Unemployment Insurance (“UI”) is a partnership program between the federal government and individual states in the United States. UI programs provide benefits — which differ from state to state — to provide coverage in the form of compensation to workers who become unemployed (involuntarily) and meet specific eligibility requirements.[i] In…

Unlike most other core public policy areas, taxation is rarely the subject of either thoughtful public discourse or bipartisan cooperation. The reasons for this are not especially hard to understand: First, no one really likes paying taxes, and for that reason tax policy is the subject of much political hyperbole. …

In the middle of August 2021, the City of Chicago released its Fiscal Year (FY) 2022 Budget Forecast. The budget forecast precedes the release of Mayor Lightfoot’s Recommended Budget and sets up the expectations of what the upcoming fiscal year may encounter. In discussing the FY 2022 Budget Forecast for…

Unemployment is used as a measure of the health of an economy. An unemployed person is a person of working age who simultaneously meets three conditions: · be unemployed, i.e., not having worked, even for one hour, during a reference week; · be available to take a job; and ·…

In economics, there is a concept called the “Marginal Propensity to Consume” or “MPC”. MPC describes the relationship between income and consumption of goods (the spending of income) — or more specifically: how someone’s consumption (spending of income) changes when that person’s income changes. A person’s MPC is calculated by…

By Clara Fong, Fiscal Policy Intern & Allison Flanagan, Director of Policy Analysis Since its creation in 2017, Opportunity Zones have been the source of controversy, with proponents believing it will narrow the geographical inequity gap across the country, while critics claim its main benefit is to wealthy investors. …

By Allison Flanagan, Director of Policy Analysis Visualizations by Nicole Shen, Research Intern Two weeks ago, Governor Pritzker proposed what CTBA would describe as a very sobering FY 2022 General Fund Budget. The short of why it was sobering is that the FY 2022 Proposed General Fund Budget increased year-to-year…

By CTBA Staff If nothing else, Governor Pritzker’s FY 2022 General Fund budget proposal was sobering. After acknowledging he had bolder plans for the state’s upcoming fiscal year, the Governor none-the-less proposed spending $28.7 billion on public services in FY 2022, essentially holding total service appropriations to the same nominal-dollar…

By Allison Flanagan, Director of Policy Analysis On Tuesday, December 15, 2020, Governor Pritzker announced $711 million in cuts to the Fiscal Year (“FY”) 2021 budget.[i] This is likely only the beginning of additional budget cuts that will be required. …