On June 26, 2014, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle issued a preliminary budget forecast for fiscal year 2015, which begins on December 1, 2014. The report also provides estimated year-end results for FY2014. A public hearing on the preliminary FY2015 budget will be held on July 16, 2014. Board President Preckwinkle plans to present her final budget proposal for FY2015 in…
Last week Cook County Clerk David Orr announced upcoming changes to property tax bills that will allow residential and business taxpayers with properties located inside tax increment financing (TIF) districts to see how much of their payments are going to TIF funds. For the first time, Cook County second installment property tax bills mailed this summer will show the tax amount and percentage of…
Cook County is a home rule government with three primary responsibilities: collecting tax and fee revenue, protecting public health through the administration of a public health and hospital system and ensuring public safety and justice through the operation of a jail and court system. The main divisions of the public safety system in Cook County include the Chief Judge, Clerk of the…
On May 28, 2014, The Civic Federation sent this letter to Representitive Elaine Nekritz and the members of the House Personnel and Pensions Committee in advance of a 4 p.m. hearing on House Bill 1154. The Civic Federation commends Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, Cook County Commissioner Bridget Gainer and Cook County Chief Financial Officer Ivan Samstein for their work to assemble a…
Chicago and Cook County residents who followed the pension debate at the State of Illinois might be surprised by the fact that proposals for pension reform for the City of Chicago and Cook County and pension reform legislation enacted for the Chicago Park District all require increases to employer contributions. This is in direct contrast to an Illinois process that focused on evaluating how much…
New actuarial reports released by the Cook County Pension Fund this month show a slight improvement in the Fund’s financial position in 2013 due to better than expected investment returns. Despite the improved performance, however, the Fund is projected to become insolvent by 2038. The Cook County Pension Fund has experienced a sharp decline in funding over the last decade, from a funded ratio…
More Illinois residents than originally projected are signing up for Medicaid as a result of the federal Affordable Care Act, but the long-term impact on the State budget remains unclear. Illinois officials had initially projected that 241,500 new recipients would sign up by the end of the current fiscal year on June 30, 2014. The current enrollment estimate for year-end FY2014 is 78.1% higher…
A recent report by the Illinois Supreme Court raises significant concerns about Cook County’s pretrial services. The Cook County Pretrial Services Department (PSD) was established in 1990 to address a host of concerns, not the least of which was overcrowding. While inmate crowding at the Cook County Jail first garnered major media and legislative attention in the 1960s and 1970s and culminated…
In 2013 President Preckwinkle formed a blue-ribbon commission of local leaders to develop the Next Century Conservation Plan to help provide vision and guidance to the Forest Preserve District of Cook County (FPDCC) for the next 25 years. In January 2014, the commission presented the plan to President Preckwinkle and shortly after it was accepted by the Cook County Forest Preserve District…
Morningstar Municipal Credit Research released a report this month comparing aggregate per capita pension liabilities among the 25 most populous cities in the United States. This means Morningstar analysts added overlapping governments’ pension liabilities to those of the cities themselves to try to get an idea of the total pension burden faced by residents of each of the cities. The Civic…
