A week after passing legislation to address a $1.6 billion budget deficit before the end of the fiscal year in June, the State swept $300 million into its operating accounts from funds designated to pay for annual transportation construction projects. An additional $200 million sweep of sales tax funds collected by the State to be distributed to local governments has yet to be transferred over to the State’s General Funds. As previously discussed here, Governor Bruce Rauner and the General…
The State of Illinois recently enacted legislation designed to close a $1.6 billion budget gap for the fiscal year ending on June 30, 2015. This blog post reviews the causes of the operating deficit and examines Public Acts 99-0001 and 99-0002, which were signed by Governor Bruce Rauner on March 27. As explained here, the State faced a steep decline in revenues in FY2015 because of the partial rollback of temporary income tax rate increases on January 1, 2015, midway through the fiscal…
Short-term or current liabilities are financial obligations that must be satisfied within one year. They can include short-term debt, accounts payable, accrued payroll and other current liabilities. This blog post presents 12-year trends for 1) total short-term liabilities in the Governmental Funds and 2) short-term liabilities as a percentage of operating revenues for the three largest local governments the Civic Federation regularly monitors and evaluates: the City of Chicago, Cook County…
This article looks at both mayoral candidates’ proposals for addressing the City of Chicago’s financial challenges, which include severely underfunded pension funds, a high debt level and Chicago Public Schools’ $1 billion deficit. The Civic Federation said that even after pension fund reforms it is hard to see how these liabilities could be fully addressed without future property tax increases.
This column discusses Governor Rauner’s pension reform proposal which accounts for $2.2 billion of the projected savings in his FY2016 budget recommendation. The key component of the proposal is a freeze on the State’s Tier 1 pension benefits, which the Civic Federation’s Institute for Illinois’ Fiscal Sustainability examined in a recent blog.
This article analyzes the health of the financial reserves of 90 northeastern Illinois suburbs in response to Governor Rauner’s FY2016 budget proposal that included reducing municipalities’ shares of State Income Tax revenues. The Civic Federation said it would be very difficult for some local governments to absorb the revenue reduction and recommends the General Assembly and Governor work to ensure that the effort to balance the State budget won’t result in greater fiscal crises for local…
Alongside his first operating budget proposed for the State of Illinois, Governor Bruce Rauner also recommended a capital budget for FY2016 that proposes shifting previously vetoed spending authority to pay for delayed maintenance at State owned facilities across the state. As previously discussed here, former-Governor Pat Quinn vetoed the remaining $250 million from the FY2015 capital budget for additional work at the Capitol Complex in response to criticism that restorations at the Capitol…
This article discusses the budget Governor Rauner proposed earlier in February, which closes a $6.2 billion budget gap through program reductions and a pension reform proposal. The piece cites recommendations from the Civic Federation’s FY2016 State of Illinois Budget Roadmap, including broadening the tax base to include some retirement income and select services.
In his first budget proposal for the State of Illinois, Governor Bruce Rauner recommended more than $4 billion in spending cuts and $2.2 billion in estimated pension savings to close a projected budget gap of over $6 billion in fiscal year 2016. The proposed $31.5 billion General Funds budget, issued on February 18, 2015, has steep cuts to many programs, including Medicaid and human services, and reduces State support for public universities, local governments and transit districts. Areas…
The Chicago Public Schools audited financial statements for fiscal year 2014 released last week indicate the deterioration of the District’s fiscal condition continued through the end of FY2014. The District’s most recent Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR) reports ending FY2014 with an operating funds deficit of $513 million, which it closed using fund balance. This deficit was smaller than the $642 million budget gap that was anticipated when the District released its FY2015…
