On August 24, 2021, Governor Pritzker signed legislation that will create a Higher Education Evidence-Based Funding Commission to evaluate higher education funding in Illinois. The Commission will make recommendations to the General Assembly and the Illinois Board of Higher Education (IBHE) on how to establish an adequate and stable equity-based funding model. This blog post includes information about previous higher education funding in Illinois and the new commission’s mission. Higher…
The Illinois General Assembly recently passed major revisions to its initial 2019 adult-use cannabis law. The revisions target an important provision of the original law that was meant to ensure access by disadvantaged communities to the growing and lucrative cannabis industry. House Bill 1443 awaits the Governor’s approval, and he has indicated he will sign it. In previous blog posts about cannabis legislation in Illinois, the Civic Federation has focused on the taxation and regulatory…
Recently, Cook County, the State of Illinois and other jurisdictions across the U.S. have begun to implement policy changes to reduce reliance on monetary bail and release more individuals while awaiting trial. These changes come amid a national push to make the criminal justice system more fair and reduce the number of criminal defendants held in jail pretrial based on their inability to pay bail. The federal system in Washington, D.C. eliminated cash bail in the 1990s. In the move away from a…
UPDATE: On February 22, 2021, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker signed House Bill 3653 Senate Amendment 2 into law as Public Act 101-0652 – dubbed the SAFE-T Act (Safety, Accountability, Fairness and Equity – Today). In December 2022, a series of amendments to the SAFE-T Act were passed by the Illinois General Assembly and signed by the Governor into Public Act 102-1104. For a summary of the amendments to the SAFE-T Act, see the Civic Federation’s summary here. On January 13, 2021 in the final…
On January 21, 2021, the Civic Federation sent the following letter to Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, urging him to veto House Bill 2451. The bill would expand a 3% non-compounded automatic annual increase to Chicago firefighters’ pensions to all Tier 1 members. The bill passed over the opposition of the leadership of the City of Chicago during the recent lame duck session of the Illinois General Assembly and was not tied to any assistance to help Chicago pay for this benefit enhancement,…
Click here to view the Civic Federation's 2021 Legislative Priorities document. OVERVIEW A large part of the Civic Federation's mission is to effect positive policy changes by working with public officials. To that end, the Federation will actively support legislation to advance the priorities and important financial reforms outlined in this document. Due to a number of factors, the Civic Federation has reorganized its 2021 Legislative Priorities document relative to past years.…
2020 Civic Federation Legislative Priorities The Civic Federation's legislative priorities for 2020 include public employee pension reforms, consolidation of local government units in Illinois, enacting policies to rationalize the property tax system, creation of a Local Government Protection Authority, requiring the State of Illinois to build a rainy day fund, development and implementation of a capital improvement plan and…
2019 Civic Federation Legislative Priorities The Civic Federation's legislative priorities for 2019 include public employee pension reforms, consolidation of local government units in Illinois, enacting policies to rationalize the property tax system, creation of a Local Government Protection Authority, requiring the State of Illinois to build a rainy day fund, development and implementation of a capital improvement plan and improved…
2018 Civic Federation Legislative Priorities The Civic Federation's legislative priorities for 2018 include public employee pension reforms, consolidation of local government units in Illinois, enacting policies to rationalize the property tax system, creation of a Local Government Protection Authority, requiring the State of Illinois to build a rainy day fund, development and implementation of a capital improvement plan, among others. …
2017 Civic Federation Legislative Priorities The Civic Federation's legislative priorities for 2017 include public employee pension reforms, consolidation of local government units in Illinois, expanding the sales tax base while controlling spending, creation of a Local Government Protection Authority, requiring the State of Illinois to build a rainy day fund, development and implementation of a capital improvement plan and extending the …
