Illinois Issues

The spring legislative session is in full swing under the shadow of a failed Grand Bargain, which aimed to end a 20-month stretch without a budget. Bills proposed are diverse, including lobbyist ethics, an Obama holiday, wage theft and animal welfare.

Gov. Bruce Rauner has little to say to journalists, and that's not just a problem for reporters.

There are serious consequences under Gov, Bruce Rauner's tax proposal. Commentar y: At first blush, Gov. Bruce Rauner's property tax freeze seems like a great idea. What homeowner wouldn't want to know the next tax bill will never, ever be larger than the last one? Property taxes on my home last year went up $52.56, a 1.7 percent increase over my 2015 tax bill. If a freeze had been in place, I could have saved those dollars, or spent them on something else. What's not to like about that? Indeed,

Yet another proposal aims to get the state out of crisis. A 1917 report conducted on the Illinois pension system revealed bad news. After a pension-focused trip around the globe, with studies on such nations as Great Britain, New Zealand, and Austro-Hungary, it got to crux of the matter:

Disparate entities say laws in this area need to change at the state and national levels.

Medicaid Managed Care Is A Mixed Bag For Providers, Patients Y vonne Hardcastle was at her wit’s end. Her son, Alfredo Mejia, was 7 years old. He was angry all the time and had been diagnosed with behavior problems and ADHD, but that didn’t feel right. She didn’t know what was wrong, but her mother’s intuition kept pushing her to find help for her boy.

In 2016, the Illinois Board of Elections and the state Republican Party were victims of cybersecurity breaches. But uncertainty lingers as to what the hackers wanted and whether future attacks can be prevented.

Who has been hurt the most by shifts in the Illinois economy?

Anti-Madigan effort fails to sway House members in speaker election.

Jamey Dunn is leaving the position of Illinois Issues editor. In this week ’s Illinois Issues report , she reflects on her time working here and covering state government.

Campus communities in the state feel the consequences of drastic higher education cuts.

Nearly 200 new laws go into effect in Illinois on January 1. The state still doesn’t have a budget. A stopgap spending plan, which was approved over the summer, will end on January 1, leaving social service agencies, institutions of higher education and others in the lurch. But, in the past year, legislators did approve hundreds of pieces of legislation, which the governor signed. Nearly 200 laws will go into effect at the start of the new year — close to the number that went into effect at the

There’s still no budget for Illinois, but some big changes to education policy kicked in this year. As the contentious presidential election played out, several national issues affected the lives of citizens here.

A few years ago, Illinois adopted regulations for high-volume horizontal fracking, but it was slow to get the permitting process up and running. Those in southern Illinois who were hoping for an economic boom have since seen the promise of fracking go bust.

The presidential election highlighted a divide that is so deep, citizens in Illinois and across the country can’t even agree on the same set of facts.