roads, higher education in disarray and schools begging increasingly for additional funding. Public officials and public unions seemingly more concerned about their pay and pensions than doing the jobs they’ve been appointed to perform on our behalf.
We got hold of a scorching letter sent to an Evanston school by a black member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Read it.
Comment: Get used to stories like this. It’s a tiny indication of what is to come across Illinois.
“Your work with CeaseFire is commendable, but it baffles me that you decided that the way to deal with the violence directed at you was to obtain a gun,” U.S. District Judge John Z. Lee said while handing down the sentence.
A Republican lawmaker who wants to eliminate Algonquin Township in McHenry County is one step closer.
From a a former Republican candidate for Illinois Senate.
By Wirepoints’ Mark Glennon: Peter Kirsanow is an African-American member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Last month he sent a letter to Nichols Middle School in Evanston, which employs racially segregated staff meetings among the ways it implemented an “equity audit” completed last year by its school district.
State Rep. Michael J. Zalewski was quick on Monday to snuff out any suggestion that his father’s retirement from the Chicago City Council was part of a plot to have Mayor Rahm Emanuel replace him with a Mike Madigan loyalist ahead of next year’s election.
“At least eight other states are considering creating or expanding charitable funds that would allow tax payments to be converted into charitable contributions,” said Jackson Brainerd, a policy associate at NCSL.
They are: California, Illinois, Maryland, Nebraska, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Virginia and Washington.
Comment: See our earlier article on a court-ordered tax increase for Harvey to pay its pension. It’s far, far beyond hopeless.
Comment: Pritzker is just lying about the private school scholarship program. It’s private money, not public money as he is telling the teachers’ unions, which want no competition.
Part of a Tribune series.
Twelve states and Washington D.C. tax inheritance, according to the Tax Foundation. In Illinois, it’s called the estate tax. It kicks in at $4 million and has rates up to 16 percent. While many Illinoisans don’t expect to inherit that much, the value of farms passed down through generations can easily surpass that.
U.S. Attorney John Lausch will be in Washington D.C. this week to help the Justice Department speed up its delivery of documents related to the FBI’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation, department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores said. He will report to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
After only four months on the job in Chicago, Lausch also finds himself at the center of a partisan maelstrom after carefully avoiding comment on national rhetoric. One Democrat has already responded to Lausch’s new role by labeling the Clinton investigation a “charade.”
“The first shots were fired here in Illinois, not far from downtown Springfield, in a nondescript shopping center, the kind you’ll find anywhere in the United States. There, in a repurposed supermarket, is the headquarters of the Illinois State Board of Elections.”
Part of a series by the Tribune.
A must-read for anybody following Illinois’ fiscal crisis. If nothing else destroys us, property taxes will.
The Cook County Board last month voted to require private developers to pay prevailing wages and hire apprentices in order to take advantage of popular property-tax incentive programs.
In an extraordinary show of unity, dozens of south suburban mayors urged commissioners to delay a vote or reconsider the requirements. Mayors said the policy changes would crush new business investment if they take effect Sept. 1 as scheduled.
Comment: OK, let’s get on with it. How much can we hock the Illinois statehouse for?
Comment: Shame on Illinois for not having dozens of towns like this: “No place in the U.S. has seen a labor-market turnaround like this metropolitan region of 110,000 workers [Elkhart IN], a mix of blue-collar whites, Mexican immigrants and Amish. ‘It’s like 1955. If you show up and have minimal literacy skills, you can find a job here.'”
A response to an earlier letter from a CTU member.
A close look at how the Comptroller’s office prioritizes bill payment.
“This steady downturn in prices the past year is most likely due to the influx of newer apartment buildings with move-in specials and an overall increase in inventory, which may be a relief to renters.”
Homeowners in the Chicago area are paying higher property tax bills, on average, than 93 percent of the country, according to a new report.
The average 2017 tax bill on a single-family home in Lake County was higher than nearly 99 percent of the 1,414 U.S. counties covered by the report, released yesterday by Attom Data Solutions.
The Wall Street rating agency that alone rates Chicago bonds as junk on Thursday threw cold water on Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s $8.5 billion O’Hare Airport expansion project.
The $70 million school is to be built on the grounds of a former Cook County Poor House where an estimated 38,000 people were buried in unmarked graves. Among the dead are residents who were too poor to afford funeral costs, unclaimed bodies and patients from the county’s insane asylum.
