In its Recommendations for a Financially Sustainable City of Chicago, the Civic Federation recommended that the City’s election function be transferred to Cook County. Consolidated election administration is the norm in Illinois. The Federation identified two primary benefits of such a merger: it would be more user-friendly and reduce voter confusion about which lines to stand in for early voting, which machines to use and where to find complete election results for county-wide elections; and…
The Civic Federation's legislative priorities for 2012 include public pension reform, requiring the State of Illinois to develop and implement a capital improvement plan, dissolving the Illinois International Port District, creating a new governing board for the Cook County Forest Preserve District, requiring all counties to hold budget hearings and large counties to produce timely annual audits, enacting tax increment financing reporting reform, requiring school financial management…
The Civic Federation supports the Cook County FY2012 Executive Budget Recommendation totaling $2.9 billion. Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle’s proposed $2.2 billion General Fund budget is a 4.6%, or $107.4 million, decrease from the FY2011 adopted budget. The budget closes a $315.2 million shortfall with $219 million in spending cuts, $53 million in revenue enhancements and over 1,000 layoffs. The County administration also appears to be on a path towards significant reform of…
The Cook County pension fund actuarial value funded ratio has fallen from 88.9% to 60.7% over ten years. The unfunded accrued actuarial liabilities have reached $5.2 billion or $993 per Cook County resident. While the County’s pension fund is not yet in quite as dire straits as some other state and local pension funds, it soon will be if no action is taken. Major reforms to contributions and benefits will keep the pension fund solvent and distribute tax burden more fairly among current and…
Cook County’s fiscal year begins on December 1 and ends on November 30. The Civic Federation believes that all governments should adopt a budget at least one month in advance of the start of the fiscal year. For the County, that would be a November 1 budget adoption. In addition, the public should be provided with ample time to review the budget in advance of the public hearing. In the past, Cook County had fallen into a pattern of delaying the adoption of its annual budget. With the exception…
Cook County Clerk David Orr’s office today released the 2010 Cook County Tax Rates Report. The report lists property tax rates for all taxing districts in Cook County and provides sample composite rates for many municipalities. The composite rate is the total tax rate that appears on a tax bill. The composite tax rate on a typical City of Chicago tax bill will increase from 4.627% last year to 4.931%. This is the first time the rate has increased since tax year 1998 (payable in 1999) when it…
Today the Civic Federation published an update to its primer The Cook County Property Tax Extension Process: A Primer on Levies, Tax Caps, Tax Bills and the Effects of Tax Increment Financing Districts. The update adds additional years of data when available and provides an enhanced explanation of the effect of tax increment financing (TIF) on local governments and taxpayers in Cook County. This blog summarizes the TIF explanation included in the primer. For more detail and background, please…
New rulings by the Illinois Department of Revenue have reignited a debate over whether the State’s non-profit hospitals provide adequate charity care to patients in exchange for their property-tax exemptions. On August 16, 2011 the Department of Revenue denied property tax exemptions to three hospitals and said it was reviewing applications from 15 others seeking exemptions . As is customary for the Revenue Department, the rulings state that the ownership and use of the properties do not…
This report provides estimates of the total market value of real property in Cook County from 2000-2009 and shows how property value is spread among the City of Chicago, the northern and the southern suburbs. The full market value of real estate in Cook County was approximately $550.1 billion in tax year 2009. This total value represents a decline of $66 billion, or 10.7%, from the 2008 estimated full value. Tax year 2009 is the most recent year for which data is available. Read the press…
A recent mid-year report issued by Cook County provides more details on the budget difficulties facing the County’s public health system in the 2011 fiscal year that ends on November 30, 2011. The required FY2011 county subsidy to the Cook County Health and Hospitals System is estimated at $371.2 million, according to data in the report. That compares with a budgeted subsidy for the year of $280.1 million. As a result, the Health System’s deficit—the gap between budgeted and actual financial…
