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Archive for the ‘The Center Square’ Category

Fiscal Fallout: Illinois has among highest-paid state employees

Posted in Economy, Pension Funding, Springfield, The Center Square, Unions on October 10, 2025| Leave a Comment »

The Illinois State Capitol is shown in Springfield. Photo: Greg Bishop / The Center Square

By Jared Strong | The Center Square

The average wages for Illinois state employees are among the highest in the nation and belie the state’s more modest cost-of-living rankings, according to state and federal data.

A living cost analysis this year by the Economic Research and Information Center in Missouri ranked Illinois as the 24th most-expensive state. That is similar to the findings of the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis, which placed Illinois 19th among states and the District of Columbia, where it is most expensive to live.

But Illinois is among the Top 5 states for highest salaries for state workers, according to OpenPayrolls, which tracks the data nationwide.

It found that the average annual state government salary in 2023 in Illinois, excluding university jobs, is about $79,000.

That pay has been further buoyed by raises since, including a recently self-imposed raise for lawmakers that increased their base pay to $98,000, which is also in the Top 5 among states.

A review by the Illinois Policy Institute this year found that pay for state government employees who are represented by the AFSCME Council 31 union has increased 57% faster since 2021 than for private sector jobs.

Read more here.

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Chicago ranks near bottom in survey of best and worst run cities

Posted in Clown Car, Deception, Economy, Immigration, Look For The Union Label, Politics, Preckwinkle's Rules of Order, Pritzker’s Rules of Order, Resident Spotlights, Springfield, Taxes, The Center Square, The Chicago Way, Unions on September 5, 2025| Leave a Comment »

By Sarah Roderick-Fitch | The Center Square

By Glenn Minnis | The Center Square contributor

The city of Chicago ranks near the bottom in the new Best & Worst-run cities in America survey of 148 different locations.

With researchers comparing the operating efficiency of each city, Chicago lands at No. 136 in the WalletHub survey after finishing 102nd in quality of city services and 140th in total budget per capita.

State Rep. Martin McLaughlin, R-Barrington Hills, isn’t shy about voicing his displeasure with Chicago’s dismal showing.

“Chicago has been known as The Second City, but we have dropped quite precipitously down to 136, and that is based on one thing and one thing alone, and that is progressive policies from people who are producing painful results for the residents and for those like my community who are living adjacent to the city,” McLaughlin told The Center Square. “It is no longer the place it was 30 years ago. It is no longer the financial capital of commodities in the world and no longer a place that you will go to and feel safe.”

Researchers weighed “quality of services” metrics that included health, safety and economy rank, measuring each category against the city’s per-capita budget.

As bad as things have gotten, McLaughlin still sees a way out for the city.

“I think Chicago has an opportunity, particularly with those who have recognized that the governor and the mayor have put illegal migrants ahead of citizens and the neighborhoods who have been underserved now recognize that they have been overlooked,” he said. “They just have to change who they’re voting for and they have a chance to do that every two years.”

Read more here.

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WATCH: ‘Partisans’ who want to should ‘GET UP and MOVE’ from Illinois, Pritzker says

Posted in Commodius Maximus, Elections, Fat Bastard, Fat Man Walking, Politics, Pritzker’s Rules of Order, The Center Square on August 31, 2025| 1 Comment »


Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker in Southern Illinois on Aug. 28, 2025 | Illinois.gov

By Greg Bishop | The Center Square

If you’re not willing to stick around and help make the state better, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker says you can “get up and move.”

Pritzker made the comments Thursday afternoon in Southern Illinois when asked about the movement to split the state into two.

“Look, if you want to leave the state, I would like you to stay, I’d like you to get involved and make it a better place by working together with us,” Pritzker said. “But if you want to leave, then get up and move.”

G.H. Merritt, the chairman of New Illinois, a movement to split the state in two, said 70 of the 102 counties in Illinois have a state split movement growing.

