The Illinois General Assembly recently passed major revisions to its initial 2019 adult-use cannabis law. The revisions target an important provision of the original law that was meant to ensure access by disadvantaged communities to the growing and lucrative cannabis industry. House Bill 1443 awaits the Governor’s approval, and he has indicated he will sign it. In previous blog posts about…
UPDATE - February 23 2022: This blog has been updated with corrections to the information about other states where court data is subject to disclosure through FOIA laws or court rules, under the section “How Illinois FOIA Law Compares to Other States.” Because the judiciary in Illinois is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), data disclosure and responses to requests…
Click here to read the full report. Click here to read the press release for this analysis. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The Civic Federation considers the Governor’s FY2022 budget recommendation to be a reasonable one-year short term response to pandemic-stressed financial and economic situation. It has many positive elements, such as holding most areas of agency spending flat at a time of uncertain…
As laid out in many Civic Federation blogs over the last several years, the State’s two pension buyout plans, which were enacted as part of the FY2019 budget legislation, were supposed to generate hundreds of millions of dollars of budgetary savings. But issues with implementation and with the savings projection itself meant that only a very small portion of those savings have actually been…
The Civic Federation’s recently released Inventory of Local Governments in Illinois report identified a total of 8,923 units of local government in Illinois. This includes 2,826 general purpose governments and 6,097 special purpose governments. In addition to providing a comprehensive list of local governments in Illinois, the report provides an overview of the different types of local…
Click here to read the full report. Click here to read the press release for this report. SUMMARY The multiplicity of local units of government, many of which are funded predominantly by property taxes, is often cited as a reason for high property tax rates in Illinois. Local government consolidation, cooperation and dissolution has therefore become a focus for many government leaders and…
Recently, Cook County, the State of Illinois and other jurisdictions across the U.S. have begun to implement policy changes to reduce reliance on monetary bail and release more individuals while awaiting trial. These changes come amid a national push to make the criminal justice system more fair and reduce the number of criminal defendants held in jail pretrial based on their inability to pay…
UPDATE: On February 22, 2021, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker signed House Bill 3653 Senate Amendment 2 into law as Public Act 101-0652 – dubbed the SAFE-T Act (Safety, Accountability, Fairness and Equity – Today). In December 2022, a series of amendments to the SAFE-T Act were passed by the Illinois General Assembly and signed by the Governor into Public Act 102-1104. For a summary of the…
Honoring Dr. Ngozi Ezike and Dr. Allison Arwady On Wednesday, February 10, 2021 the Motorola Solutions Foundation and the Civic Federation honored the outstanding public service contributions of Dr. Ngozi Ezike and Dr. Allison Arwady. Dr. Ezike serves as the Director of the Illinois Department of Public Health. Dr. Arwady serves as the Commissioner of the Chicago Department of Public Health. The…
UPDATE: In the final hours of the lame duck session on January 13, the Illinois General Assembly passed legislation providing for spending up to $150 million annually through fiscal year 2027 to modernize safety net hospitals. Senate Bill 1510, as amended, is similar to the transformation funding proposal described below by the State’s Medicaid agency. A new provision would allow for the creation…
