wirepoints
Illinois school district superintendents keep finding ways to retire with generous Illinois pensions while continuing to get salaries to boot. We recently wrote about this type of double dipping here. The scheme works because Illinois law lets retired educators collect a pension and go back to work, so long as they work part-time and no more…
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One of the Illinois legislature’s biggest failures during the pandemic has been its complete abdication of responsibility over the management of the pandemic itself. Lawmakers have let Gov. Pritzker run the state’s response via executive fiat for nearly two years. The result has been a disaster for democratic norms. Regardless of whether you agree with…
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By MARK GLENNONWirepoints How many fibs can Gov. JB Pritzker pack in a ten-minute interview? Count ’em: Jerry Nowicki of Capital News Illinois challenged Pritzker on why the $4.2 billion deficit in Illinois’ unemployment trust fund has been ignored, and asked why it wasn’t reduced using funds from federal government under ARPA, the American Rescue Plan Act. This…
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By TED DABROWSKI and JOHN KLINGNERWirepoints State politicians continue to ignore Illinois’ local pension crisis, forcing suburban and downstate cities to cut staff, including active police officers, to make room for skyrocketing pension costs. A Wirepoints’ analysis of Illinois’ 175 largest municipalities with dedicated police and fire pension funds found that since 2003, pension costs…
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From WIREPOINTS Illinoisans are suffering from more than just the nation’s worst state-level pension mess. For most residents, another problem hits much closer to home: Illinois’ local pension crisis. Wirepoints has quantified the negative impact of local pension costs by examining the finances of Illinois municipalities from 2003 to 2019. To allow for a like-for-like…
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By: Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner from WIREPOINTS Illinois lawmakers have passed a budget for fiscal year 2022 that does nothing to improve the fiscal and economic trajectory of this state. Missing were the many spending reforms Illinois needs to bring down its pension debts and high property tax rates. The budget reportedly spends $42.2 billion of $42.3 billion…
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