Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘Illinois Policy Institute’ Category

$3.3B in road funds sit idle, yet Illinois drivers face record-high gas taxes

Posted in Aunt Blabby, Economy, Fat Bastard, Illinois Policy Institute, Politics, Pritzker’s Rules of Order, Springfield, Taxes on September 16, 2025| Leave a Comment »

If Illinois state lawmakers are not going to spend the $3.3 billion sitting in the state’s road fund, drivers should get a break from the taxes going into it. Illinois gasoline taxes are No. 2 in the U.S.

By Ravi Mishra | Illinois Policy Institute

An accumulation of over $3.3 billion of unused dollars in Illinois’ road fund shows Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s automatic gasoline tax hikes are not necessary, and lawmakers should halt them.

Illinois      drivers have been paying more for gas every July since 2019, when Pritzker doubled motor fuel taxes and tied annual tax hikes to inflation. The state gas tax is now 48.3 cents per gallon, costing each driver an extra $143 annually and ranking Illinois as No. 2 in the country for highest gas taxes.

Road Fund balance has ballooned in the past six years

From 2018 to 2024, state road spending increased nearly $1 billion, but because of constant tax and fee hikes, revenues have surged even faster and grown nearly 95% in the same period. In 2024 alone, the state’s road fund collected over $5 billion while spending under $4 billion.

The fund reserves have ballooned. Cash balances grew from $624 million in 2018 to $3.3 billion as of 2024, a 428% increase. Balances are projected to continue growing to nearly $3.5 billion by 2026. Illinois’ “lockbox” amendment prevents these funds from being redirected to other expenses, yet lawmakers continue to allow automatic gas tax hikes regardless of need.

Drivers are paying more than necessary

Motor fuel tax rates were doubled in 2019 from 19 cents per gallon to 38 cents. Since then, rates have risen automatically to match inflation, ballooning to 48.3 cents in 2025, the second highest in the nation.

Read more here.

Read Full Post »

See how well your local 3rd graders can read

Posted in 220, Barrington Education Association, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), Education, Illinois Federation of Teachers, Illinois Policy Institute, Politics, Pritzker’s Rules of Order, Property Taxes, School Districts, Unions, What the Ficke (Bradford)? on September 10, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Third grade is a critical year for young readers, predicting the success of their future education. See how well your local schools are doing at producing proficient readers by the end of third grade.

By Hannah Schmid | Illinois Policy Institute

Students are back in school, so how well is your local public school preparing children to read by the critical third-grade milestone?

In Illinois, 7 of 10 third graders can’t read at grade level. That means there’s trouble awaiting most Illinois students.

If a child has not learned to read by the end of third grade, that child is likely to struggle throughout his or her education. That’s because fourth grade is when students move from learning to read to reading as their main method of learning.

Read more here.

Read Full Post »

New iPhone launching soon, but Illinoisans will pay nation’s highest taxes to use it

Posted in BOHICA, Commodius Maximus, Illinois Policy Institute, Pritzker’s Rules of Order, Springfield, Taxes on September 9, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Apple’s new iPhone launch on Sept. 9 may be a celebration for tech consumers, but it also makes the Illinois taxman smile. Illinois already had the nation’s highest tax rate on cell phone plans before it bumped up even more July 1.

By Dylan Sharkey | Illinois Policy Institute

With the new iPhone launch Sept. 9, Illinoisans’ excitement may quickly fade as they realize they are charged the highest state and local taxes on cell phone bills in the nation.

Illinoisans already paid the nation’s highest wireless taxes, but then the taxes were pushed even higher July 1 by state leaders. Illinois increased its share of wireless taxes from 7% to 8.65% to support a 9-8-8 suicide and crisis hotline.

Families in Illinois pay an effective 37.7% tax rate on their cell phone bills. No other state is even above 35%. That includes 24.9% in state and local taxes and 12.8% in federal taxes. For a family of four sharing a $100 plan, taxes add nearly $38 a month. That’s $456 a year, compared to the U.S. average of $320.

Chicagoans pay even more. Illinois allows local per-line taxes of $5 per phone in the city, meaning a family with four lines pays an additional $20 each month.

More here.

