The Civic Federation's legislative priorities for 2012 include public pension reform, requiring the State of Illinois to develop and implement a capital improvement plan, dissolving the Illinois International Port District, creating a new governing board for the Cook County Forest Preserve District, requiring all counties to hold budget hearings and large counties to produce timely annual audits, enacting tax increment financing reporting reform, requiring school financial management…
Cook County Clerk David Orr’s office today released the 2010 Cook County Tax Rates Report. The report lists property tax rates for all taxing districts in Cook County and provides sample composite rates for many municipalities. The composite rate is the total tax rate that appears on a tax bill. The composite tax rate on a typical City of Chicago tax bill will increase from 4.627% last year to 4.931%. This is the first time the rate has increased since tax year 1998 (payable in 1999) when it…
Today the Civic Federation published an update to its primer The Cook County Property Tax Extension Process: A Primer on Levies, Tax Caps, Tax Bills and the Effects of Tax Increment Financing Districts. The update adds additional years of data when available and provides an enhanced explanation of the effect of tax increment financing (TIF) on local governments and taxpayers in Cook County. This blog summarizes the TIF explanation included in the primer. For more detail and background, please…
UPDATE: The proposal to allow the Blue Park Gun Club the use of Forest Preserve District property for its operations was withdrawn, after significant urging from the Friends of the Forest Preserve. Cook County Commissioner Joan Murphy, one of the sponsors of the resolution, withdrew the proposal when Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle said she would not support the issue. Commissioner Murphy also indicated that the proposal lacked support from other commissioners. As discussed in this…
As explained previously in this blog a key indicator the Civic Federation uses to assess the financial health of local governments is the level of unreserved general fund balance maintained. Such reserves are essential in order for the governments to be able to withstand the inevitable “rainy days” that result from revenue fluctuations and unexpected expenditures. Without a fund balance in place, a government may have to abruptly cut services or raise taxes in response to unfavorable conditions…
The Civic Federation analyzes the budgets of nine Chicago area local governments. One important indicator that the Federation utilizes to assess the financial health of these municipalities is their fund balance level. In particular, we examine the balance within the general fund that does not have any external legal restriction, called the unrestricted fund balance. Fund balance differs from net assets typically reported by business enterprises in that it includes only a subset of assets and…
The Civic Federation’s Cook County Modernization 100-Day Accountability Report continues the work of our Cook County Modernization Project. This report includes detailed information on the status of all 36 recommendations from the Civic Federation’s Cook County Modernization Report (published in October 2010), as well as a dashboard rating system for recommendations that were to be implemented within the first 100 days under the leadership of Board President Preckwinkle. Cook County has made…
Today marks the 100th day since Toni Preckwinkle took office as President of the Cook County Board of Commissioners. During that time, the County has begun to implement a variety of reforms including many of the recommendations from the Civic Federation’s Cook County Modernization Report. The administration released a 100-day report card this morning, which highlights what the administration considers to be its key accomplishments. The Civic Federation began its Cook County Modernization…
This report analyzes basic financial data on ten major local government employee pension funds in Cook County. It is intended to provide lawmakers, pension trustees, pension fund members and taxpayers with the information they need to make informed decisions regarding public employee retirement benefits. The report reviews fiscal year 2009 actuarial valuation reports and financial statements of the retirement plans for the City of Chicago, Chicago Park District, Chicago Public Schools, Cook…
The staff and President of the Forest Preserve District of Cook County filed a FY2011 proposed budget for review by the District’s governing board on October 6, 2010, almost three months before the start of the new fiscal year on January 1, 2011. Despite the staff’s timely preparation of a budget, the Board declined to review the proposal in October. Instead, a new budget was presented more than three weeks after the start of the new fiscal year on January 26, 2011 in order to reflect the…
