During President Barack Obama‘s first term, Democrats in Washington, D.C., labeled Republicans “The Party of No.” Whatever Obama tried to accomplish, Republicans shunned it.

At the time, Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, another Democrat, latched onto the same rhetoric, describing Republicans in Springfield as obstructionists. Madigan said the GOP had become “The Party of No,” with Republicans even opposing proposals that they knew would help the state but might hurt them come election time.

From a February 2010 Tribune story on the state budget:

“They don’t want to participate in the legislative process. They don’t want to participate in the government. They simply want to stand on the sidelines and point fingers and say, ‘Wherever there are problems, it’s the problems of the Democrats because they’re the majority party in the legislature,'” Madigan said.

The crisis in many state-pension funds is by now familiar: Unfunded obligations are at $1 trillion or more, according to the Pew Charitable Trusts. But there is a lesser-known aspect of the problem. Many boards of government pension funds, often composed of politicians and political appointees, have paid more than necessary to manage the $2.5 trillion of assets in these funds.

Consider the Illinois State Board of Investment. Over the past three years, it has paid hedge-fund managers more than $180 million in fees. Yet, even excluding compensation, the performance generated by these managers was worse than that of a balanced index fund. Such funds invest broadly in equities and bonds that simply track the market’s performance, while the current system adopts complexity at high costs.

A new report says state government employees in Illinois are pretty much the highest paid such workers in the nation.

The study for the Illinois Policy Institute, a conservative think tank, found the average salary for state workers here, when adjusted for cost of living, is just over $59,000 – about $10,000 more than the national average.

IPI vice president Ted Dabrowski wasn’t directly saying Illinois state workers – who are unionized – are overpaid, but he compared their wages to those in the private sector.

Illinois government employees are the highest-paid in the country, according to an Illinois Policy Institute report.

The non-partisan group found the average annual salary of state government workers in Illinois is $59,088 – in addition to other benefits such as health insurance and pensions – which is about $10,000 more than the national average for state workers.

The report also found that salaries for state workers in Illinois have increased by 41 percent since 2005. Meanwhile, earnings in the private sector have remained nearly flat.

For those who haven’t followed the contentious contract negotiations between Gov. Bruce Rauner’s administration and the state’s largest employee union, a close Rauner ally is out with an analysis of the dispute that does a pretty fair job of telling at least one side of the issue.

The report, from the Chicago-based Illinois Policy Institute, again alleges that AFSCME workers here are overpaid relative to workers in other states and in the public sector. Specifically, the institute says that the average state worker here gets just under $60,000, once inflation is taken into account.

The institute usually gets its basic facts right. But remember that it’s adjusting pay rates for perceived higher costs of living elsewhere. In terms of actual pay without adjustment, workers in California, New Jersey and Connecticut actually made more.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel, under fire for months over how the city investigates excessive force allegations against Chicago police, plans to propose abolishing the city’s beleaguered Independent Police Review Authority.

The city would replace the agency — known for sluggish investigations that rarely led to discipline — with a civilian agency “that has more independence and more resources to do its work,” Emanuel wrote in an essay released Friday. The essay offered few specifics about the new agency, though the mayor wrote that the details will be worked out in the coming weeks and presented at a City Council meeting June 22.

“…It is clear that a totally new agency is required to rebuild trust in investigations of officer-involved shootings and the most serious allegations of police misconduct,” the column says.

Five months ago, I pledged to the residents of Chicago that we would do whatever it takes to rebuild public trust and restore accountability in the police department. My goal is to bring safety to every community though building trust in our police department. That requires creating a new system for police accountability and oversight.

Today I can announce that in the coming weeks, we will have the final details worked out on a comprehensive plan to fundamentally reshape our system of police accountability and it will be introduced at the following meeting of the full City Council on June 22nd. It will be based on the thoughtful suggestions made by my Police Accountability Task Force. It will also be informed by the conversations my administration is having with aldermen, community leaders, the U.S. Department of Justice and experts in the field. We want to make sure the police accountability system is trusted by the members of the Chicago Police Department and the residents of Chicago.

As Illinois lawmakers consider a new school funding bill, Fox Valley school districts are contending with the possibility that budget gridlock will spill over into next year and leave them without state money.

Several have warned they don’t know how long they can remain open next year without state funding.

In Oswego, Community Unit School District 308 school board member Jared Ploger said recently the district, in the face of uncertainty and funding cuts, should consider cutting state testing and mandates that don’t affect students.