A new report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) says that more information is needed to determine whether local school districts that receive federal stimulus money from the State of Illinois are using the funds promptly, as required by federal regulations. The report stems from the GAO’s effort to track uses of funds under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (…
The Governor’s office recently published its first official document that included details of the revenues and expenditures approved by the General Assembly for FY2010 fiscal year. The Official Statement accompanying the sale of $1.25 billion in short term debt on August 20, 2009 includes new information on the State’s fiscal condition. It should eventually be available along with the other bond…
Starting today, increases in the taxation rates on soft drinks, personal grooming and hygiene products, and candy will take effect to help pay for improvements to Illinois’ infrastructure. The tax base of these three categories of merchandise will change from the low food and medicine rate of 1% to the higher general merchandise rate of 6.25%. Many municipalities add an extra tax to the base…
Earlier this spring the Civic Federation opposed the $26 billion capital plan proposed by Governor Quinn because it was unaffordable over time and was not based on a capital improvement plan (CIP). The massive spending proposal was heavily debt funded, borrowing $10.6 billion for new projects (HB 312) and (HB 313). The Governor also planned to refinance the State’s existing $11.8 billion of…
More details are finally available on the FY2010 operating budget, and it would be difficult to describe it as balanced—even on paper. Depending on how you look at it, there is technically either a $157 million deficit or an $872 million surplus in the budget approved by the General Assembly and signed by Governor Pat Quinn on July 15, 2009. However, those numbers don’t take into account the $3.5…
Hoping that Illinois lawmakers will agree to an income tax increase later this year, Governor Pat Quinn chose not to make the necessary cuts to work within the budget approved on July 15, 2009 by the General Assembly. At a press conference on July 31, the Governor said he had already trimmed more than $1 billion from the FY2010 budget that he initially proposed in March. However, Governor Quinn…
In this interview, Civic Federation President Laurence Msall discusses the Illinois State operating budget deficit and the State’s unwise choice to borrow money in order to make its mandatory pension contributions.
This editorial examines the Illinois General Assembly and Governor Pat Quinn’s difficulty in passing an operating budget that does not rely on borrowing to meet its obligations. The Civic Federation is quoted enumerating the many problems with the budget and how the State does business.
This editorial mentions the Civic Federation as one of the many groups opposed to Governor Pat Quinn’s plan to legalize video poker to help finance the State’s $31 billion infrastructure repair bill.
In this column, Mark Brown discusses the State’s current fiscal crisis, and the choices that the State made to get to this point, and the possible loss of State services in the future. He quotes the Civic Federation, which says that Illinois’ fiscal problems are worse than California’s because that state has ceased postponing hard budgetary decisions.
