It is conventional wisdom that taxpayers in Illinois pay some of the highest property taxes in the nation. That assertion is borne out in a report released last week by the Tax Foundation. The Foundation’s report provides a county-by-county and state-by-state context for evaluating property tax burden across the United States. Local governments in Illinois rely on the property tax to fund…
With the increasingly polarized political environment and the November 2022 mid-term election approaching, the debate about pretrial reforms in Illinois has been at the forefront in the news media and on social media. The pretrial reforms, referred to as the Pretrial Fairness Act, were passed via Public Act 101-0652, known as the SAFE-T Act (Safety, Accountability, Fairness and Equity-Today).…
The General Assembly has approved and Governor Pritzker has signed an approximately $46.5 billion FY2023 capital budget. Unlike the State’s annual General Funds budget, which is intended to cover only the cost of operations for the current fiscal year, capital appropriations are reauthorized over multiple years as planning, engineering and construction of capital investments commence. Since 2005…
The criminal justice system in Illinois is comprised of a multitude of different agencies and systems. This blog post will focus on the departments that make up the key criminal justice system agencies within Chicago and the State of Illinois, including agencies from three levels of government: municipal (City of Chicago), county (Cook County) and state (the State of Illinois). Each agency plays…
On April 9, 2022 the Illinois General Assembly passed the three bills that comprise the FY2023 budget and FY2022 supplemental appropriations. On April 19 the Governor signed the bills into law. The FY2023 budget was passed nearly two months earlier than in previous years because the State’s primary election was moved to June from the usual March date and the General Assembly adjourned early to…
On March 24, 2022, the Civic Federation released its annual analysis and recommendations for the Governor’s proposed State of Illinois FY2023 Operating and Capital Budgets. The proposed budget noted that since the enactment of the FY2022 State Budget, revenue collections have continuously exceeded expectations. This strong performance has prompted both the Governor’s Office of Management and…
Update (August 12, 2022): Following almost a year of delays, the State of Illinois has resumed issuing social equity licenses, having issued 177 of the 185 licenses it was supposed to issue as of late July. On August 6, 2022, WTTW News reported that the Department of Financial and Professional Regulation has issued 177 “conditional” licenses of the 185 licenses that were awarded by the lottery…
Click here to read the full report. Click here to read the press release for this analysis. SUMMARY Governor JB Pritzker’s proposed fiscal year 2023 budget benefits from extraordinary revenue growth as the State has recovered strongly from the pandemic, with surpluses projected for both FY2022 and FY2023. The Governor has prudently prioritized the use of much of the FY2022 and FY2023 surplus…
Governor JB Pritzker’s proposed FY2023 State Budget directs funding to a number of public safety initiatives, including funding to implement Public Act 101-0652, known as the SAFE-T Act, signed into law by Governor Pritzker in February 2021. The sweeping criminal justice reform bill changes various policies and practices across the entire justice system including the courts, prisons and law…
Illinois Governor JB Pritzker’s fourth budget recommendation proposes taking advantage of a stronger than expected economic recovery to fund supplemental spending and additional pension contributions in the current year, along with plans to rebuild the State’s meager rainy day fund. The balanced spending plan starkly contrasts projections made when the current FY2022 budget was approved in June…
