The following is a statment from AFSCME on the Civic Federation's new report on the state budget.
The patient, state government, is ailing. Symptoms include chronic
failure to adequately fund basic services or pay bills, forcing harmful
cuts. But this report fails to diagnose the cause, while the bitter
medicine it prescribes offers no cure.
Illinois’s persistent
mismatch between costs and revenues—its structural deficit—results from a
broken and unfair tax system that fails to capture economic growth and
squeezes the middle class while granting rich people lower effective tax
rates and allowing two-thirds of all corporations to pay no corporate
income tax at all.
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On Monday, we 
The American Federation of
State, County and Municipal Employees, AFSCME, which represents city library
workers, is calling on the city to return to a 48-hour operating week for branch libraries. Also, AFSCME wants the city to
rehire more than 100 laid off Chicago Public Library employees. 
Health advocates and workers held a candlelight vigil in front of city hall last night in the hopes of staving off proposed cuts in the city budget to clinics and the Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH) and Department of Family Support Services (DFSS). The current proposal, which will be voted on by city council next week, calls for the closing of six mental health clinics, the privatization of seven health clinics, and nearly 200 layoffs for DFSS employees. The upcoming vote leaves little time for advocates to save these services for the “most vulnerable of citizens.”