The Civic Federation opposes the City of Chicago's proposed $5.9 billion budget. The budget proposes an additional $266.6 million in new spending and includes a $108.0 million property tax increase, the largest in recent Chicago history. We believe that the 15.1% property tax increase should be rejected and the city should maintain its self-imposed property tax cap. We believe that the city has not made a compelling case for why libraries--the intended beneficiaries of the property tax increase…
The Civic Federation supports the Forest Preserve District's proposed $175.2 million budget because the District has issued a Capital Improvement Plan for the second consecutive year and made it available on its web site. The Federation makes a number of recommendations on ways to improve the financial management of the District.
The Civic Federation opposes the Cook County FY2008 proposed budget. The $3.2 billion budget includes a 267% increase in the county sales tax, the addition of 1,130 new positions, and other tax hikes that could generate as much as $979.8 million when fully implemented in FY2009. The Federation’s analysis includes recommendations that would both contain costs and provide much-needed improvements to the county’s management of tax dollars.
The Civic Federation gives qualified support to the Chicago Public Schools Recommended 5.8 billion dollar FY2008 operating budget. The District has made efforts to contain costs and improve budget transparency. However, the Civic Federation's support is based on the District's pledge to develop publicly-available long-term planning processes and documents next year. The Civic Federation also urges the District to reduce its property tax levy by 32 million dollars in response to unexpected…
The Civic Federation supports the City Colleges of Chicago's tentative $473.6 million FY2008 budget because the district will reduce its overall property tax burden, exercize fiscal restraint, and has increased the amount of time allowed for public comment and review. The Federation is concerned, however, that the budget does not contain current personnel or enrollment projections and predicts significant operating deficits by 2010.
The Civic Federation opposes the massive expansion of health care and long-term borrowing proposed in the FY2008 State budget recommendation, but offers qualified support for sale/lease of the State lottery and for reasonable revenue enhancements to fund education and mass transit. The Federation also urges the General Assembly to implement pension benefit reforms.
This report provides a trend analysis of indicators that measure the financial health and performance of ten major local government pension funds from 1997 to 2005. It finds a combined 16.5 billion dollars in unfunded liabilities for the ten funds, and makes numerous recommendations on legislative actions that should be taken to slow the downward spiral of pension underfunding.
This issue brief describes and explains the term "actuarially required contribution" (ARC) and compares the amount of annual contributions actually made to some of the major public pension funds in Illinois to their ARCs.
This issue brief describes dedicated revenue sources for state pension funds and recent proposals for dedicated revenue sources in Illinois. It then discusses important features of an effective dedicated pension revenue source.
The Civic Federation's legislative priorities for 2007 include public pension reform, property tax exemptions and assessment reform, revision of the Regional Transportation Authority Act, tax increment financing disclosure, timely county audits, and other post employment benefit trust fund authorization.
