The Civic Federation supports the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District’s tentative budget of $1.2 billion for its responsible pension practices and transparent long-term planning. The District is prudently basing its pension contribution this year on the actuarial needs of the fund, rather than blindly following statutory requirements. The District’s responsible pension fund stewardship is…
In 2011, as part of its FY2012 budgeting process, the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District (MWRD) Retirement Board proposed legislative initiatives for pension funding reform, with the support of the MWRD Board of Commissioners.[1] In its FY2012 budget analysis, the Civic Federation supported the MWRD’s initiative to seek pension funding reforms. The legislation increases the contributions to…
The Civic Federation supports the $425.6 million Chicago Park District budget for continuing the District’s multi-year effort to reduce its structural deficit. The proposal includes a broad-based property tax increase after eight years of relatively flat levies for the District. It also leaves the District well-positioned to implement the comprehensive pension reforms passed by the Illinois…
UPDATE: On January 7, 2014, Governor Pat Quinn signed Senate Bill 1523 into law. The provisions of Public Act 98-0622 will go into effect starting January 1, 2015. Original blog post published on November 20, 2013 On November 6, 2013, the Illinois House passed Senate Bill 1523, House Amendments 3 and 4 and the Senate concurred with the changes the next day. The bill contains a number of…
The Civic Federation supports the Chicago Transit Authority’s (CTA) proposed FY2014 operating budget of nearly $1.4 billion. After two years of difficult but necessary steps to stabilize its operations, the CTA has produced a balanced budget with no fare increases. The FY2014 budget reflects significant steps taken by the CTA in recent years to match ongoing expenses with recurring revenues and…
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 seventh Chicago-area government or government agency to have been downgraded since July. In describing its concerns, the ratings agency cited the financial condition and recent credit rating downgrades of the City of Chicago, Cook…
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 funds. However, the Federation warns that these achievements are threatened by the declining health of the District’s pension fund. The District’s reasonable budget plan is only possible because State law…
As part of its ongoing analysis of State and local government budgets, the Civic Federation also reviews proposed capital budgets along with any planning documents provided in support of infrastructure investments. Although many governments approve new and reappropriated capital spending on an annual basis, few public entities in Illinois have based these expenditures on comprehensive capital…
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 and reducing their funded ratios. The State of Illinois’ five retirement funds also recently reduced their…
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’ proposed FY2013 budgets. The governments studied by the Civic Federation include: the City Colleges of Chicago and…
