Reuters: Illinois sells $480 million in bonds after 20 month hiatus
Illinois sold $480 million of bonds on Thursday, its first debt issue in nearly two years, with the U.S. municipal market’s hunger for higher-yielding assets easing the interest penalty the state is paying for its fiscal woes.
The deal marks the first debt issuance under Republican Governor Bruce Rauner, who took office a year ago and is embroiled in a battle with Democrats in control of the legislature. The impasse has left the fifth-largest state without a budget six months into fiscal 2016.
Illinois’ enormous $111 billion unfunded pension liability and chronic structural budget deficit have driven up yields for its debt, making it more expensive for the state to borrow.
Fox Illinois: Rauner Praises Criminal Justice Taskforce
Criminal justice has been in the spotlight following police shootings, protests and climbing costs of dealing with crimes.
Here in Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner hopes to change all of that.
In the beginning weeks of his term, Governor Bruce Rauner signed an executive order creating the criminal justice taskforce.
The diverse group was charged with looking at ways to improve a system that’s costing the state more and more money every day.
WREX: AFSCME calls on Rauner to say whether contract talks stalled
The state’s largest public employee union has asked Gov. Bruce Rauner’s administration to flatly state whether contract talks are at a legal standstill.
A letter obtained by The Associated Press on Thursday from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees claims that at a session last Friday, the union made concessions on wages and health care, but Rauner’s team declared the year-old talks at impasse.
Administration officials later denied they had mentioned impasse but no further talks are set.
Crain's: Illinois penalized as it ends hiatus from muni bond market
Illinois, the worst-rated state in America, returned to the $3.7 trillion municipal-bond market for the first time in almost two years and paid a price for its financial turmoil.
The state, now in its seventh month without a budget, sold $480 million of general-obligation bonds to pay for transportation projects. The federally tax-exempt securities maturing in 2041 sold at a top yield of 4.27 percent, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That’s about 1.5 percentage points more than benchmark debt. When it last sold bonds in April 2014, that gap for debt due in 2039 was about 0.4 percentage point less.
“It’s generally a good result in line with or better than expectations given the credit deterioration since the last sale,” said Paul Mansour, the head of municipal research for Conning, which oversees $11 billion of state and local debt, including Illinois securities.
Sun-Times: Mayor Rahm Emanuel blinks — again — on city borrowing
For the second time this week, Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Wednesday did something he seldom, if ever, does: make a concession to the City Council on a major issue pivotal to city finances.
At the request of the anti-Emanuel Progressive Caucus, Emanuel shrunk his massive borrowing plan — by another $200 million — to ease concerns about lucrative swap termination fees paid to major banks.
Chicago has already paid $250 million in similar penalties over the last five years. The $200 million in water revenue bonds, dropped for the time being, were billed as the last “variable-rate conversion” involved in terminating those complex deals dating back to the tenure of former Mayor Richard M. Daley. It would have paid the banks at least $100 million more.
SJR: Automatic voter registration bill could simplify process for many in Illinois, supporters say
State senators and advocacy groups on Wednesday pushed for a bill to allow for automatic voter registration, which would simplify the registration process for more than 2 million unregistered Illinois voters.
Sen. Andy Manar, D-Bunker Hill, is sponsoring Senate Bill 2134, which would automatically register voters once they apply for or renew a driver’s license or state ID.
Illinois currently uses an opt-in system where citizens are asked whether they want to register to vote when renewing or updating a license or state ID. If they do, they must prove their eligibility, which completes their application to register once it is combined with other provided materials. The secretary of state’s office then sends the information to the appropriate county clerk or election authority.
Sun-Times: Emanuel proposes regulatory crackdown on Airbnb
Airbnb and other home-sharing services would have to register their units with the city, and units rented for more than 90 nights per year would have to be licensed as either a vacation rental or bed-and-breakfast under a proposed mayoral crackdown that hotel operators have been demanding.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s 2015 budget included a $1 million plan to try to collect Chicago’s a 4.5 percent hotel tax on vacation rentals.
Crain's: Cloud tax gives startups sticker shock
Like shoppers getting a post-holiday credit card bill, tech companies are suffering sticker shock after finding out what the city’s cloud tax will cost them.
Companies such as Amazon Web Services are warning their customers in Chicago that they’ll be collecting the city’s new 5.25 percent tax on their bills in the new year. For some companies, that could mean an annual tax in the six figures that will pinch profits or increase their burn rates, which could cause them to slow their rate of expansion.
“The tax will siphon revenue away, and we’ll be able to hire fewer people this year,” said one CEO who declined to be named for fear of putting a target on his company. “It’s a ton of money that we hadn’t budgeted for.”
Chicago Tribune: Why Mayor Rahm Emanuel is losing Chicagoans
Five years ago Chicagoans took a gamble. Their departing mayor had devastated City Hall‘s financial future. Nobody wanted to predict the service cuts and higher taxation that his successor would have to impose. But an abundance of voters wanted Chicago fixed. So they elected a man who talked tough — and seemed to talk straight — to lead them across the broken glass left from Richard M. Daley‘s ruinous stewardship.
Rahm Emanuel didn’t blame Daley; Chicago may have nonpartisan mayoral elections, but Emanuel and Daley come from the same Democratic tribe that has dominated this city’s governance for much of a century. The new mayor instead projected constancy, competence and above all resolve. Whatever the mission, he would stay the course and accomplish it, consequences to his career be damned.
Last year Emanuel won re-election.
RR Star: Why is union afraid of merit pay?
Some days I’m flummoxed by how the most commonsense proposals in Springfield are blocked by entrenched special interests.
Take, for example, Gov. Bruce Rauner’s latest proposal that calls for rewarding state workers who show up for work and excel. The largest union that represents state government workers is squealing about that one louder than a pig caught in a gate. You’d think the apocalypse is upon us rather than a chance for workers to earn more.
But the proposal is threatening to one of the most powerful players in Springfield: the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
NFIB: Mandatory paid leave would cost IL 22,000 jobs, $4 billion in lost output
A federal mandate requiring employers to offer paid leave would erase 13,223 jobs and shrink the state’s economic output by $2 billion this year alone, according to new research released today by the National Federation of Independent Business.
By 2025, the total number of jobs lost would reach 21,859, while the cumulative drop in the state’s economic output would reach a projected $4 billion.
“While a paid sick leave benefit may be desirable, these numbers reflect the cold, hard truth that faces every small business in this country: it is too expensive and jobs will be lost,” said Kim Clarke Maisch, state director of NFIB/Illinois, the state’s leading small-business association. “Our members work hard to provide the best benefit package they can afford. This one-size-fits-all approach is another attempt by government to get in the middle of a small business and their workers. What works for a multinational conglomerate might not work for the flower shop down the street.”
Fox: 'Insolvent': City of Harvey is worse than broke, experts say
The South Suburb of Harvey is at the tipping point.
After examining audit reports obtained exclusively by FOX 32 News, experts say the city is worse than broke.
These are the first independent audits of Harvey’s finances in many years. But as FOX 32’s Political Editor Mike Flannery reports from Harvey’s City Hall, the auditors complain that key records are missing.