Read Full Post »

Ahead of Monday Night Football: When are Bears moving to Arlington Heights?

Posted in Commodius Maximus, Cook, County, Deception, Entertainment, Ethics, Illinois Policy Institute, Look For The Union Label, Politics, Pritzker’s Rules of Order, Property Taxes, Springfield, Taxes, Topics Of Interest, Unions on September 7, 2025| Leave a Comment »

As the Chicago Bears get ready for Monday Night Football, fans have heard talk about Arlington Heights since 2021. Here are the three biggest questions surrounding the move.

By Dylan Sharkey | Illinois Policy Institute

As the Chicago Bears gear up for Monday Night Football Sept. 8, fans wonder: when will the team leave Soldier Field and move to Arlington Heights?

Here are three big questions at play.

Are they moving to Arlington Heights?

Bears President and CEO Kevin Warren said Arlington Heights is the team’s sole focus. He told reporters Arlington Heights is “the only location in Cook County” able to support a fixed-roof stadium. But the team will only move forward if state lawmakers allow the team and surrounding businesses to freeze their property taxes.

Warren has said if the state passes a “mega project bill,” the new stadium would create 56,000 construction jobs and 9,100 permanent jobs. Gov. J.B. Pritzker has ruled out the state cutting a check to help pay for the new stadium, but he’s considering the property tax freeze.

When would they move?

If the Illinois General Assembly passes a bill, construction could start this year but likely wouldn’t end until 2028 at the earliest. Warren previously worked for the Minnesota Vikings when their stadium construction took 30 months.

State lawmakers return to Springfield in October, but only for six total days of legislative session. That leaves little time for the Bears to get enough consensus from lawmakers to pass their bill. It might also be tough to get state lawmakers representing Chicago on board with a bill, assuming they want the team to stay in the city.

More here.

Read Full Post »

Illinois tops U.S. in college spending, but loses over 106K students

Posted in Economy, Education, Illinois Policy Institute, Look For The Union Label, Overhead, Pension Funding, Politics, Pritzker’s Rules of Order, Property Taxes, Springfield, Taxes, Uncategorized, Unions on September 4, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Illinois ranked No. 1 for spending per student on higher education in 2024, paying more than double the national average. Declining enrollment, poorly structured finances, growing pension payments and bloated administration have driven up costs.

By Patrick Andriesen | Illinois Policy Institute

Illinois spends double the U.S. average per full-time higher education student, yet 106,375 fewer students want to attend its public community colleges and state universities than 15 years ago.

Pensions, administrative bloat and a poor funding formula are mainly to blame.

Illinois ranked No. 1 in the U.S. for higher education spending per full-time student in fiscal year 2024, spending $25,529 per student. That was double the national average and over $4,400 more per student than the No. 2 state: Wyoming, which had only about 8% of the students Illinois supports.

(Click on image to enlarge)

That translates to Illinois spending the most in the nation per full-time student at public two-year institutions and the second most in the U.S. per full-time student at public four-year institutions.

But all that government money has failed to make Illinois higher education more attractive to students. Enrollment at two- and four-year institutions has dropped from 368,019 in 2009 to 261,644 in 2024, according to the State Higher Education Finance report.

(Click on image to enlarge)

As spending by the state on higher education has climbed, so has the cost of tuition. Illinois’ in-state tuition for a public university now ranks No. 6 in the nation. It is the highest in the Midwest, rewarding Illinois students with more affordable options when they cross state lines.

Research in 2021 showed nearly 48% of Illinois’ four-year, college-bound students chose schools elsewhere, with the top picks being public universities in neighboring states where tuition was cheaper. They took their knowledge, income and tax dollars with them – often for good.

So why are Illinois taxpayers being forced to spend more on higher education when their schools are serving fewer students? And why does all that government spending fail to keep Illinois tuition from being among the highest in the nation?

State pensions, administrative glut and a poor funding model are mainly to blame at the state’s 12 public universities and 48 community colleges.

Read more here.

