The redesign of the Civic Federation website in July has provided the public, government officials, and the media better access to the Federation’s analyses of government services in Illinois. The regularly-updated Civic Federation blog…
The Civic Federation's legislative priorities for 2010 include public pension reform, requiring state government to develop and implement performance measurement and a capital improvement plan, the dissolving of the Illinois International…
Under the old state statute that limited the property tax rates of the Chicago Public Schools, Tax Increment Financing directly restricted property tax revenues available to CPS because it froze part of the equalized assessed value (EAV)—…
Chicago Public Schools has received almost $400 million in Tax Increment Financing revenue from the creation of the first City of Chicago TIF in 1984 through July 2009 and is scheduled to receive over $491.3 million more according to…
The Civic Federation supports the $6.9 billion Chicago Public Schools FY2010 proposed budget. The District employed reasonable measures to balance its budget in light of a $473 million deficit, including cuts to personnel and a proposed…
Today the Civic Federation released its analysis of Chicago Public Schools’ proposed FY2010 budget. On page 61 of the…
This report provides a trend analysis of indicators that measure the financial health and performance of ten major local government pension funds from 1998 to 2007, the most recent year for which audited data are available. It finds that…
This report reviews best practices in the composition of public pension boards of trustees nationwide, and makes recommendations on improvements to pension boards in Illinois.
The Civic Federation supports the FY2009 City of Chicago budget of $5.97 billion because it does not rely on raising property tax and begins the painful yet necessary step of reducing payroll by 2,618 full-time equivalent positions to…
The Civic Federation supports the the Chicago Public Schools recommended 6.2 billion dollar FY2009 budget because it shows restraint by freezing property tax rather than reflexively raising them to the maximum amount allowed under the…
