Get the latest news headlines from around Illinois.
WSJ: Chicago O’Hare Airport Workers Expected To Strike
Support staff at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport plan to press ahead with a threatened strike as early as next week and plan to announce the date on Monday, a union official said.
Workers including aircraft cabin cleaners and janitors at the nation’s second-busiest airport last week voted to take industrial action over wages and working conditions, probably over the busy Thanksgiving travel period.
Hundreds are expected to walk off the job, with the timing of the action expected to be announced at a news conference at O’Hare on Monday morning, said the Service Employees International Union Local 1 in a statement on Saturday.
Northwest Herald: With stopgap state budget ending, all eyes now on Springfield, lawmakers
While all eyes were on the most divisive presidential election in recent memory, Illinois’ already lousy financial footing got worse.
A forecast revealed Wednesday during a meeting with legislative leaders concluded that the state’s deficit could grow past $5 billion by the June 30 end of the state’s 2017 fiscal year.
The state’s pile of unpaid bills – which the state comptroller now pegs at $10.6 billion – could increase to $13 billion. A subsequent report from the Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability increases the estimated unfunded liability for the five state-run pension systems, not including benefits, from $111 billion to $130 billion. Almost one dollar out of four in the state’s general fund goes to pay pensions, a percentage that, given no changes, is sure to increase.
Reuters: Illinois' unfunded pension liabilities reach $130 billion: study
The financial condition of Illinois’ five state pension systems worsened during 2016 with unfunded liabilities growing to a record-setting $129.8 billion, a new report showed on Wednesday.
The nearly 17 percent surge was the result of lowered long-range investment return assumptions by four of the five pension systems and poor investment returns during 2016, the state Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability (CGFA) reported.
The combined funded ratio of the five pension systems dropped from 41 percent in fiscal 2015, a level that put Illinois in a tie with Kentucky for the lowest-funded state pension system in the country.
RT: Illinois residents forced to cough up nearly $725mn in civil asset forfeitures
“[E]very year, Illinois law enforcement agencies take tens of millions of dollars in cash, vehicles, land and other assets from state residents – in some cases without bringing criminal charges, let alone obtaining convictions, against property owners,” the Illinois chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU-IL) and the Illinois Policy Institute (IPI) jointly wrote in the introduction to a report outlining how much money law enforcement has made off of civil asset forfeitures since 2005.