Read Full Post »

Illinois lowers standards making more students seem “proficient”

Posted in Barrington Education Association, Clown Car, Deception, Education, Illinois Federation of Teachers, Illinois Policy Institute, Look For The Union Label, Politics, Pritzker’s Rules of Order, School Districts, Springfield, Unions, What the Ficke (Bradford)? on August 23, 2025| 1 Comment »

Illinois students are struggling to meet proficiency standards on state assessments. Instead of working to improve student learning, the state is lowering standards to hide the crisis.

By Hannah Schmid | Illinois Policy Institute

Most Illinois students are struggling to read or do math at grade level on their end of year state assessments. The State Board of Education’s solution? Lower the standards.

The board of education approved a plan to lower the scores needed to be considered proficient in reading and math on the Illinois Assessment of Readiness. It also determined the scores needed to be considered proficient in reading and math for 11th graders as the state moves from the SAT to ACT as the state-required assessment for high school students.

The most recent state data available shows only 41% of students in third through eighth grade could read at grade level in 2024 and just 31% in 11th grade. In math, 28% of third through eighth graders were proficient and 26% of 11th graders

New proficiency rates will be implemented on the 2025 Illinois Report card released in October, leaving Illinoisans unable to compare scores to previous years’ proficiency rates.

Lowering proficiency benchmarks will inflate the percentage of students meeting proficiency standards this year and moving forward, but it will do little to improve students’ actual performance in core subjects. Instead of addressing low proficiency, the board is minimizing the problem by changing the definition of a student struggling.

New scoring allegedly aligns proficiency benchmarks to rest of nation

The state board approved the lowering of “cut scores,” or proficiency benchmarks, on state assessments because it claims Illinois has been “misidentifying students as being ‘not proficient’… due to misaligned cut scores established several years ago.”

Cut scores are the state test results placing students into one of four performance levels:

  • Below proficient
  • Approaching proficient
  • Proficient
  • Above proficient

According to the board, the new cut scores mean 53% of students will be considered proficient in reading and 38% would be proficient in math on the spring 2025 state assessment data, which will be officially released October 2025. That marks an increase of 12 percentage points in reading proficiency and 10 percentage points in math proficiency.

Read more here.

Related: “Editorial: Illinois moves the goalposts (again) on reading, math and science”

Read Full Post »

Illinois ranks last in U.S. for financial transparency

Posted in Ethics, Illinois Policy Institute, Politics, Pritzker’s Rules of Order, Property Taxes, Springfield, Taxes, The Center Square, Transparency on August 13, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Illinois was just ranked last in the nation for financial transparency. The state’s chronic delays, audit failures and last-minute budgeting have put taxpayers in the dark and long-term stability at risk.

By Dylan Sharkey and Charlotte Rotkis | Illinois Policy Institute

Illinois ranked dead last in financial transparency, according to the latest scores from Truth in Accounting.

The state performed poorly across key areas, including failing to get a clean review from an independent auditor, giving a distorted picture of its true financial health and missing the deadline to publish its annual report within 100 days of the fiscal year ending.

By late August 2024, Illinois still hadn’t released its 2023 financial report. Its 2022 report received a disclaimer of opinion, the equivalent of an incomplete grade, because auditors couldn’t gather enough information to determine if the numbers were accurate. Only three other states received that disclaimer.

Illinois received a score of 47 out of 100, the lowest score in the nation.

“Illinois is chronically late on issuing its financial report,” Truth in Accounting founder and CEO Sheila Weinberg told The Center Square. “They make budget decisions without considering important information from audited reports. … There’s something dysfunctional going on.”

More here.

Read Full Post »

Businesses moving out of Illinois triples since pandemic

Posted in Economy, Illinois Policy Institute, Open Meetings Act, Politics, Pritzker’s Rules of Order, Springfield, Unions on August 12, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Illinois lost 218 businesses to other states in 2023, part of an acceleration to triple the rate of what losses were before the pandemic. When adjusted for population, Illinois ranked No. 2 for the most business losses.

By Bryce Hill | Illinois Policy Institute

The Illinois exodus isn’t limited to people: businesses are moving out of the state, and the rate is accelerating dramatically.

Illinois lost 2,616 businesses to other states from 1994-2023, data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows. For most of that time, the average loss was 65 businesses per year. The rate started accelerating significantly in about 2017 and has tripled since the pandemic.

