City of Chicago

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Chicago Area Governments Prohibited from Improving Pension Funding Without State Intervention

State statute governs all benefits and funding of public pensions for the City of Chicago. The City cannot contribute more to its pensions than the multiple of employee contributions allowed under state statute. There has unfortunately…

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Why Aren’t Pension Benefit Reforms in Chicago and Cook County Decreasing Employer Pension Contributions?

Chicago and Cook County residents who followed the pension debate at the State of Illinois might be surprised by the fact that proposals for pension reform for the…

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Forum on Municipal Fiscal Distress Looks at the Landscape After Detroit

The Civic Federation joined with the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago on April 23, 2014 to co-host a conference on ways that municipalities in Illinois can avoid or resolve fiscal…

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Illinois General Assembly Passes Pension Reforms for Chicago

On April 8, 2014, the Illinois House of Representatives and Senate approved Senate Bill 1922,…

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Chicago Proposes Pension Funding Reform for Municipal and Labor Funds

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel unveiled a proposal to stabilize the City’s underfunded Municipal and Laborers pension funds on March 31. The 40-year plan includes successive property tax increases to provide additional pension funding coupled…

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Moody's Downgrade Reflects Chicago's Pension Crisis and Looming Budgetary Challenges

Four weeks ago, the Civic Federation blogged about the Chicago City Council granting the City authority to issue general…

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City of Chicago to get more Revenue from Amusement Tax in FY2014

As noted in many media reports and in the Civic Federation’s analysis of the City of Chicago’s FY2014 budget, the City balanced its budget in part with a number of targeted revenue enhancements. One of these revenue enhancements was a…

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Chicago City Council Authorizes New Borrowing While City's Debt Per Capita Steadily Increases

This week the Chicago City Council granted the City authority to issue $900.0 million in general obligation bonds and $1.0 billion in Midway Airport revenue bonds. At the Finance Committee meeting on February 3, 2014, the City’s Chief…

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Selected Consumer Taxes in the City of Chicago

This brief provides a compilation of selected consumer taxes, including rates and descriptions, in place in the City of Chicago as of January 10, 2014. It includes such taxes as the sales tax, gas tax, amusement tax, lease tax, hotel tax,…

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Report Identifies Chicago as Pension Obligation Outlier Among Large U.S. Cities

Morningstar Municipal Credit Research released a report this month comparing aggregate per capita pension liabilities among the 25…