The City of Chicago contributed $423.9 million to its Municipal, Laborers, Police, and Fire pension funds in fiscal year 2009, an amount equivalent to 13.4% of payroll. If it were following a fiscally reasonable pension funding policy it…
The Civic Federation's legislative priorities for 2011 include public pension reform, requiring state government to develop and implement a capital improvement plan, the dissolving of the Illinois International Port District, creating a…
Last week the Civic Federation described the City of Chicago’s structural deficit in our budget analysis…
Today the Civic Federation released its analysis of the City of Chicago’s proposed FY2011 budget of nearly $6.…
The Civic Federation opposes the proposed FY2011 City of Chicago budget of nearly $6.2 billion because it does not effectively address the structural deficit and relies too heavily on asset lease reserve funds and debt restructuring to…
The Civic Federation often voices concerns when governments use one-time or nonrecurring revenue sources for ongoing expenses. There are a number of reasons this can be problematic. By definition such revenue sources will not be…
The following letter to the editor of the Chicago Tribune from Civic Federation President Laurence Msall was published on August 24, 2010. As a non-partisan, independent government research organization, the Civic Federation applauds R.…
This report compares effective property tax rates in selected communities around metropolitan Chicago and finds that while all communities’ effective tax rates increased in 2008, rates have mostly declined since 1999. The report also finds…
A tax increment financing (TIF) transparency bill (Public Act 096-1335) passed by the Illinois legislature in May and signed into law by Governor Pat Quinn on…
The sales tax rate on general merchandise in Cook County declines by 0.5 percentage point on July 1, 2010. This rolls back half of the 1.0 percentage point increase imposed by the Cook County Board of Commissioners effective July 1,…
