On April 9, 2022 the Illinois General Assembly passed the three bills that comprise the FY2023 budget and FY2022 supplemental appropriations. On April 19 the Governor signed the bills into law. The FY2023 budget was passed nearly two months earlier than in previous years because the State’s primary election was moved to June from the usual March date and the General Assembly adjourned early to accommodate members’ campaign schedules. The FY2023 budget passed by the General Assembly is similar…
On March 24, 2022, the Civic Federation released its annual analysis and recommendations for the Governor’s proposed State of Illinois FY2023 Operating and Capital Budgets. The proposed budget noted that since the enactment of the FY2022 State Budget, revenue collections have continuously exceeded expectations. This strong performance has prompted both the Governor’s Office of Management and Budget (GOMB) and the Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability (COGFA), the fiscal…
Update (August 12, 2022): Following almost a year of delays, the State of Illinois has resumed issuing social equity licenses, having issued 177 of the 185 licenses it was supposed to issue as of late July. On August 6, 2022, WTTW News reported that the Department of Financial and Professional Regulation has issued 177 “conditional” licenses of the 185 licenses that were awarded by the lottery last summer. Those that received a license now have 180 days to open their stores and get final…
Click here to read the full report. Click here to read the press release for this analysis. SUMMARY Governor JB Pritzker’s proposed fiscal year 2023 budget benefits from extraordinary revenue growth as the State has recovered strongly from the pandemic, with surpluses projected for both FY2022 and FY2023. The Governor has prudently prioritized the use of much of the FY2022 and FY2023 surplus to pay down debt, increase reserves, make supplemental pension payments and advance other important…
Governor JB Pritzker’s proposed FY2023 State Budget directs funding to a number of public safety initiatives, including funding to implement Public Act 101-0652, known as the SAFE-T Act, signed into law by Governor Pritzker in February 2021. The sweeping criminal justice reform bill changes various policies and practices across the entire justice system including the courts, prisons and law enforcement agencies. The Civic Federation plans to release its full analysis of the Governor’s…
Illinois Governor JB Pritzker’s fourth budget recommendation proposes taking advantage of a stronger than expected economic recovery to fund supplemental spending and additional pension contributions in the current year, along with plans to rebuild the State’s meager rainy day fund. The balanced spending plan starkly contrasts projections made when the current FY2022 budget was approved in June 2021, as well as in November 2021 updated projections, which at the time showed a deficit for FY2023…
On November 9, 2021, the Governor’s Office of Management and Budget (GOMB) released the Illinois Economic and Fiscal Policy Report. The report includes a comparison of the FY2022 enacted budget with the current outlook for FY2022 and a five-year budgetary forecast. The FY2022 Enacted Budget On June 17, 2021, Governor JB Pritzker signed the State’s fiscal year 2022 budget, contained in P.A. 102-0016 and P.A. 101-0107, into law. The legislative sessions held this past spring were both in-person…
Illinois enacted a $48.7 billion multi-year FY2022 capital budget in June 2021. 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. The current capital budget was initially approved in 2019 as the Rebuild Illinois capital plan. The Civic Federation reviewed the FY2022 enacted capital…
The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy (Lincoln Institute) released last week an evaluation of common property tax relief programs used across the United States. The report also makes recommendations for the best practices in promoting a property tax system that is fair and also retains the ability to provide sustainable revenue. The Civic Federation has long supported some of the reforms recommended in the report, such as circuit breakers. For Illinois policymakers, we believe the report is an…
In a report released last week, the Civic Federation and the Illinois Supreme Court presented a first-of-its-kind statewide analysis of the total amount of bond payments collected in criminal cases and how those dollars are distributed at the conclusion of a criminal case. Beginning January 1, 2023, judges may no longer order someone accused of a crime to pay a monetary amount in order to secure their release from pretrial detention. In anticipation of this change in policy (enacted through…