Part of a series being run by the Tribune.
Janitors who clean Chicago Public Schools buildings said Thursday that schools are dirty because the private mega-company managing them has cut too much staff. And if Aramark doesn’t agree to add 500 more custodians during contract negotiations, members of SEIU Local 1 will strike.
Comment: Sounds like Springfield at its finest: Using the new funding formula, “more than half the districts currently flunk funding, because they can’t raise even half of what they need. But guess what: 140 districts have more than they need — more than 100 percent of ‘adequate funding.’ A few even have more than two times what they need.” And where will the additional $350 million per year for ten years called for under the new law come from? Nobody has bothered with that little matter.
Comment: How much more will it cost consumers to have 25% of their energy from renewable sources within seven years? Who knows. We’ll probably never know. Nobody cares if its green.
Don’t be so sure that China’s new tariffs on soy beans, hurting Illinois farmers, will stay. “There simply aren’t enough soybeans in the world outside of the U.S. to meet China’s needs,” said Mark Williams, chief Asia economist at Capital Economics.
Comment: This is completely unacceptable: He declined to say what that increased tax rate should be. During the primary campaign, he also didn’t say what rates should come with his favored graduated tax, which would tax people of various income levels based on how much they make. Both, he said, are subject to talks with state lawmakers.
Pertinent to Illinois because Pritzker wants to force employers to pay for family and medical leave.
See our Quicktake on this linked here.
Further into the abyss: $10 billion loss this year, $137 billion loss over the last ten years.
Comment: This is one example of why Senator Kwame Raoul (D-Chicago), candidate for attorney general, is particularly dangerous. He’s a radical.
Comment: Same for Illinois, Cook County, MWRD and pretty much every municipality in the state.
Pritzker told reporters he’d get rid of the program “immediately” should he win in November: “We’re going to get rid of them. I think diverting money away from public schools right now to private tuition tax credits seems like a really bad idea.
The cruelest month’s cruelest, as T.S. Eliot might put it.
Comment: That’s what all the high-minded preaching we’ve heard from Illinois Democrats during the election will end up meaning in practice. They’ll elect who they always do to run the General Assembly — miserably corrupt and incompetent Cook County career politicians.
Illinois’s finances are so troubled that investors can make nearly as much money betting on the worst-rated U.S. state as they can on the American Dream mall project, perhaps the most despised structure in New Jersey.
Remember when, in 2013, a reform plan passed by the Illinois General Assembly for the Chicago Park District’s pension fund was held up by some as an example of a cooperative approach to fixing pensions?
Silly you, if you believed it.
Presented without comment.
The Illinois’ Supreme Court recently decided it would not take up Rauner’s appeal of a lower court ruling that the state has to pay thousands of members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 31 their automatic raises, called step increases. Rauner and lawmakers now have to figure out how to pay for those pay hikes that have been accumulating since summer 2015.
Comment: Trustees Sweeney, Carrabotta and McKenzie warriors doing great work there.
The Chicago area is on its third straight year of population decline, but there is one pocket of growth. The far western edge of the metro area is adding residents again, albeit slowly. You can see it in subdivisions in Kendall County, such as the Grande Reserve in Yorkville, where home construction on tracts of former farmland has restarted
The Tribune is tracking down expats to hear their stories. By the tens of thousands
And it’s not just Streator. Poorer school districts across the state get the short end of the stick when it comes to state pension “subsidies.”
Hundreds of thousands of Illinois residents covered by Medicaid will see their health coverage change Sunday when they’re transferred into managed care.
Critics say the state is keeping the public in the dark and trying to speed a process that they fear may ultimately benefit corporate interests more than people sickened by air pollution.
Chicago receives local sales taxes from Amazon, Davis said, based on his spot-check of its website. But the state of Illinois doesn’t require local sales tax collection by e-commerce companies that don’t have a physical presence in the state.
“Companies based outside Illinois are being advised accurately by sales tax filing services that they only need to collect the state-level tax,” Davis said. “The local tax cannot be collected by those companies because of the current setup of Illinois law. There’s been a little bit of discussion about this, but not the amount I think is warranted given how close
“Short-term borrowing is an expensive alternative to using reserve funds to bridge revenue gaps. However, with depleted reserves and unreliable State funding, it is possible that CPS will need to rely on short-term borrowing again in fiscal year 2019.”
That chart above is the ramp up in annually required taxpayer pension contributions!
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