The Civic Federation supports the Chicago Park District’s proposed FY2015 operating budget of $448.6 million that accommodates increased employer pension contributions mandated by the District’s 2014 pension reform legislation while holding the property tax levy relatively flat and expanding programming. The Civic Federation strongly supported the District’s work with its labor partners, the Illinois General Assembly and the Governor to enact comprehensive pension reform legislation in 2014.…
The Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) recently released its FY2015 proposed budget. While the Civic Federation traditionally analyzes features common to all local government budgets, our analyses of the Chicago Transit Authority’s (CTA) budgets include additional productivity measurement data. The Civic Federation uses expenditure, ridership and miles traveled data provided by the CTA to gain insight into changes in productivity. The Civic Federation uses two measures to assess the CTA’s…
The Civic Federation supports the Forest Preserve District of Cook County’s FY2015 proposed $187.4 million budget for holding the property tax levy relatively flat and minimizing the use of one-time resources. This balanced budget is very reasonable in the near-term, especially when paired with the extra information provided by the master plans recently adopted by the District. The Civic Federation commends the Forest Preserve District’s increased dedication to public involvement in its…
The Civic Federation supports the Chicago Transit Authority’s (CTA) proposed FY2015 budget of nearly $1.4 billion. The budget represents an improved level of fiscal stability made possible by the CTA’s efforts in past years to secure its pension fund and modernize its labor practices. The agency is working under a more sustainable labor agreement, no longer relies heavily on one-time revenue sources and has balanced its budget for the past three years without increasing base fare rates. While…
The provisions of Public Act 98-0622 will not go into effect until January 1, 2015, but the changes to Chicago Park District employee and retiree pension benefit levels contained in the legislation have already reduced the fund’s unfunded liability by $109.4 million or 18.5% and increased the funded ratio by five percentage points to 45.5%. Those changes, described in more detail in this blog post, include a reduced automatic annual increase for current employees and retirees, staggered years…
Chicago-area public employee pension funding levels continued to decline in FY2012, with total unfunded liabilities for the ten funds analyzed rising to $37.2 billion from $32.0 billion in FY2011. On average, the ten funds analyzed had an actuarial funding level of 45.5% in FY2012, down from 74.5% in FY2003. For all pension funds supported by the taxes of Chicago residents, including statewide finds, the total unfunded liabilities reached $19,579 per Chicago resident in FY2012. The…
The most basic question about a pension fund is whether its assets are sufficient to cover total liabilities incurred. In this blog post, we examine the aggregate pension liabilities and Other Post Employment Benefit (OPEB) liabilities of ten large local government pension funds in the Chicago area and their collective assets.[1] Liabilities are calculated using actuarial assumptions about the value of all future pension payments for both current and retired employees, as well as any…
The difference between a pension fund’s assets and accrued liabilities is known as the unfunded liability. The unfunded actuarial accrued liability (UAAL) is calculated by subtracting the actuarial value of the assets from the actuarial accrued liability (AAL) of each fund. One of the functions of this indicator is to measure a fund’s ability to bring assets in line with liabilities. Healthy funds are ones that are able to reduce their unfunded liabilities over time while substantial and…
The Civic Federation supports the City Colleges tentative FY2015 budget totaling $723.5 million for reflecting the District’s continued commitment to sound financial practices and prudent planning. The FY2015 tentative budget holds the property tax levy relatively flat for the fifth consecutive year, increases unrestricted operating funds by only 1.0% from FY2014 and continues to maintain a healthy fund balance for contingencies. City Colleges’ dramatic financial improvement in…
On May 28, 2014, The Civic Federation sent this letter to Representitive Elaine Nekritz and the members of the House Personnel and Pensions Committee in advance of a 4 p.m. hearing on House Bill 1154. The Civic Federation commends Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, Cook County Commissioner Bridget Gainer and Cook County Chief Financial Officer Ivan Samstein for their work to assemble a comprehensive reform framework to address Cook County and the Forest Preserve District’s pension…
