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With 2017 winding down, CFA Society Chicago hopes its members, partners and other industry professionals are enjoying a safe and happy holiday season. As we reflect on the past year, we would like to provide readers of the CFA Society Chicago NewsBrief a look at the most clicked articles from the year. Enjoy the look back!
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Forbes
From April 11: It’s no secret that Chicago is facing tough times. For example, the city’s public pension system is a mess. In fact, the city had to enact a water tax to strengthen it, money that could have helped pay for its costly water system repairs. Chicago’s school district may have to shorten the school year if it can’t get a lifeline from the state, and in 2016 murders in the city hit their highest total in nearly two decades. The result is that people are leaving both the city and the metro area.
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Reuters
From March 14: The hole in Illinois' general funds budget deepened to $9.6 billion in fiscal 2016, an increase of $2.7 billion from the previous year and the biggest deficit in at least 10 years, according to the state's annual audit released. As a 20-month impasse over the budget continues between Illinois' Republican governor and Democrats who control the legislature, the state's finances are in a freefall.
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Reuters
From Feb. 14: As speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives, Michael Madigan has outlasted five governors and is now on his sixth. This year, the Chicago Democrat will become longest-serving state or federal House speaker in the United States since at least the early 1800s. Madigan is to Illinois what his late mentor, Mayor Richard J. Daley, was to Chicago, the state’s great metropolis — a city the political boss once controlled down to the last garbage truck.
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Reuters
From July 11: Illinois' first budget after two years is filled with partial outlines to address its debt-ridden pension system and unpaid bill backlog — signs that political fighting and the fiscal mess in the nation's fifth-largest state are far from over. At least 15 House and Senate Republicans broke with first-term Republican Governor Bruce Rauner on Thursday and joined with Democrats to override Rauner's vetoes of the state's first budget package in more than two years.
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The Associated Press via Chicago Sun-Times
From Feb. 14: A report released Friday says Illinois’ financial situation is so bad that the state would have to slash spending by more than 26 percent to balance next year’s budget through cuts alone. Civic Federation President Laurence Msall says Gov. Bruce Rauner and legislators “need to take action immediately.” The nonpartisan government-watchdog and policy-analysis organization recommends Illinois limit spending growth and increase the individual income tax rate from 3.75 to 5.25 percent, as well as increasing the corporate tax rate. It also calls for lowering the state sales-tax rate.
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Bloomberg
From Nov. 14: Chicago's public pension debt is $36 billion and growing, it's facing $550 million in budget deficits over the next three years and this summer the state had to bail out a school system that was flirting with insolvency. Yet next month, the nation's third-largest city — whose bonds were downgraded to junk by Moody's Investors Service two years ago — will start selling as much as $3 billion of debt that another rating company considers as safe as U.S. Treasuries.
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Bloomberg via Crain's Chicago Business
From April 25: What's worse than the worst? Illinois may find out. The lowest-rated U.S. state is headed toward its third year of an unprecedented budget impasse as Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner and the Democrat-led General Assembly repeatedly fail to agree on how to plug chronic deficits and halt the growing backlog of unpaid bills.
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The Associated Press via Pantagraph
From June 27: Illinois is on track to become the first U.S. state to have its credit rating downgraded to "junk" status, which would deepen its multibillion-dollar deficit and cost taxpayers more for years to come. S&P Global Ratings has warned the agency will likely lower Illinois' creditworthiness to below investment grade if feuding lawmakers fail to agree on a state budget for a third straight year, increasing the amount the state will have to pay to borrow money for things such as building roads or refinancing existing debt.
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Reuters via U.S. News & World Report
From Aug. 15: Under a plan announced by the mayor's office, Chicago would create a new entity to issue bonds backed by city's share of Illinois sales tax collections in an effort to reduce its borrowing costs. Mayor Rahm Emanuel unveiled the plan at the city's annual investors conference, saying it will be "much more financially viable" for Chicago.
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Chicago Magazine
From May 30: One of the Rauner administration’s most prominent and controversial demands is to find a way to reduce how much the state spends on its retired employees. For political and ideological reasons, Illinois Democrats are supported by labor, and support it in turn, so pension reform is not popular among the Democratic base.
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