Illinois General Assembly

No, this is not a news tip from The Onion: A group of Illinois state lawmakers, headed by state Rep. Karen May (D-Highland Park), starred in a musical...

To rush unprepared into widespread drilling downstate without appropriate regulations would be monumentally foolish. We have to take the long view here.

The real solution to our gas price problem is not doubling down on the dirtiest oil on the planet: Instead we need to lessen our dependence on oil.

This past holiday season, the Illinois General Assembly gave a giant present to some big corporations while most families across the state struggled just to get through another challenging year.

As the Illinois General Assembly's fall veto session rallies on in Springfield, debates over gambling, pension reform, red-light cameras in Chicago an...

Illinois Governor Pat Quinn on Monday vetoed legislation that would have allowed for Commonwealth Edison to increase its rates for its customers while...

Illinois State Rep. Ron Stephens, a 27-year veteran of the state House of Representatives, announced Monday that he was resigning from the post immedi...

The Illinois Senate reconvened Wednesday to vote on a handful of measures, including a 4.6 percent cut in their own pay. Four senators voted agains...

The members of the General Assembly who voted in favor of the revenue package, and its leadership, must be lauded for their courage in doing the only responsible thing.

As the clock winds down on the lame duck Illinois General Assembly, two out-of-state coal companies are asking to put ratepayers and businesses on the hook for a bailout of their risky projects.

House Bill 5428 makes Illinois the seventh state in the U.S. to reverse mid-20th century laws mandating the automatic sealing of adoptees' original birth certificates.

Four weeks ago, after a long and contentious debate, Chicago's City Council voted unanimously to allow a zoning change for a Wal-Mart to open a store in Chicago's far south side Pullman neighborhood.

Under current Illinois law, a voter must declare a party affiliation before voting in the primary, which is then recorded as a public record. Pat Quinn's "open primary" plan would change that.

The real fixes for our state's budget crisis -- fixes that will likely include both an income tax hike and some deep spending cuts -- are being put off, for reasons purely political, until after Election Day.

Most of the cuts in the Illinois budget are harmful and unwise. They are not driven by policy considerations or evidence-based program evaluations, but by the brutal calculus of the state's fiscal default.

Governor Quinn wants to take the option to borrow again to get through another year. Common sense dictates that borrowing on top of borrowing will eventually lead to bankruptcy.

Those who see an income tax increase as the only solution do not understand the problem. With one out of eight Illinoisans out of work, a tax increase would only serve to lead us further down the wrong path.

On Monday, I appealed directly to Quinn in a letter and requested that he veto the budget and call the members of the assembly back to Springfield. My request has received no response.

Year after year, state Rep. Robert Molaro doled out publicly funded scholarships to the family of a longtime political supporter, ultimately giving th...

Let's hope Governor Quinn can scrape up the commitment and the $9.7 million out of a $25 billion budget to provide HIV/AID drugs to help keep people, your neighbors, alive.

By shortchanging teacher pensions, is Chicago Public Schools simply creating a bigger mess down the road?

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — Illinois lawmakers are going to take another stab at passing a new state budget. Democratic legislative leaders said Thursd...

The House has overhwelmingly passed a bill to get rid of free rides for all seniors, regardless of income. 83 members voted "Yes." If the bill becomes...

I've filed a bill to repeal the Video Gaming Act, which allows places licensed to serve alcohol to have up to five video poker machines for patron use -- the equivalent of 60 new casinos in Illinois.

Is it really possible that a school whose mission is based on teaching a specific set of religious values can distinguish which parts of the building are religious and which are not?