Gov. Bruce Rauner is halting a practice that let companies get tax breaks for keeping or creating jobs at one plant while eliminating jobs at a separate site in Illinois, a move that has happened dozens of times.

While it is common for large companies to operate from multiple locations, the state's leading jobs program long allowed companies to treat every location, division or subsidiary as an independent operation.

The Tribune last month found the quirk in an examination of the Economic Development for a Growing Economy program, or EDGE, a tax incentive designed to create jobs and lure businesses from other states. Read the story in the Chicago Tribune.

With cold temperatures on their way, the Office of the Illinois State Fire Marshal encourages residents to prevent carbon monoxide poisoning by ensuring their homes have working smoke and carbon monoxide detectors.

Carbon monoxide (CO) is a colorless, odorless and tasteless gas byproduct of burning fossil fuels. At elevated levels, carbon monoxide (CO) causes sickness and, if not detected, death. Simply having working carbon monoxide detectors in your home and regularly testing them can prevent awful consequences.

FY16 budget – CGFA
General Assembly watchdogs chart continued budget picture.  The nonpartisan Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability (CGFA), the in-house budget agency of the Illinois General Assembly, released their October 2015 fiscal report this week. The CGFA “Monthly Briefing” covers ongoing State revenues, particularly key State General Funds revenue numbers, and ongoing trends likely to affect future State revenues. For example, the October briefing includes a discussion, based on nationwide trends and economic models, of the likely health of the 2015 Christmas retail selling season and its expected impact on State sales tax revenues.

While the winter of 2015-16 is expected to be milder thanks to the effects of El Nino, its unlikely Illinois will completely avoid the cold temperatures, snow and ice that define Midwestern winters.

To help people prepare for potentially dangerous winter weather, the Illinois Emergency Management Agency (IEMA), the National Weather Service (NWS) and local emergency management agencies will highlight winter weather preparedness throughout November.

“There hasn’t been a winter in Illinois without at least one winter storm in the past century,” said IEMA Director James K. Joseph. “Right now, before that first snowstorm or ice event, is the perfect time to prepare yourself, your home and your car for winter.”

“Heroin is no longer a secret,” Illinois State Rep. Patti Bellock told dozens of lawmakers, community leaders and local advocates who gathered at the Robert Crown Center for Health and Education in suburban Chicago on Wednesday to commemorate the inaugural Illinois Heroin Abuse Awareness Day.

“Eight or nine years ago,I wasn’t worried about heroin,” said Bellock, who sponsored the resolution to make November 4th Heroin Abuse Awareness Day — an effort to raise awareness among Illinois residents, and parents in particular, about the dangers of heroin, the deadly drug at the center of a nationwide epidemic.

“When a close friend approached me, distraught because her son was addicted, I was shocked,” Bellock said. “People weren’t aware that heroin was a problem.”

The midwest, and the Chicagoland area specifically, have been among the regions hardest hit by the country’s current drug problem which, according to the CDC, has caused the rate of heroin-related deaths to nearly triple since 2010. Read more on Yahoo News.

Illinois' troubled child welfare system could soon become an investment opportunity for charities, banks and wealthy citizens under a public-private partnership experiment set to launch Tuesday.

The project, first commissioned by former Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn and embraced by his Republican successor, Gov. Bruce Rauner, aims to remake the way the state delivers services to people in need.

Rather than the government paying providers directly, investors will cover the costs of coordinating and supplying services, with the potential for a return on the investment if their efforts meet goals designed to improve outcomes and save the state money. The idea is among a number of so-called social impact bond initiatives that have cropped up across the country as states search for new ways to pay for costly social services in an era of slashed budgets.

If successful, the program could become a model for transforming the way human services are delivered in Illinois, freeing providers from the uncertainty of the state budgeting process, which in some years — like this one — has left many caught in the middle of a political battle between the governor and legislature. Read more in the Chicago Tribune.

FY16 Budget
Governor Rauner to chair public meeting with legislative leaders on Nov. 18.  The meeting is expected to examine the delayed FY16 budget process.  Although the FY16 fiscal year began on July 1, 2015, a constitutional balanced budget has not been enacted by the Democrat supermajorities in the Illinois House and Senate.  The State has continued to operate under consent decrees, court orders, continuing appropriations, and school appropriations, but this has created many operational problems.  Recipients of State services, and providers of goods and services to the State, have been affected by the lack of a legal budget document.