This blog continues the Civic Federation’s examination of indicators that can be used to assess the financial health of local governments. The Federation is working on a project that compares the City of Chicago with a group of thirteen large U.S. cities that have also been the subject of analysis by the Pew Charitable Trusts’ Philadelphia Research Initiative. Previous entries examined the City of Chicago’s fund balance ratio, continuing service ratio and operating deficit ratio. This blog…
This blog continues the Civic Federation’s examination of indicators that can be used to assess the financial health of local governments. The Federation is working on a project that compares the City of Chicago with a group of thirteen large U.S. cities that have also been the subject of analysis by the Pew Charitable Trusts’ Philadelphia Research Initiative. Previous entries examined the City of Chicago’s fund balance ratio and continuing service ratio. This blog examines the operating…
In order to address sometimes inconsistent application of reporting standards for fund balance by governments, the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) issued GASB Statement No. 54: Fund Balance Reporting and Governmental Fund Type Definitions in February 2009. GASB Statement No. 54 shifts the focus of fund balance reporting from the availability of fund resources for budgeting purposes to the “extent to which the government is bound to honor constraints on the specific purposes for…
The Civic Federation is working on a project to examine indicators that can be used to assess the financial health of local governments. Previously, this blog compared Chicago’s fund balance with a group of thirteen large U.S. cities that have also been the subject of analysis by the Pew Charitable Trusts’ Philadelphia Research Initiative. This entry compares Chicago to the same group of cities for a different indicator: the continuing services ratio. While the fund balance ratio considers…
In 2011 the Civic Federation blog provided weekly context, information and perspective on government budgets and fiscal issues across Illinois. Posts in 2011 focused on FY2012 local government budget analysis and the severe challenges facing local government pension funds, as well as a series of recommendations for improving the fiscal sustainability of the City of Chicago and Cook County. The following is a selection of the year’s posts. FY2012 Local Government Budget…
In 2011 the IIFS blog provided weekly context, information and perspective on key fiscal issues in the State of Illinois. Posts in 2011 focused on analysis of FY2012 Illinois budget negotiations, analysis of the ongoing Illinois pension crisis and timely research on other fiscal issues impacting the State of Illinois. The following is a selection of the year’s posts. Analysis of FY2012 Illinois Budget Negotiations The IIFS blog opened the year by examining the implications of a…
A government’s fund balance represents savings that it has accumulated and is an important indicator of fiscal health. Previously this blog compared the fund balance levels and policies of the nine Chicago area local governments whose budgets the Civic Federation analyzes. This blog entry compares Chicago with a group of thirteen large U.S. cities that have also been the recent subject of analysis by the Pew Charitable Trusts’ Philadelphia Research Initiative. The Government Finance Officers…
This report examines trends in expenditures, revenues, fund balance, personnel, and long-term debt for 1099 local governments in Cook, Lake, DuPage, Kane, McHenry, and Will counties. It includes aggregate data on counties, forest preserve districts, townships, municipalities, school districts, park districts, and special purpose districts. The study found that local government expenditures per capita grew at a rate almost double that of revenue from FY2000-FY2003.
This report presents a macro-level overview of expenditure, revenue, debt and personnel trends of 1,043 governments in Cook, Lake, DuPage, Kane, McHenry, and Will Counties. It includes FY1997 and FY2000 comparative information for counties, municipalities, school districts and other special districts.