“One would think that if you’re at the helm of a state and this is going on, you would at least be a little curious about why are these people thinking this,” Merritt told The Center Square. “Why are these people wanting to do this? He has no curiosity about that.”

Pritzker said splitting the state was a partisan idea and won’t ever happen.

“That’s not how it works. You know, if they really want to get involved, they should show up, vote, make sure that their voices are heard,” Pritzker said.

Read more here and watch the YouTube video here.

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Pritzker unveils Illinois LGBTQ HOTLINE amid debate over transgender athletes

Posted in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), Fat Bastard, Girlie man, Overhead, Politics, Pritzker’s Rules of Order, Springfield, Taxes, The Center Square on August 26, 2025| 1 Comment »

Alexander Grey | Unsplash

By Catrina Barker | The Center Square contributor

Reports of a transgender student being accepted onto the Conant High School girls volleyball team has supporters and opponents sharing their thoughts with the Palatine-Schaumburg High School District board.

While critics voiced concerns about potential injuries to female athletes, others defended the decision as a matter of inclusion and equal rights.

Marsha McClary, chair of Lake County Moms for Liberty, expressed concerns about fairness in girls’ sports.

“There’s an innate difference in strength, size, and performance of biological males versus females,” said McClary. “Even the Olympic Committee has rules that elite athletes compete based upon biological sex. High school athletes deserve the same fairness.”

The U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee recently banned transgender athletes from women’s sports, following President Donald Trump’s executive order “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports.”

Read more here.

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Public education budgets balloon while enrollment, proficiency, standards drop

Posted in Barrington Education Association, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), Education, Immigration, Overhead, Pritzker’s Rules of Order, Property Taxes, School Districts, Taxes, The Center Square, Unions on August 21, 2025| 1 Comment »

Illinois Superintendent of Schools Tony Sanders | Greg Bishop / The Center Square

By Jim Talamonti | The Center Square

In return for soaring state spending on education, Illinois taxpayers are getting chronic absenteeism, poor academic proficiency and declining enrollment from the state’s public schools.

The Illinois Policy Institute found that Illinois’ education budget increased by nearly $4 billion over the last decade, while the number of students enrolled in public schools decreased by about 177,000 during the same period.

Illinois Policy Institute Policy Analyst Hannah Schmid said poor academic proficiency and chronic absenteeism are coming at a higher cost.

“So the state spending has grown over two times faster than student achievement has grown. We’ve actually seen achievement in math decline over the past few years,” Schmid told The Center Square.

The state’s education budget for the 2025-26 school year is a record-high $11.2 billion.

“Spending is up 24%, reading is just up 9% and math has actually dropped by 11%, so we’re seeing poor outcomes for students,” Schmid said.

According to the Illinois State Board of Education’s Illinois Report Card, the state’s public school students had a chronic absenteeism rate of 26.3% last year.

More here.

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Small business group: Pritzker-signed bills are wrong move

Posted in Fat Bastard, Look For The Union Label, Politics, Pritzker’s Rules of Order, Springfield, The Center Square, Unions on August 15, 2025| 1 Comment »

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker holds up three bills impacting labor laws he signed on Aug. 14, 2025 | BlueRoomStream

By Jim Talamonti | The Center Square

Gov. J.B. Pritzker has signed legislation that he says will protect workers, but a small business advocate says small towns and Main Streets will suffer.

The governor signed two bills Thursday morning at the Illinois AFL-CIO headquarters in Springfield.

Pritzker said Senate Bill 1976, also known as the Workers’ Rights and Workplace Safety Act, would preserve worker protections against federal rollbacks. He also signed House Bill 1189, which provides that workers are paid the state’s prevailing wage if it is higher than the federal prevailing wage for federal construction projects.

National Federation of Independent Business Illinois State Director Noah Finley said Senate Bill 1976 expands workplace liability and red tape.

“This is not the direction we need to go for Illinois if we want to create a prosperous future for our small towns and Main Streets across the state,” Finley said.

