This article profiles the Civic Federation’s support of the City Colleges of Chicago budget. The Federation’s budget analysis praised City Colleges' decision to hold its property tax levy flat for the next two years. This article also mentions the Civic Federation’s work with L.E.K. Consulting to analyze the financial aspects of the Chicago 2016 Olympic bid. Click here to read the Federation's full analysis of the FY2010 City Colleges of Chicago budget.
In this interview, Civic Federation President Laurence Msall discusses the Illinois State operating budget deficit and the State’s unwise choice to borrow money in order to make its mandatory pension contributions.
This editorial examines the Illinois General Assembly and Governor Pat Quinn’s difficulty in passing an operating budget that does not rely on borrowing to meet its obligations. The Civic Federation is quoted enumerating the many problems with the budget and how the State does business.
This editorial mentions the Civic Federation as one of the many groups opposed to Governor Pat Quinn’s plan to legalize video poker to help finance the State’s $31 billion infrastructure repair bill.
In this column, Mark Brown discusses the State’s current fiscal crisis, and the choices that the State made to get to this point, and the possible loss of State services in the future. He quotes the Civic Federation, which says that Illinois’ fiscal problems are worse than California’s because that state has ceased postponing hard budgetary decisions.
Laurence Msall, President of the Civic Federation, is interviewed on this segment of Chicago Tonight about the State’s budgetary problems. Msall points out that the State is pushing off its hard decisions to a later date in favor of borrowing today.
In this blog post, Greg Hinz discusses Illinois’ capital plan and the various infrastructure needs throughout the State. Hinz notes that the Civic Federation has urged lawmakers to prioritize spending through a capital improvement plan before any funds were allocated.
In a blog post about the programs the Illinois capital budget will fund, Greg Hinz mentions the Civic Federation as one of the major supporters of the State producing a capital improvement plan as a way of prioritizing projects in the budget.
A new study from the Rockefeller Institute of Government in Albany, New York reports that total state tax collections for the first quarter of 2009 declined by 11.8% from the same quarter last year. This is the largest decline since 1963 and can be attributed in large part to the impact of the current recession. There were sharp reductions in collections for all three of the major state revenue sources: Sales Taxes declined by 8.3%; Personal Income Taxes declined by 17.6%; and…
In order to make its capital selection process more transparent in FY2009, the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) has revised the way in which is selects and prioritizes capital projects. CTA’s revised capital selection process includes an additional layer of accountability with the creation of a new Capital Governance Board consisting of five of the CTA’s executive vice presidents, its budget director, and its director of planning. The Capital Governance Board will review the FY2010-…
