At a meeting on September 24, the Cook County Board approved changes in the operations of the County’s Inspector General’s Office, including recommendations made by the Civic Federation to improve public...

UPDATE : On September 21, the Cook County Health (CCH) Board approved by a vote of eight to three an amended FY2021 proposed budget with $40 million of additional County funding, instead of the $53...

The City of Chicago recently released its Budget Forecast for FY2021 , which provides financial estimates for the City’s current fiscal year that ends on December 31, 2020 and a...

In a recent analysis of the Chicago Public Schools FY2021 budget, the Civic Federation supported the District’s proposed $8.4 billion budget. However, the Federation expressed serious concerns about the budget’s reliance on $343 million in...

The Civic Federation is a member of the Governmental Research Association, the national organization of individuals professionally engaged in government research. Founded in 1914, the GRA has for more than 100 years worked to promote government research as a vocation and facilitate the exchange...

On August 12, 2020 the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) approved Ordinance 020-070 amending its FY2020 budget to incorporate $690.1 million of the CARES Act funding it received from the federal government in...

In March Congress passed the $2.2 trillion CARES Act, the third federal coronavirus relief act, which among many ...

On June 26, 2020, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle issued a preliminary budget forecast for fiscal year 2021 , which begins December 1, 2020 and ends November 30, 2021....

City Colleges of Chicago released its tentative FY2021 operating and capital budgets on June 23, 2020. The total budget is proposed to be $441.0 million. This...

Since the federal government provided $139 billion of coronavirus relief funds to states and large cities and counties in April, smaller localities have been waiting to receive...

Starting July 1, 2020, many Illinois cannabis consumers will see an increase in the taxes they pay on recreational cannabis as the Cannabis Retailers’ Occupation Tax that is allowed to be imposed by counties and municipalities goes into effect. This local option sales tax will be in addition to...

In the wake of protests over the deaths of George Floyd and other Black Americans at the hands of police officers, police accountability and reform has risen to the forefront in government discussions, and residents in...

The Illinois Department of Revenue recently announced that the final equalization factor for the Cook County 2019 property assessment year (taxes payable in 2020) is 2.9160. Each year the Illinois...

Changes could be coming to Cook County’s pretrial electronic monitoring program as the Cook County President’s Office looks to hire a consultant to examine best practices and potential alternatives to the way the Sheriff’s electronic monitoring program is currently run.

While the number...

This blog post is an update to the Civic Federation’s April 9, 2020 blog post: How COVID-19 is Impacting Chicago’s Criminal Justice System and How Public Safety...