On Monday, Illinois citizens were jolted by a piercing pain in the wallet as federal officials unveiled proposed Obamacare insurance premium rates for 2017. Insurers plan to dial up rates as much as a heart-stopping 45 percent for those who buy plans on the Obamacare marketplace when open enrollment starts Nov. 1.

That means thousands of people will scramble for affordable insurance … and won’t find it.

Is this rate shock unforeseen? Not really. Rocketing Obamacare rate requests have become an annual rite of summer, as welcome as sunstroke. In California, for instance, Obamacare health coverage is slated to rise by an average of 13.2 percent next year — more than three times the increase in each of the past two years. In Michigan, the pass-the-smelling-salts proposal is 17.3 percent.

A coalition of community organizers are asking residents to help protect their own neighborhoods on Labor Day in response to the police union’s call for officers to refuse overtime work during the historically deadly weekend.

They’re encouraging individuals and groups to ramp up safety measures and criticized a directive from the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police urging its members to protest the “disrespect” and “killing of officers” by not volunteering to work overtime.

Our judicial system has a time-tested option for those who can’t pay their debts: bankruptcy. Individuals and businesses use it all the time.

The debtor submits itself to a court, which tries to reach the fairest possible settlement with creditors. It’s messy, but it usually works for the best.

Federal bankruptcy code permits cities, school districts, and other local governments to file bankruptcy.

Warning that a taxpayer “revolt is upon us,” aldermen on Tuesday gave the cold shoulder to Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s plan to raise utility taxes to save the largest of Chicago’s four city employee pension funds.

Top mayoral aides will hold a series of closed-door aldermanic briefings Wednesday to outline the mayor’s plan to reform and fund a Municipal Employees Pension fund with 71,000 members and $18.6 billion in unfunded liabilities.

Just when you think Cook County government is moving toward efficiency, certain elected officials reveal that their commitment to patronage and bloat outweighs their commitment to taxpayers.

The Cook County Board on Wednesday is scheduled to vote on whether to cancel a referendum on the November ballot that would combine the offices of clerk and recorder of deeds. The board approved the referendum proposal in June during a lengthy meeting that dissolved into attacks alleging racism. Combining the offices, according to Commissioner Richard Boykin, D-Oak Park, was viewed in his district as “an all-out attack on black elected officials.”

There’s little sympathy among lawmakers and union members for Jeri Shanahan, 74, of Orland Park.

For about a decade she’s waged a one-woman crusade over what she sees as an injustice that has cost her $82,000 since 2004. That’s when she retired from teaching children in Community Consolidated School District 146, which serves Tinley Park, Oak Forest and Orland Park.

Shanahan seems to be the only person bothered by the fact that Medicare ineligible retired educators who live in Illinois pay twice as much for health insurance than their counterparts who live out of state.

Rockford Products LLC is planning to permanently lay off 171 people from its plant at 707 Harrison Ave. on Sept. 30 if it can’t find a buyer for the business.

The company filed a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act letter with the state on Monday. The U.S. Department of Labor requires that companies with 100 or more employees send WARN letters 60 days in advance of plant closings and mass layoffs to affected employees and state and local governments.

“We regret to inform you that circumstances will force Rockford Products LLC to conduct a mass layoff in the coming days,” CEO Dave Richeson said in the letter.