The Civic Federation annually releases a report on consumer taxes in the City of Chicago, which will be released next month. Consumer taxes are tied to the use or consumption of certain goods and services that can be charged directly to consumers through retail transactions or passed on to consumers by businesses or governments. Consumer taxes in Chicago are imposed at various levels of government, including the City of Chicago, Cook County, the State of Illinois and the federal government.…
The Illinois General Assembly passed a series of amendments during veto session in early December to the SAFE-T (Safety, Accountability, Fairness and Equity – Today) Act, the criminal justice omnibus law enacted in early 2021. The SAFE-T Act (Public Act 101-0652) was originally passed by the Illinois General Assembly in January 2021 and signed by Governor Pritzker in February 2021. For details of the provisions included in the SAFE-T Act, see the Civic Federation’s summary. Two subsequent…
On November 14, 2022, the Governor’s Office of Management and Budget (GOMB) released the Illinois Economic and Fiscal Policy Report. The report includes changes to the FY2023 enacted budget revenue forecast and a five-year budgetary forecast. The FY2023 Enacted Budget On April 19, 2022, Governor JB Pritzker signed the State’s FY2023 budget, which consists of three bills, into law. The budget was passed nearly two months earlier than in previous years because the State’s primary election had…
A report recently released by the Civic Federation highlights the current processes in Cook County bond court, including how often judges require payment of money as a condition of bail. The study, conducted in partnership with the League of Women Voters of Cook County, found that despite narratives to the contrary, cash bail is still widely used in Cook County. Another report recently released by the Illinois Network for Pretrial Justice examined the bond court processes of six other Illinois…
Last year, the Civic Federation worked in partnership with the Administrative Office of the Illinois Courts (AOIC) and the Illinois Supreme Court’s Pretrial Implementation Task Force to release a report that measures the financial impact that the elimination of cash bail in Illinois will have on counties and circuit court clerks throughout the state. This week, the AOIC and the Task Force released a series of updates to the report, originally released in September 2021. The updates include a…
The Commission on Governmental Forecasting and Accountability (COGFA) has released a new report on gaming in Illinois. The report provides a comprehensive look at all forms of legally sanctioned wagering in the state, including casino gambling, horse racing, video gaming, the Lottery and now sports betting. In FY2022, the State of Illinois collected nearly $1.9 billion in total gaming revenues.[1] The single largest gaming revenue source was the Lottery, which generated $833 million, 44.2% of…
It is conventional wisdom that taxpayers in Illinois pay some of the highest property taxes in the nation. That assertion is borne out in a report released last week by the Tax Foundation. The Foundation’s report provides a county-by-county and state-by-state context for evaluating property tax burden across the United States. Local governments in Illinois rely on the property tax to fund everything from debt to pensions to day-to-day expenses. In tax year 2020 total property tax extensions for…
With the increasingly polarized political environment and the November 2022 mid-term election approaching, the debate about pretrial reforms in Illinois has been at the forefront in the news media and on social media. The pretrial reforms, referred to as the Pretrial Fairness Act, were passed via Public Act 101-0652, known as the SAFE-T Act (Safety, Accountability, Fairness and Equity-Today). Much of the information being circulated and even promoted by some government bodies has been…
The General Assembly has approved and Governor Pritzker has signed an approximately $46.5 billion FY2023 capital budget. Unlike the State’s annual General Funds budget, which is intended to cover only the cost of operations for the current fiscal year, capital appropriations are reauthorized over multiple years as planning, engineering and construction of capital investments commence. Since 2005 the capital budget has been proposed in a separate document from the State’s operating budget and is…
The criminal justice system in Illinois is comprised of a multitude of different agencies and systems. This blog post will focus on the departments that make up the key criminal justice system agencies within Chicago and the State of Illinois, including agencies from three levels of government: municipal (City of Chicago), county (Cook County) and state (the State of Illinois). Each agency plays a role in the criminal legal system, although many criminal justice system agencies are…
