The State of Illinois received some good fiscal news this summer: two rating agencies upgraded the State’s credit ratings and a third revised its outlook to positive. The credit upgrades were the first in in two decades, reversing years of…
The fiscal year 2022 budget for the State of Illinois and the process that created it showed the ongoing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, but also the beginnings of a recovery within the State economy. Unlike the FY2021 budget, the…
The Illinois General Assembly recently passed major revisions to its initial 2019 adult-use cannabis law. The revisions target an important provision of the original law that was meant to ensure access by disadvantaged communities to the…
UPDATE - February 23 2022: This blog has been updated with corrections to the information about other states where court data is subject to disclosure through FOIA laws or court rules, under the section “How Illinois FOIA Law…
As laid out in many Civic Federation blogs over the last several years, the State’s two pension buyout plans, which were enacted as part of the FY2019 budget…
The Civic Federation’s recently released Inventory of Local Governments in Illinois report identified a total of 8,923 units of local government in Illinois. This includes 2,826 general…
Recently, Cook County, the State of Illinois and other jurisdictions across the U.S. have begun to implement policy changes to reduce reliance on monetary bail and release more individuals while awaiting trial. These changes come amid a…
UPDATE: On February 22, 2021, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker signed House Bill 3653 Senate Amendment 2 into law as Public Act 101-0652 – dubbed…
