On May 28, 2014, The Civic Federation sent this letter to Representitive Elaine Nekritz and the members of the House Personnel and Pensions Committee in advance of a 4 p.m. hearing on House Bill 1154. The Civic Federation commends Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, Cook County Commissioner Bridget Gainer and Cook County Chief Financial Officer Ivan Samstein for their work to assemble a…
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 City of Chicago and Cook County and pension reform legislation enacted for the Chicago Park District all require increases to employer contributions. This is in direct contrast to an Illinois process that focused on evaluating how much…
New actuarial reports released by the Cook County Pension Fund this month show a slight improvement in the Fund’s financial position in 2013 due to better than expected investment returns. Despite the improved performance, however, the Fund is projected to become insolvent by 2038. The Cook County Pension Fund has experienced a sharp decline in funding over the last decade, from a funded ratio…
More Illinois residents than originally projected are signing up for Medicaid as a result of the federal Affordable Care Act, but the long-term impact on the State budget remains unclear. Illinois officials had initially projected that 241,500 new recipients would sign up by the end of the current fiscal year on June 30, 2014. The current enrollment estimate for year-end FY2014 is 78.1% higher at…
A recent report by the Illinois Supreme Court raises significant concerns about Cook County’s pretrial services. The Cook County Pretrial Services Department (PSD) was established in 1990 to address a host of concerns, not the least of which was overcrowding. While inmate crowding at the Cook County Jail first garnered major media and legislative attention in the 1960s and 1970s and culminated in…
In 2013 President Preckwinkle formed a blue-ribbon commission of local leaders to develop the Next Century Conservation Plan to help provide vision and guidance to the Forest Preserve District of Cook County (FPDCC) for the next 25 years. In January 2014, the commission presented the plan to President Preckwinkle and shortly after it was accepted by the Cook County Forest Preserve District…
Morningstar Municipal Credit Research released a report this month comparing aggregate per capita pension liabilities among the 25 most populous cities in the United States. This means Morningstar analysts added overlapping governments’ pension liabilities to those of the cities themselves to try to get an idea of the total pension burden faced by residents of each of the cities. The Civic…
Since the Civic Federation’s last blog on changes to taxes imposed on tobacco purchases, Chicago area local governments have increased tobacco tax rates, which will have an impact on Chicago consumers. As part of the FY2013 budget and effective March 1, 2013, Cook County increased its home rule tax rate from $2.00 to $3.00 per pack of cigarettes. As part of the City’s FY2014 budget, Chicago’s…
As a follow-up to the Capital Planning Overview, this blog post summarizes information contained in the Civic Federation’s FY2014 budget analyses to compare how well the capital improvement plans (CIPs) of six major Chicago area governments conform to best practice guidelines. The governments are the City of Chicago, the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA), Cook County, the Cook County Forest…
Last month the Civic Federation released its annual estimate of the full value of real estate in Chicago and the Cook County suburbs. After four straight years of significant drops in estimated value, the rate of decline in the County as a whole slowed in 2011. Tax year 2011 is the most recent year for which data are available. The 2011 estimate of the full value of property in Cook County was $…
