This segment on the news program “Eight Forty-Eight” examines Chicago Public Schools’ proposed FY2010 budget and the District’s underfunded pension system. It features an interview with Civic Federation President Laurence Msall, who says that union contracts will likely need to be examined and possibly renegotiated in order to avert a looming pension crisis.
This in-depth profile of Mike Madigan, Speaker of the Illinois House, cites Civic Federation research into Illinois’ public employee pension system, which indicates the system has $73.4 billion in unfunded pension liabilities.
More details are finally available on the FY2010 operating budget, and it would be difficult to describe it as balanced—even on paper. Depending on how you look at it, there is technically either a $157 million deficit or an $872 million surplus in the budget approved by the General Assembly and signed by Governor Pat Quinn on July 15, 2009. However, those numbers don’t take into account the $3.5…
The Civic Federation supports the $492.1 million City Colleges of Chicago FY2010 budget because it is a prudent spending plan that both holds the District’s property tax levy flat over the next two years and compensates for uncertainties in State funding by proposing alternative plans to support core academic programs. The Federation is concerned that City Colleges is predicting revenue…
Over the years, Illinois’ poorly funded retirement systems have put an enormous strain on the State’s budget. At times, the State has chosen to simply avoid the burden by making smaller contributions to the pension funds than required under a 1995 pension funding law. As part of the $54 billion FY2010 operating budget passed on July 15, 2009, the General Assembly and Governor chose to make…
In this column, Steve Huntley explores the deadlock in Springfield over the State of Illinois budget. He cites the Civic Federation’s analysis of Governor Quinn’s proposed budget, which advocated state employee pension and health care benefit reforms and budget cuts before any kind of tax increase.
The Civic Federation's Institute for Illinois' Fiscal Sustainability produced this analysis of the proposed FY2010 Illinois operating and capital budgets. The Civic Federation does not support the proposed operating budget because it raises taxes without fixing the state's structural deficit. If significant pension and employee healthcare reforms are implemented, the Federation could support a…
Urges General Assembly to Reject Proposed Illinois Budget CHICAGO (May 11, 2009)—The Civic Federation rejects Governor Pat Quinn’s proposed $52.9 billion FY2010 operating budget because it raises taxes without fixing the state’s core problems. The Federation’s new Institute for Illinois’ Fiscal Sustainability released today a 90-page analysis of the budget, offering alternative proposals that…
This report provides a trend analysis of indicators that measure the financial health and performance of ten major local government pension funds from 1998 to 2007, the most recent year for which audited data are available. It finds that unfunded liabilities for the ten funds climbed even during years of good investment returns, increasing from $4.8 to $17.1 billion in ten years, and makes…
While the ten major local government employee pension funds in Cook County experienced a slight decrease in their total deficit before the onset of recession in late 2007, the Civic Federation has found that local pension funds were in trouble well before the decline in the stock market. The Federation’s annual status of local pensions report, released today, concluded that the funds’ total…
