CTBA experts are available to provide insight, analysis, and data to the press on a wide range of public policy issues. In addition, CTBA disseminates new research and timely updates on policy developments to the media.
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Low-income immigrants residents hope Rauner's cuts won't block their path to citizenship
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"The governor of Illinois came to the African American Contractors Association gala with a message: The state needs to expand economically, construction needs to be booming, jobs need to be created and Blacks need to be included in a growing economy................................In typical GOP fashion, Gov. Rauner is taking on labor unions and proposing budget cuts that are troubling. Robert Otter of the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability said Gov. Rauner proposed $6.3 billion cuts as Illinois faces a budget deficit. “He has yet to present as governor any sort of revenue enhancement or revenue increases,” Mr. Otter said."
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UPDATE: On Thursday afternoon, Madigan announced a plan to tax personal income over $1 million at an extra 3 percent, bringing the effective rate for people earning more than $1 million to 8 percent. Individuals with income under $1 million would continue to pay the current rate of 5 percent,
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Mayor Rahm Emanuel's housing agency has been pulling hundreds of millions of dollars from a fund earmarked for its affordable housing program and using the money instead to boost its pension, purchase government debt and build up a staggering cash reserve.
The agency's massive cash reserves were first noticed by the Chicago Housing Initiative, a coalition of tenants. The Center for Tax and Budget Accountability, a Chicago-based watchdog group, later produced a report on the stockpile, leading to a spate of news coverage over the summer. But the fate of much of the money the housing agency has stashed away has so far gone unreported. Through a series of open records requests, the Chicago Housing Initiative and the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability obtained internal documents revealing that under Emanuel, the CHA has become as much an investment fund as a housing agency.
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"...Rauner is making this budget thing more difficult than it needs to be by opting to introduce a budget that ignores the revenue side of the ledger, instead relying entirely on questionable spending cuts to resolve the state's fiscal mess."
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As lawmakers and stakeholders await Gov. Bruce Rauner’s budget proposal next week, the Institute for Illinois' Fiscal Sustainability at the Civic Federation has released a five-year roadmap that it says will stabilize state finances and protect government services.
.......While the group’s plan calls for a rate hike, it wants to see the income tax drop on Jan. 1, 2018 to 4 percent for individuals and 5.6 percent for corporations. Ralph Martire, executive director of the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability, says while income tax rates do need to be adjusted, it’s not sound policy to temporarily increase the rates and call for a rollback in three years.
“You’re implementing artificial changes in policy that aren’t based on anything economically driven – rather, they’re politically driven,” Martire said. “The problem with our revenue system isn’t temporary, it’s structural.”
Martire says a more sound approach is to adjust the rates to account for the gap between the revenue Illinois takes in and what it spends on services, like education and health care.
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In January 2013, Time Magazine featured the story “Why Illinois is Going Bankrupt.” It pronounced the state’s financial prognosis as terminal, with little hope of recovery. From its gaping annual billion-dollar deficit, to its bulging unpaid pension debt and revenue-draining Medicaid, Time
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Bruce Rauner is Illinois' first Republican governor in more than a decade.
If that isn't enough to shake things up, Rauner also never had held elected office, so there's no track record to assess. This means his policy "to-do" list is somewhat of an unknown, except in one area: education.
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Illinois Governor-elect Bruce Rauner won a mandate to fix the finances of the lowest-rated U.S. state. Investors are signaling the Republican’s got his work cut out for him to avert a credit downgrade closer to junk.
“….A broader sales tax would generate about $600 million of revenue, and wouldn’t cover lost tax revenue, according to the Chicago-based Center for Tax and Budget Accountability, which calls itself a bipartisan, nonprofit research group.
“We can’t cut our way out of this problem,” said Amanda Kass, the center’s research director. “The revenue loss is so huge that we’d be looking at serious cuts to K-through-12 education, to higher education, public safety.”
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Hundreds of Chicagoans hit the city's downtown streets Tuesday afternoon to rally for economic justice and demand action from their elected officials on policies important to working families.
The demonstration, held one week after the midterm elections, focused on several key demands, including approval of a state minimum wage increase to $10.65 an hour during the upcoming veto session, adoption of a $15 hourly minimum wage in Chicago and an elected school board in the city.
Activists also called for the reopening of six public mental health clinics that closed in 2012 and immediate reforms to the Chicago Housing Authority. The call for CHA reforms follows a recent fiscal review by the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability, which showed the housing authority has built up large cash reserves in recent years primarily by socking away millions in federal funds intended for housing vouchers.