The Southern: Rauner touts DCFS turnaround and announces new bills for foster kids
Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner and George Sheldon, director of the Department of Children and Family Services, announced past successes and new goals for the embattled state agency responsible for thousands of foster children. Rauner says the department has turned itself around, including reducing by 50 percent the number of children in high-cost shelter care.
SJR: Study warns state cuts threaten $36.3B tourism industry
Illinois risks losing thousands of tourism jobs — and hundreds of millions in state and local tax revenue — from marketing cuts and ongoing budget uncertainty, according to an industry study released Monday.
Springfield tourism officials, meanwhile, are trying to get the word out early in Chicago and St. Louis that local sites — with the exception of the Illinois State Museum — are open for visitors.
The study released Monday by the Illinois Council of Convention & Visitors Bureaus coincided with the opening of the Governor’s Conference on Travel & Tourism at the Prairie Capital Convention Center. This is the first year for the event in Springfield since 2008.
SJR: State, AFSCME will both go to court over arbitrator's decision
The state has gone to court in Sangamon County to uphold an arbitrator’s decision that Gov. Bruce Rauner was within his rights to order the layoffs of more than 150 state workers last year.
At the same time, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees said it intends to file a counter-claim asking the court to vacate the arbitrator’s ruling.
The two sides are fighting over an arbitrator’s ruling issued in response to a grievance filed by AFSCME that the Rauner administration violated contract language governing layoffs. AFSCME represents 109 of the affected workers.
City Limits: After record tax hike to fund pensions, Chicago borrows $220M for pensions Leave a comment
In his most recent budget address, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel said his 2016 budget would “eliminate the structural deficit once and for all.”
But mere months after passing a record-setting property-tax hike, nearly all of which will go to fund pensions for police and firemen, Chicago still doesn’t have enough cash on hand to make payments to those systems.
The city borrowed $220 million from its short-term line of credit to meet a March 1 deadline for demonstrating it is able to pay the state-required contributions to the two pension funds. The city will pay a 3 percent interest rate on that loan.
Chicago Tribune: Youth unemployment stings south suburbs far worse than north
Disturbing unemployment trends among Chicago youth are mirrored in some Cook County suburbs, including a stark north-south divide.
Nearly 40 percent of black 20- to 24-year-olds were both out of school and out of work in Cook County in 2014, compared with 15 percent of Hispanics and 8 percent of whites in those age groups, according to a report released Tuesday by the Great Cities Institute at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
The numbers are particularly troubling for young black men, 45 percent of whom were neither working nor in school in Cook County, compared to with 17.7 percent of Latino men and 9.1 percent of white men, the report found.
Chicago Sun Times: Could upcoming CTU elections affect negotiations?
As the Chicago Teachers Union gears up for a one-day strike on April 1, the mayor’s City Council floor leader is arguing that the window for the union and Board of Education to secure a contract is all but closed.
If negotiations stretch through the summer while a cash-strapped district scrapes together a $670 million pension payment due in June, without any help from Springfield, the chances of a smooth start to the next school year diminish.
But with the governor threatening to take over Chicago’s public school system, the union and district both say they haven’t yet given up hope for a deal.
Quad-city Times: The 26 weirdest laws in Illinois
Illinois and has some absurd state and city laws still on the books. Here are a few of the funniest ones.