The NFIB sent a letter to the governor last week, urging him to veto SB 1976.

On Thursday, Pritzker dismissed concerns that the added regulations would hold small businesses back.

“Paying our workers properly does not hold Illinois back. It advances the cause of Illinois,” Pritzker said.

Finley says Illinois’ GDP and population growth trail the national averages.

“Right now we’re seeing a lot of developing countries, France, Britain, obviously we’re seeing regulatory relief coming from Washington, but Illinois is moving in the opposite direction. I would say we’re moving in the wrong direction on making Illinois viable, making it possible for small businesses to compete in the global economy,” Finley said.

Read more here.

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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.

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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.

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Educator urges Illinois teachers to reject union pressure, politics and coercion

Posted in 220, Barrington Education Association, Board of Education, Education, Elections, Illinois Federation of Teachers, Illinois Policy Institute, Politics, Pritzker’s Rules of Order, Property Taxes, School Districts, Taxes, The Center Square, Unions on August 7, 2025| 1 Comment »

“Say hey to our newest class of educators in Barrington 220!” | Barrington 220 School District Facebook post August 7, 2025

By Catrina Barker | The Center Square contributor

With the Illinois Education Association’s mid-September opt-out deadline approaching, critics call for a permanent opt-out option instead of yearly reaffirmation, arguing union influence restricts school choice and teacher autonomy in Illinois.

Sarah Fletcher, a former charter school educator and now the Head of School at White Horse Academy, a private school, said her own teaching career trajectory was shaped by a desire to avoid union involvement altogether.

“When we moved here to Illinois from Arizona, I had very little interest in teaching at the public school,” Fletcher said. “Part of that was because I didn’t want to be pressured into or have to be mandated to pay dues. The IEA and IFT, which are part of larger organizations like the NEA, use the majority of their funds not to represent teachers, but for political advocacy.”

Fletcher said she founded White Horse Academy in part to provide a space where teachers wouldn’t be required to hold state certification or pressured into union membership. She says the high cost of dues isn’t justified by what little teachers get in return.

“Oftentimes unions don’t advertise opting out is an option. I experienced something similar in a different sector where there was a union. I was heavily pressured into signing paperwork to pay union dues and was basically told I had no choice,” said Fletcher. “Much of the money from the dues collected fund political agendas, even opposing public and private school options. For example, [state Rep.] Terra Costa Howard, who wrote the homeschool bill HB 2827, received nearly $500,000 from teachers’ unions.”

According to Illinois Policy, Chicago Teachers Union members pay over $1,400 in dues annually, but less than $149 is spent on representing Chicago teachers.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Janus v. AFSCME on June 27, 2018 means teachers nationwide are no longer required to be part of a teachers union in order to keep their jobs.

Read more here.

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Economist explains flight of people, dollars from Illinois

Posted in Economy, Real Estate, School Districts, The Center Square, Topics Of Interest on July 29, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Vladimir Solomianyi | Unsplash

By Jim Talamonti | The Center Square

Outmigration has taken a major toll on the Illinois economy, according to a new report by Unleash Prosperity.

Using data from the Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. Census Bureau, analysts found that Illinois lost 881,012 residents from 2012 to 2022.

Economist Stephen Moore said only New York and California suffered more domestic outmigration than the Land of Lincoln.

“This is the sad story, same thing. New York and California and Illinois are just being bled to death,” Moore said.

VoteWithYourFeet.net breaks down the Census Bureau and IRS numbers from 2012 to 2022.

The data shows that Illinois was also one of the biggest losers for personal income, with a net adjusted gross income loss of $63,478,115,000 from 2012 to 2022. Only New York and California suffered heavier losses.

“Some of our friends on the left and some of our Democratic friends like to say, ‘Well, taxes don’t matter that much. They don’t really have an impact.’ You’re looking at the impact of taxes right here,” Moore said.

Read more here.

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