11.08.13
On October 25, 2013, Moody’s Investors Service downgraded the CTA’s bond rating to A1 from Aa3 and lowered its outlook to negative from stable. This makes it the...
Library
11.07.13
The Civic Federation supports the Forest Preserve District of Cook County’s FY2014 proposed $178.8 million budget that holds the property tax levy flat and maintains substantial reserve...
10.31.13
Recent trend analysis performed by the Civic Federation shows that the funded status of the Cook County Pension Fund declined again in fiscal year 2012, the most recent year for which data are available. The market value funded ratio for the County pension fund fell to 55.1% in FY2012 from 69.1...
10.28.13
The Civic Federation supports Cook County’s proposed FY2014 operating budget of $3.2 billion for holding the property tax levy relatively flat, reducing expenditures and aggressively...
10.09.13
Four large local government pension funds in the Chicago area reduced their expected investment rates of return for fiscal year 2012. While intended to make the funds’ actuarial assumptions more realistic, these decisions will also have the effect of increasing the funds’ liabilities...
10.03.13
Over the next few weeks, many Chicago-area local governments will be releasing their proposed budgets for fiscal year 2014. In preparation for the upcoming budget releases, this blog will recap the Civic Federation’s significant observations from our analyses of local governments’...
09.26.13
Since July 2013 each of the six local governments monitored by the Civic Federation with General Obligation bond debt has experienced downgrades to their bond ratings. These governments are the City of Chicago, Cook County, the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District (MWRD), the Forest Preserve...
08.28.13
The blogs for this week and next week will examine the long-term obligations of six selected municipalities in Illinois and their overlapping local governments using per capita indicators based on unfunded pension liabilities and bonded debt. The overlapping pensions per capita and the...
08.22.13
The Civic Federation does not support the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) proposed $6.6 billion operating budget for FY2014, which completely draws down unrestricted reserve funds and uses some...
08.08.13
Last week the City of Chicago released its Annual Financial Analysis for 2013 . According to an...