Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner, Wirepoints News
Illinois Democrats vote for 17% lawmaker pay hike, to $85K, even as their constituents struggle
We’ve reported several times how hard Illinoisans have had it in recent years, especially when it comes to work. Illinois currently has the nation’s second-highest unemployment rate. Jobs are less plentiful today than when Gov. Pritzker took office, down by nearly 150,000 (see appendix). Not to mention Illinoisans had to endure some of the most draconian Covid lockdowns in the country, a doubling of gas taxes, nasty inflation, and more.
Over 460 soon-to-expire teachers union contracts and the 'Workers' Rights' Amendment make Illinois' April school board elections critical
With the “Workers Rights” Amendment now part of the state constitution, expect local teachers unions to test the limits of their new powers. Sure they’ll demand more pay given the record inflation, but it’s around school curriculums where Illinois parents should be most concerned. The amendment gives Illinois teachers new collective bargaining rights to negotiate over more issues, including curriculums, potentially eroding parents’ rights further.
1,000 days: Pritzker's emergency declarations kill jobs, increase Illinois' dependence on government
Gov. Pritzker recently extended his Disaster Proclamation for Illinois for the 37th straight time, a period that now stretches over 1,000 days.
Illinois pension debts jump back up to $140 billion; State shortchanges its annual contribution by $4.4 billion
What the market giveth, the market taketh away. Illinois state’ pension debts jumped back to near-record high of $140 billion in 2022, largely due to the funds’ poor investment performance. Both the stocks and bond markets had negative returns, worsening the state’s unfunded liability by $10 billion.
Amendment 1 makes vast majority of Illinoisans subservient to government workers: 7 percent lords over 93 percent
Amendment 1’s codification into the constitution was a mistake. We’ve repeatedly written about the troubles it’s about to cause: higher property taxes, complicated labor disputes, a tied-up court system, fewer parents rights, and a host of legal challenges in the private sector. See our Amendment 1 page for full details.
A 36th-straight Illinois Covid emergency declaration; 979 days under Pritzker's executive orders
It’s been so long now that most of the media and many Illinoisans no longer care that Gov. J.B. Pritzker continues to maintain a Covid disaster declaration for all of Illinois’ 102 counties. And with the elections out of the way, many may care even less.
Gov. Pritzker continues to abuse his executive powers: 949 days and counting
He’s done it again. Gov. J.B. Pritzker issued his 35th Covid Disaster Proclamation on October 14, 2022.
Threatening Illinoisans' safety: Six major flaws in the SAFE-T Act's end to cash bail
Proponents of Illinois’ SAFE-T Act claim that the law’s provisions to end the cash bail will make Illinoisans more safe once the provisions are implemented on January 1, 2023. They claim the new law will give judges more discretion to detain dangerous criminal suspects. They also claim that the law poses no problem for the state’s many jurisdictions concerned they’ll have to release what could total thousands of potentially dangerous defendants on January 1 as a result of the elimination of bail.
Here are the four most important votes for Illinoisans in November, three of which many know little about
Most Illinoisans will go to the voting booth this November thinking the Darren Bailey vs. J.B. Pritzker contest for governor is the only statewide race that really matters. But three other November 2022 votes matter a lot, too, a couple being arguably more consequential than the governor’s race.
Gov. Pritzker is still proclaiming Illinois a Covid 'disaster area:' How does he do it with a straight face?
Gov. J.B. Pritzker recently declared Illinois a Covid disaster area for the 31st consecutive 30-day period. For more than two years, the governor has invoked a “disaster” to rule by executive order. It’s what allowed him to lock down businesses, impose mask mandates, close schools and micromanage healthcare across the state.
Illinois has been bleeding its wealthiest residents for years; Now it's Ken Griffin's turn to leave
“First and foremost, respect the taxpayer. Start losing taxpayers and it’s a downward spiral from there.” That’s the advice a wise man from Detroit had for Chicago when I visited the Motor City right after it filed for bankruptcy in 2013. It was just one of five lessons I was told Illinois should learn from Detroit’s collapse.
Your breakfast costs 45 percent more than it did two years ago: Who's to blame for such sky-high inflation?
The federal government has failed spectacularly to manage the risk of inflation. For many, that’s no surprise given the unprecedented government-enforced lockdowns, the trillions of dollars spent on bailouts and a haphazard implementation of the green energy agenda.
Poor student achievement and near-zero accountability: An indictment of Illinois' public education system
If what follows isn’t an indictment of Illinois’ education establishment, we don’t know what is. Of Decatur’s public school 3rd-graders in 2019, just 2 percent of black and 16 percent of white students could read at grade level. In Rockford, it was 7 percent of black students. In Peoria, 8 percent of blacks. And in Elgin, just 11 percent of Hispanic 3rd-graders could read at grade level. Similar results can be found across the state.
Bleeding people: New IRS migration data shows Illinois lost another 100,000 residents and a record amount of wealth in 2020
A Wirepoints analysis of the Internal Revenue Service’s just-released migration data shows Illinois lost, on net, another 101,000 residents to other states in 2020. The state ranked third-worst nationally for net resident losses, both in number of people and per capita.
Thirty years of pain: Illinoisans suffer as property tax bills grow far faster than household incomes, home values
Any way you cut them, the residential property taxes Illinoisans pay are punitive.
The Covid bailouts can paper over Illinois' fiscal mess, but they can't hide Illinois' GDP, employment and population failures
It’s amazing what nearly $200 billion in federal COVID aid can do to paper over a state’s crumbling finances. Illinois’ state tax revenues are temporarily at record levels, the unpaid bills backlog has been cut and Illinois even saw its credit rating saved from the precipice of junk. Comptroller Susana Mendoza recently called the state’s changed circumstances an “absolutely remarkable turnaround.”
Parents, keep an eye on your school's sex ed curriculum. It may be more extreme than you think
It doesn’t matter where you stand on the issues of sex-ed, pronoun usage or transgenderism in school, you should know who’s teaching your kids, what they’re teaching them and whether there’s more than meets the eye.
It's not just Illinois homeowners that suffer: Businesses pay some of the nation's highest property taxes too
We recently wrote about how Illinoisans are burdened by the nation’s highest effective property taxes. New research by ATTOM ranked Illinois residential property tax rates as number one in 2021, just ahead of New Jersey.
New census release: 81 of Illinois' 102 counties lost population in 2021, Cook County lost the 3rd-most nationwide
When the U.S. Census Bureau released its state population estimates for 2021 last December, Illinois’ population drop of 114,000 was the second-largest in the country on a percentage basis. Illinois lost nearly 1 percent of its population.
A stunning miscalculation: CDC cuts nation's reported child COVID deaths by nearly 25 percent
One of the greatest sins of our government’s approach to the COVID pandemic has been its oppressive treatment of children. Lockdowns, remote-learning and other mitigation policies have stunted the mental, physical, social and emotional development of children for two years. Research and coverage from NPR, New York Times, the Atlantic and other media increasingly show the damage to children has been enormous, though we won’t know the full impact for decades.