Rich Miller

I asked Illinois House Speaker Chris Welch last week about the failure to pass an omnibus energy bill (the Clean and Reliable Grid Affordability Act) during the just-ended spring legislative session. “I think the same thing that happened on energy happened on all the things, you know. Big bills take time,” Welch said. “And I […]

For quite a while now, most folks in politics have assumed that Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias and Comptroller Susana Mendoza will probably run for mayor of Chicago in 2027. The incumbent Brandon Johnson is spectacularly unpopular, and a real hunger is developing in the city (again) for new leadership. Anyway, some wags have […]

The U.S. House’s Energy and Commerce Committee released its recommendations for budget reconciliation early last week. A preliminary review by the Congressional Budget Office projected that, if implemented, at least 8.6 million Americans would lose their Medicaid coverage during the coming decade. That translates to well over 300,000 Illinoisans. In addition, the CBO projected that […]

House Speaker Chris Welch took the extraordinary actions last week of permanently kicking Rep. Fred Crespo, D- Hoffman Estates out of the House Democratic caucus, stripping him of his legislative staff, removing him from his appropriations committee chair’s position and booting him from the bicameral Legislative Audit Commission. Speaker Welch also suspended a Democratic staffer […]

I spent some time talking with a top legislative budget negotiator last week who said rank-and-file legislators will very soon have to come to terms with a state budget environment unlike anything many have ever seen before. The “budgeteer” didn’t know yet how things would shake out, but the person was adamant that weak revenues […]

As you likely know by now, a federal jury deadlocked last week on all three corruption charges against Sen. Emil Jones III, D-Chicago. U.S. District Judge Andrea Wood declared a mistrial after polling individual jurors and arriving at the conclusion that they could not possibly reach a verdict. When you think of the Chicago U.S. […]

Gov. JB Pritzker said last week that the extreme uncertainty with the U.S. government and the international economy might mean that the legislature may have to reconvene to reconfigure the state budget after it adjourns at the end of next month. “It may very well be that we’re going to have to come back at […]

The Civic Federation, the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, the Illinois Economic Policy Institute and the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability recently released a report calling for the expansion of the sales tax to several services, claiming such a move could raise $2 billion for the state. The state imposes an additional sales tax […]

Rep. Marty Moylan, D-Des Plaines, recently told me he was “astonished” by some Chicago Transit Authority employee paychecks. Moylan, the chair of the House Transportation: Rail Systems, Roads & Bridges Committee, is heading into the transit funding discussions armed with an inch-and-a-half-thick binder filled with CTA salary data. The agency’s gross payroll for all employees […]

Advocates say a major storm is brewing that could overwhelm the state’s child foster care system. The problem is legal liability insurance, or, more specifically, the lack thereof. Insurance companies, advocates and providers say, are not taking on new private foster care agencies as clients and some agencies are being notified that they’re losing their […]