Illinois’ current budget started out at a deficit, hoped for a tax increase that was rejected and counted on a federal bail-out that never came. Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s best fix is pension reform.
When Illinois state lawmakers wrote the mail-in voting law, they decided voters who did not seek a mail-in ballot should receive a letter from the state, and then another.
Pritzker should join other Democratic governors in postponing automatic pay raises, which would free up funds for needy Illinoisans and potentially preserve state worker jobs in the long run.
The largest permanent income tax hike in Illinois history was followed by a slide to 34th least-free state in the union, behind nearly every neighboring state.
If you found out you habitually had been overcharged for something or charged for something you didn’t want or know you were getting, you’d have a right to complain, to expect an end to the abuse and to receive reimbursement in full.
State records show AFSCME Council 31 funnels membership dues into its political action committee, which just gave a record-breaking $767,800 donation to Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan.
In the wake of the U.S Supreme Court’s landmark decision to declare unconstitutional forced union fees, the legal and political landscape will undoubtedly change. But precisely what will change, and how and when those changes will roll out, remains anybody’s guess.
WASHINGTON – Taxpayers should brace for strikes now that government unions can no longer compel members to pay agency fees for political campaigns, attorney David Frederick said last December arguing for unions before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Illinois' powerful public school lobbying groups mobilized to beat back a measure that would have reined in massive school district borrowing, often concealed from taxpayers.
Mark Janus learned about public service from a young age, growing up as a Boy Scout in Springfield. He eventually became an Eagle Scout. And he’s passed along his knowledge to young men and women from the state’s capital while leading scouting trips to Florida.
A group of nine Republicans currently serving in the Illinois General Assembly, including two rookie state lawmakers, have signed their names to a brief filed with the U.S. Supreme Court, asking the court to uphold the state’s ability to allow unions to extract fees from government employees who don’t wish to join a union, arguing the country’s founding federalist principles should allow the 50 states to decide such policy questions for themselves.
Critics of policy decisions that prop up labor organizations at the expense of taxpayers have said it’s no mistake that some of the state's most consequential and political legal battles - contract negotiations, worker pay and union dues - have been filed in “union friendly” St. Clair County.
St. Clair County Associate Judge Chris Kolker has ruled that Gov. Bruce Rauner's executive order prohibiting the collection of union dues from non-union state workers violates collective bargaining agreements.
WASHINGTON - The U.S. Supreme Court announced it will hear oral arguments in Janus v. AFSCME on Feb. 26, in a case challenging the constitutionality of compulsory union dues for state government workers.
The Fifth District Appellate Court dealt Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner a setback Nov. 6 by ruling in favor of union employees on the question of stepped salary increases, saying whether or not there is a collective bargaining agreement in place, the union workers are owed the regular pay raises, which the state hasn't paid since a contract expired in 2015.
For four decades, government workers have been denied their First Amendment right to freedom of association, but that could change with a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2018.
The U.S. Supreme Court will again wade into the question of whether public sector worker unions can force government employees who don’t wish to join their union to still pay fees, ostensibly for collective bargaining representation.
SPRINGFIELD – Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan has asked the Supreme Court for direct appeal of a St. Clair County order preserving a normal payroll for state employees in the absence of appropriations.
