QUOTE OF THE DAY
Chicago Tribune: Red light cameras tag thousands for undeserved tickets
Thousands of Chicago drivers have been tagged with $100 red light fines they did not deserve, targeted by robotic cameras during a series of sudden spikes in tickets that city officials say they cannot explain, a Tribune investigation has found.
The Tribune’s analysis of more than 4 million tickets issued since 2007 and a deeper probe of individual cases revealed clear evidence that the deviations in Chicago’s network of 380 cameras were caused by faulty equipment, human tinkering or both.
Chicago transportation officials say they had no knowledge of the wild swings in ticketing until they were told by the Tribune — even though City Hall legally required the camera vendor to watch for the slightest anomaly in ticketing patterns every day. Many of the spikes lasted weeks.
Fox Chicago: Ill. unemployment rate falls again in June
The state Department of EmploymentSecurity says Illinois unemployment dropped in June to 7.1 percent. It was the fourth straight monthly decrease in the state’s jobless rate.
The June figure was down from 7.5 percent in May. And while Illinois’ unemployment rate remains higher than most other states it has now fallen almost a full percentage point in the past two months.
The monthly employment report that the department released Thursday pointed out that construction employment increased across the state by 3,500 jobs. But manufacturing jobs in the state continued to decline. Illinois lost a net 1,500 manufacturing jobs in June.
Chicago Tribune: High court declines to hear term limits appeal
The Illinois Supreme Court today refused to hear a direct appeal of a lower court ruling that found a plan to impose legislative term limits through a proposed change in the state constitution was unconstitutional.
The proposal to ask voters on the Nov. 4 general election ballot whether to limit lawmakers to eight years of service is backed by the Committee for Legislative Reform and Term Limits, a group formed by Republican governor candidate Bruce Rauner.
The state Supreme Court ruling means the group must go through the normal appellate court process, which could take some time.
Governing: Has S&P Been Exaggerating Local Governments’ Stability?
A financial analyst questioned the rating upgrades issued by Standard & Poor’s (S&P) to many local governments, saying he was “skeptical” of the agency’s scoring. He noted such practices could encourage ratings shopping by issuers.
Since last fall, when S&P released new scoring criteria, the agency has been reassessing ratings for thousands of local governments. Generally, and as predicted by S&P itself, the new criteria resulted in more upgrades of governments than downgrades. But a Janney Montgomery Scott analyst pointed out in his July note on the bond market that those changes have not put S&P’s ratings more in line with competitors Moody’s Investors Service and Fitch Ratings.
In some cases, rather, agencies’ ratings scores for the same local governments have diverged even more.
Chicago Sun Times: Ferguson uncovers in-house scheme to steal 4,000 lbs. of wire
There’s a Department of General Services employee fired for allegedly engineering an elaborate scheme that disarmed overnight security systems and paved the way for the theft of 4,000 pounds of copper lined industrial cable wire valued at $21,800.
And a city health inspector who resigned to avoid being fired after being accused of soliciting homeowners and contractors to hire an electricity provider that paid commissions to the inspector. The inspector also was accused of offering a contractor a passing inspection in exchange for making the switch.
Inspector General Joe Ferguson’s quarterly report shows he’s been busy uncovering corruption, even as he also takes on the formidable task of policing city hiring, now that a judge has dismissed a federal hiring monitor and released the city from the 42-year-old Shakman decree banning political hiring and firing.
Chicago Sun Times: Three Ways ACA is affecting Business
More often than not, when healthcare reform is brought up, the impact and the interests of businesses are lumped together, as if each faces with the same challenges as the next. The reality is that as healthcare-related requirements for businesses have evolved since the passing of the 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA), the interests and priorities of different sized businesses are changing as well.
Some provisions in the ACA for example, only impact employers with a certain number of full-time employees. One such rule going into effect in 2015 is the Employer Shared Responsibility Provision. It states that if 50 or more full-time equivalent employees work for a business, that employer is obligated to provide a minimum level of healthcare coverage for those workers, or face a penalty of $2,000 or more per employee. Obviously, if you’re a business owner with only 30 employees and have never provided insurance previously, this rule does not apply to you.
That potential fine is causing many employers with more than 50 full-time workers to re-evaluate their situations and determine the value that health insurance may bring to their business operations while simultaneously striving to keep both their budgets in check and their legal obligations in good standing.
Crain’s: Sure, tax inversions squeeze Uncle Sam. But what about Illinois?
Corporate inversions, those deals that shift a company’s headquarters to a low-tax country, aim to reduce federal income taxes.
Companies including North Chicago-based AbbVie Inc., Deerfield-based Walgreen Co. and Horizon Pharma Inc. are pursuing or considering inversions because the potential federal tax savings could run into the billions. One estimate pegs the five-year hit to the U.S. Treasury from a Walgreen inversion at $4 billion.
But what about Illinois? How would the loss of these corporate headquarters affect state income tax receipts?
The American: Uber Upstarts: Technological Progress and Its Discontents
“You working the whole day?” I asked my UberX driver en route to San Francisco International Airport, trying to make small talk. “Well, I’m driving for a few hours,” he responded, “but then I’m meeting my direct reports to polish off some time-sensitive projects.”
In my experience riding in the cars-for-hire of transportation network companies (TNCs) like Uber, Lyft, and Sidecar, my driver’s moonlighting — in this case, daylighting — has been typical. My drivers over the past six months have included men and women pursuing their own careers as consultants, software engineers, students, and used-car salesmen, yet exploiting the flexibility of app-powered opportunities to earn extra cash on the side.
If not quite the hunt-in-the-morning-fish-in-the-afternoon-criticize-after-dinner idyll set forth by Marx more than a century ago, the Uber-driven challenge to traditional transportation posed by TNCs nonetheless offers tremendous promise to workers and consumers alike.
Portraits of four Pennsylvania lawmakers that hang in the State Capitol building in Harrisburg will now indicate they were convicted of a crime.
“There was a question: ‘Do you remove the portraits or do you do something else?’” said Stephen Miskin, a spokesman for House Speaker Sam Smith, a Republican from Punxsutawney. “You can’t change history, whether you like it or not. There was a feeling you should keep the portraits out there and let people make up their own mind.”
The lawmakers’ criminal activity will now be inscribed on a plaque that identifies their portraits, and is a result of several members concern over what to do following the two most recent convictions in 2011 and 2012.
WSJ: Ignoring the Facts on Corporate Inversions
‘I never let the existence of facts cloud my judgment.” This comment was made to me years ago by a colleague at McKinsey & Company during a debate where his facts were wrong, but his opinion firm.
That remark sums up the debate about corporate inversions, deals in which companies reincorporate overseas. My company, Abbott Laboratories, announced this week that we would sell a portion of our generics pharmaceuticals business to MylanInc., which will organize their new firm in the Netherlands. U.S. drug maker AbbVie is working out a similar deal with the Ireland-based Shire, and many other companies have recently announced similar “inversion” deals.
The raging debate about these decisions has been absurd, and people expounding on the topic are making wild claims that inversion is an abuse of the tax code, cheating and unpatriotic. It all makes for emotional and dramatic headlines and debate but ignores the facts.
CARTOON OF THE DAY
