A detailed look at how Chicago, Cook County and Illinois have managed to completely screw themselves into near-financial ruin:
Cook County lost more than a quarter of its manufacturing jobs between 2000 and 2010, according to a new analysis.
Cook lost some 89,100 jobs, more than any other county in the United States except for Los Angeles County, which saw 113,000 jobs disappear. Detroit’s Wayne County lost 84,000 manufacturing jobs, according to a Scripps Howard News Service tally.
Every county in the Chicago area lost manufacturing jobs in that time span — more than 125,500.
Statewide, Illinois in 2010 had 742,089 manufacturing jobs, a 20 percent decline from 2000, according to U.S. Census figures.
Now tie that into this report:
- A hotly debated tax break package designed to prevent two major Chicago-area companies from moving operations out of Illinois took clearer shape Sunday, with legislators scaling back its scope to ease concerns about its potential costs.
The focus of deal is giving tax incentives to Sears Holdings Corp. and CME Group Inc., parent company of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and Chicago Board of Trade. - The slimmed-down package, crafted by Rep. John Bradley, D-Marion, chairman of the House Revenue Committee, and Rep. David Harris, R-Arlington Heights, the committee's GOP spokesman, would cost the state an estimated $250 million a year, compared with the estimated cost of $800 million or more on the earlier package, which stalled.
The cost would be completely offset by a resurgence in state corporate income tax receipts that is expected with the expiration of a tax break that allows businesses to accelerate their deductions for capital investments through 2012, Bradley said.
So these tax breaks cost Illinois $250 million a year, but they expect to make it up with an expiring tax break? What's to stop corporations from merely abandoning Illinois for greener pastures and telling Quinn and company to take their expiring tax break and sticking it where the sun don't shine?