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 various proposals would save the State in contributions immediately and over time. Why won’t the…
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 of over 90% as recently as FY2000. While there is no official industry standard or best practice for…
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 430,000. Medicaid is a joint federal-state program that pays for healthcare for certain categories…
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 a federal consent decree in 1974, the County’s jail capacity problems go back much further. Since…
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 Board of Commissioners. The plan develops a series of strategies and action plans to achieve…
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 Federation performs a similar analysis for the City of Chicago in our annual Status of Local Pensions…
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 home rule tax rate increased from $0.68 to $1.18 per pack of cigarettes, effective January 10, 2014.…
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 Preserve District, the Chicago Park District and the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District (MWRD).…
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 $442.8 billion, a decline of $7.0 billion or 1.6% from the 2010 estimated full value. However, the…
The following posts were among the most highly read on the Civic Federation blog in 2013 and represent some of the most closely followed local government issues this year: City Council’s Proposed Independent Budget Office, A Civic Federation Recommendation January 2, 2013 This blog details a proposal introduced in the Chicago City Council on December 12, 2012 to create an Office of Independent Budget Analysis responsible for vetting all financial legislation before the Council. The Civic…
