In advance of Governor Pat Quinn's budget address on February 22, this op-ed by Civic Federation President Laurence Msall discusses Illinois' damaged fiscal reputation. The piece offers recommendations for stabilizing the State's finances…
A week before Governor Pat Quinn’s FY2013 budget address, a panel of Illinois State senators met in Chicago to hear testimony on the State’s major budget challenges: rising Medicaid costs and unfunded pension liabilities. The Senate’s two…
On February 14, 2012, the Civic Federation blogged about its support for a…
(See addendum: "No Quorum for Cook County Public Hearing") On February 14, 2012 the Finance Committee of the Cook County Board of Commissioners will hold a…
In its most recent monthly briefing, the State of Illinois Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability (COGFA) published new revenue projections for…
(The full text of this article is available only to the publication’s subscribers.) This article reports that laws passed by the Illinois General Assembly are rarely accompanied by “fiscal notes” which detail a law’s financial impact on…
Municipalities and other local governments in the United States continue to struggle financially in the aftermath of the Great Recession. While recession has technically ended, revenues for many governments have not returned to pre-…
The State of Illinois FY2013 Budget Roadmap, issued on January 30, 2012 by the Civic Federation’s Institute for Illinois’ Fiscal Sustainability, relies on a five-year budget analysis…
This article examines the State of Illinois FY2013 Budget Roadmap released January 30th by the Civic Federation’s Illinois research institute. The analysis warns that the State could see its backlog of unpaid bills rise to $34.8 billion by…
In this editorial the Chicago Tribune urges Illinois Governor Pat Quinn to address the future of the State’s budget in light of the scheduled partial sunset of the temporary income tax increase in FY2015. The editorial cites budget…
