Capital Facts

House committee doesn’t budge on Pritzker’s plan to dissolve some townships

Published by admin on Sun, 03/23/2025 - 11:00am

Two major proposals backed by Gov. JB Pritzker did not advance out of legislative committees before last week’s passage deadline.
Sen. Suzy Glowiak Hilton confirmed that she won’t be advancing her legislation supported by the governor that would dissolve townships with populations below 5,000 (SB2217), and eventually abolish townships with populations below 50,000 and lower the petition threshold to 5 percent from 10 percent to put a township abolition on the ballot.

Workers rack up overtime while mass transit agencies face ‘fiscal cliff’

Published by admin on Sat, 03/15/2025 - 11:15am

Most weeks I use this newspaper column to highlight a story that’s appeared in my subscriber newsletter Capitol Fax. This week will be no different, but today’s column was written by my associate Isabel Miller:
Rep. Marty Moylan (D-Des Plaines) recently told me he was “astonished” by some Chicago Transit Authority employee paychecks.
Rep. Moylan, the Chair of the House Transportation: Rail Systems, Roads & Bridges Committee, is heading into the transit funding discussions armed with an inch-and-a-half-thick binder filled with CTA salary data.

State’s foster care system facing crisis

Published by admin on Sun, 03/09/2025 - 1:06pm

Advocates say a major storm is brewing that could overwhelm the state’s child foster care system.
The problem is legal liability insurance, or, more specifically, the lack thereof.
Insurance companies, advocates and providers say, are not taking on new private foster care agencies as clients and some agencies are being notified that they’re losing their insurance, including some of the state’s biggest foster care providers. Some others are being forced into high-priced, low benefit insurance plans. Many may ultimately find themselves out of business.

Budget cuts 9.1% in core state services

Published by admin on Sun, 03/02/2025 - 2:50pm

The latest report from the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability shows that spending on four “core” state services in the governor’s proposed Fiscal Year 2026 budget will be 9.1 percent less in real dollars than it was back in Fiscal Year 2000.
Those four core services are education, healthcare, human services and public safety.

Ethics reform not a priority in Illinois

Published by admin on Sat, 02/22/2025 - 3:57pm

Illinois House Speaker Chris Welch didn’t sound all that enthused about passing any new ethics reforms during an interview last week.
In the wake of former House Speaker Michael Madigan’s conviction on 10 felony counts earlier this month, I asked Speaker Welch if he believed Madigan’s conviction called out for new reform laws.

Madigan pays the price while Blago gets full pardon

Published by admin on Sun, 02/16/2025 - 4:27pm

Mike Madigan knew for a very long time that the US Attorney’s office and the FBI badly wanted to put his head on a spike.
It was no secret. Everybody knew it. Madigan was investigated over and over again, but nothing ever came of it.
“This was a guy they wanted to go after, and they gathered as much as they could against him and something stuck,” the Madigan/McClain jury foreman told the Chicago Tribune.

Pritzker may be stuck having to raise taxes

Published by admin on Sat, 02/08/2025 - 1:06pm

Gov. JB Pritzker has "revised" his remarks about not raising taxes to balance the budget.
“It’s very important that we live within our means in this state, and that we not resort to tax increases as a way to, you know, to balance the budget,” Pritzker said on Jan. 30th.

Illinois better plan for what might happen next

Published by admin on Sun, 02/02/2025 - 12:05pm

To many Statehouse types, some of last week’s news out of Washington, DC felt eerily familiar.
Last Monday night, the White House announced a sweeping new policy that would’ve at least temporarily defunded trillions of dollars of government spending on everything from the National School Lunch Program, to Head Start, to cancer and sleep disorders research, and on and on through 50 small-print pages.
So, some Illinoisans rightly pointed out that former Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner also tried crashing government spending by defunding vital social services and other programs.

Union-backed bill would cost Illinois $30 billion more for pension payments

Published by admin on Sat, 01/25/2025 - 10:56am

The Illinois legislature’s Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability recently released an eye-popping actuarial analysis of a union-backed pension reform plan.
The analysis concluded that the proposal, House Bill 5909, would cost taxpayers almost $30 billion through the year 2045.
And the annual state cost starting in Fiscal Year 2027, which begins in mid-2026, would be $1.13 billion.

Madigan should’ve known better

Published by admin on Sat, 01/18/2025 - 2:21pm

Former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan’s longtime law firm partner Vincent “Bud” Getzendanner testified in Madigan’s defense against numerous federal charges last week.
One of the main themes of Getzendanner’s testimony was the property tax firm’s process of weeding out clients and potential clients who could pose a conflict of interest to Madigan.