What local government purposes, services, or expenditures does your property tax dollar fund? Governments traditionally use property tax revenues to pay for a wide variety of expenditures, including employee salaries and pensions, debt…
The Civic Federation has long supported sensible legislation aimed at improving the efficiency and effectiveness of government operations in Illinois. The purpose of this blog is to summarize briefly consolidation legislation and…
Short-term or current liabilities are financial obligations that must be satisfied within one year. They can include short-term debt, accounts payable, accrued payroll and other current liabilities. This blog post presents 12-year trends…
The Civic Federation’s previous blog examined the long-term debt of eight major local governments in northeastern Illinois.This…
The Civic Federation regularly analyzes and comments on the budgets and audited financial statements of eight major local governments in northeastern Illinois: 1.…
The Civic Federation’s recent report profiling six townships in Cook County with the…
The Civic Federation and IIFS blogs have written extensively about reductions to assumed rates of return on investment by State and some local public pension plans over the last several years. These changes are part of a nationwide…
Annexation is the extension of municipal boundaries into adjacent unincorporated areas and the corresponding expansion of city services to those newly incorporated areas. In Illinois, municipal governments have the authority to determine…
The following posts were among the most highly read on the Civic Federation blog in 2014 and represent some of the most closely followed local government issues this year:…
Cook County’s unincorporated areas account for 125.8 square miles, or 13.1% of the County’s total land area. (Of that land area, 60.26% is located within a forest preserve.) Residents of these areas rely on the County to provide municipal…
