Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle this week released a joint budget efficiency report that revealed more than that the two governments have saved taxpayers $20 million in the last six months. It also revealed a difference in public relations between the two.

Emanuel issued a...

One day after Governor Pat Quinn signed a taxpayer-funded subsidy of $77 million annually to the wildly profitable Chicago Mercantile Exchange Group -- and seven days before Christmas -- the CME Group's charitable arm pulled the plug on its charitable giving in Illinois.

And the move has left...

On Chicago's North Side, a political brawl is in brewing between two high-profile lesbian human rights activists for the Illinois state House seat once held by ex-State Rep. Harry Osterman, a clash which has drawn in Chicago's newly minted mayor and the state's powerful House Speaker.

Democratic State Rep. Kelly...

The thinking among Springfield insiders up until a few weeks had been that the legislature was likely to override Governor Pat Quinn's veto of Commonwealth Edison's "Smart Grid" bill, a measure that guaranteed the electric giant a rate increase of 6 percentage points over the 30-year Treasury rate to upgrade...

If Governor Pat Quinn ever wonders why the public, the press and the legislature find his approach to governing to be incoherent and frustrating, and at times cynical, he needs only to consider his recent whiplash-inducing turn on behavioral health care policy.

Last week Quinn held a bill-signing ceremony at...

It's a $30 million "oops."

It's an "oops" that could cost nearly 20,000 Illinois kids, mothers, grandmothers and others their mental health care services on July 1.

It's an "oops" that can only be fixed by the Illinois Senate within the next 24 hours.

How's that for a political thriller...

Governor Pat Quinn struggled to assert his political authority and legislative agenda during the just completed spring session of the Illinois General Assembly, drawing public questioning of his political relevance by political commentators and Springfield observers.

To combat the image of shriveled gubernatorial relevance, Quinn last week held a combative...

In Illinois budget politics this year, regarding funding for the young, the old, and the ill, the golden rule is this: she who has the gold makes the rules.

An overhauled budget process in the Illinois General Assembly has empowered individual House and Senate appropriations committee lawmakers to allocate...

The honeymoon is not only over -- voters may be seeking a quickie divorce.

After its first 100 days in power, a new national poll finds that U.S. House Republicans have fallen so far out of fashion with the American public that it is now possible Democrats could take control...

In 2010, the Wisconsin Legislative Fiscal Bureau estimated that President Barack Obama's new health reform would save the state budget $365 million over the next five years.

In 2011, newly-inaugurated Tea Party Governor Scott Walker, despite a gaping budget deficit, ordered the state Attorney General to add...

Many Illinois Republican lawmakers, like State Senator Matt Murphy (R-Palatine), a GOP budget "expert," are fond of loudly dismissing Illinois budget cuts made by Governor Pat Quinn as nothing but a mere budgetary mirage.

"The idea that spending has somehow gone done and there have been real cuts is straight...

Justice is supposed to be colorblind.

In Illinois, justice has been black and white.

If you are black, the probability is greater that the justice system will send you to prison for low-level drug possession than if you are white.

A state commission last week released a report that...

Sometimes a candidate offers a campaign promise whose staying power lasts only as long as its echo in the microphone.

Chicago mayoral candidate Gery Chico trotted out one of those promises this week to address a vanishing problem.

At a press conference in Marquette Park yesterday, Chico pledged to deploy...

Governor Pat Quinn is looking to fill the Christmas stockings of Illinois vendors.

Quinn's administration is planning to move forward next week with an expanded program to sell a big chunk of the state's $5.3 billion of vendor-owed debt to Wall Street banks and hedge funds, according to a Quinn...

"Most County departments run nearly independent back-office functions, which in many cases are redundant. For example, procurement and information technology are handled separately by multiple elected officials. This duplication wastes taxpayer dollars," said newly-minted Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle at her swearing-in ceremony on Monday

Preckwinkle's inaugural rhetoric mostly...

In 1996, Illinois and 14 other states approved "Defense of Marriage of Act" laws to outlaw same-sex marriages and to refuse to recognize such marriages adopted in other states, but Illinois yesterday partially undid that injustice.

State Rep. Greg Harris (D-Chicago) brought civil unions legislation, Senate...

Chicago mayor candidate Rahm Emanuel is planning some key changes to Chicago's use and management of its infamous Tax Increment Financing districts, changes that will be welcomed by both city residents and good government types.

Emanuel says reducing the violent crime rate in neighborhoods is the key to their economic...

This is simple.

Governor Pat Quinn won the election. But he won no mandate to raise the Illinois income tax.

Quinn beat State Senator Bill Brady (R-Bloomington) because liberal and moderate voters in Chicago and suburbs were turned off by Brady's right wing positions on social issues, such as...

First, let us be clear: Pat Quinn won. Second, progressive, conservative, and tea party voters helped him do it.

While the bean counters and the lawyers at the Cook County and Chicago Board of Elections and elsewhere in Illinois continue to sift through uncounted absentee and other ballots in the...

At the moment, Illinois progressive voters--better known as liberals--hold Governor Pat Quinn's fate in their hands. If Quinn falls on Tuesday, it won't be the Tea Party types who did him in--it will be progressives.

According to new poll data buried in the cross tabs, 7%...