Losing businesses to other states is nothing new in Illinois. Since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began tracking this data in 1994, Illinois has lost businesses to other states every single year.

The acceleration is what is new and troubling. Losses peaked at 260 in 2022 and were 218 in 2023, the most recent year of data. In terms of raw numbers, that was third in the nation, behind California losing 533 businesses and New York losing 278. But per capita, Illinois ranked No. 2.

Florida led the nation in attracting businesses from other states: 503 just in 2023. No other state attracted more than 160 migrating businesses.

The 2,616 businesses lost to other states from 1994-2023 put Illinois in third place for most losses. Again, when adjusted for the population, Illinois ranked No. 2 behind New York for losses during the 30-year period.

Read more here.

Read Full Post »

Pritzker works on national profile as Illinoisans tire of him

Posted in Economy, Elections, Illinois Policy Institute, OP/Ed, Politics, Pritzker’s Rules of Order, Property Taxes, Taxes, The Chicago Way on August 12, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker is burnishing his national image as a Democratic presidential candidate by inserting himself in the Texas redistricting controversy. But Illinoisans are growing tired of Pritzker and taxation, pushing his favorability rating into the negative.

By Paul Vallas | Illinois Policy Institute

Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s decision to welcome Texas Democrats to Illinois, framing the state as a sanctuary for lawmakers seeking to block partisan redistricting efforts in Texas, offers a timely diversion from his mounting problems closer to home.

While Pritzker works to draw the national spotlight, Illinois residents are increasingly vocal about their dissatisfaction with him.

Recent polling by the Illinois Policy Institute shows Pritzker’s approval has dipped underwater: 47% view him favorably, while more than 50% hold an unfavorable opinion.

Even more troubling is over half of Illinois residents would relocate if they had the means. They overwhelmingly cited high taxes as their main concern: 60% said it was the top issue, followed by worries about governance, the economy, crime and migration.

These concerns are valid. In 2025, Illinois will impose the highest combined state and local tax burden in the nation on households earning the median U.S. income. That tax burden is $13,099, or more than 16.5% of annual earnings. It’s $4,472 more than the national average and nearly 52% more than what most Americans pay. Families can save over $5,000 a year simply by moving to Indiana.

Despite receiving over $53 billion in federal COVID relief – with $11.8 billion eligible to be used directly by the state for operational and one-time expenses – Pritzker has grown Illinois’ budget by $16 billion and enacted over 50 tax hikes.

Read more here.

Read Full Post »

New poll: 50.2% of Illinois voters view Pritzker unfavorably

Posted in Clown Car, Commodius Maximus, Deception, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), Economy, Ethics, Fat Bastard, Fat Man Walking, Girlie man, Illinois Policy Institute, Immigration, Look For The Union Label, Politics, Pritzker’s Rules of Order, Property Taxes, Springfield, Taxes, The Center Square, Unions on August 8, 2025| 2 Comments »

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker | BlueRoomStream

By Jim Talamonti | The Center Square

A new poll shows that Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s approval rating has flipped negative for the first time.

The Illinois Policy Institute’s newest Lincoln Poll conducted by M3 Strategies July 15-18 found that 50.2% of likely voters in 2026 view the governor unfavorably and 47.2% view Pritzker favorably.

M3 surveyed 752 individuals and reported a +/- 3.57 percentage point margin of error.

The previous Lincoln Poll in late January showed a slim majority of Illinois voters approving of Pritzker’s job performance.

Illinois Policy Institute Senior Fellow and former Illinois state Rep. Mark Batinick, R-Plainfield, said he would have advised Pritzker not to run for a third term.

“Third terms are often called the third-term curse, number one. Number two, running a general election for governor doesn’t match with running in a far-left Democratic primary for president,” Batinick told The Center Square.

Batinick said he predicted months ago that the governor’s poll numbers would drop.

“The stuff that he’s trying to do to go to the far left to be relevant in the Democratic primary for president is costing him with rank-and-file voters here in Illinois. They’re like, ‘You know what? I’ve got a high property tax bill. I don’t care about Texas legislators. I want you back in Illinois doing the things that matter to us.’ When you look at that poll, taxes was the number one issue,” Batinick said.

Read more here.

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »