An Illinois Senate committee on Wednesday rejected a measure that would force local government to pick up the tab when it gives an ex-lawmaker a big paycheck to fatten his pension.

The bill passed the House on a 110-0 vote in March. The legislation sought to require cities, villages or other governments employing a former lawmaker for short periods of time to pay for the additional pension expenses that go with the new job, said House Republican leader Tom Cross of Oswego, who sponsored the bill in his chamber...

Illinois could soon have a new privately run jail. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement wants a new privately run detention center in Crete, just south of Chicago, to house illegal aliens, and the Illinois Senate passed a bill last week to stop it.

Illinois currently has a law against privately run state prisons or county jails. Senate Bill 1064, which passed the Senate by a vote of 34-17 on March 28, would attempt to expand the ban to federal prisons and detention centers. Though state laws generally don’t inhibit the federal government from doing as it pleases, the bill would ban units of government in Illinois from contracting with private companies to house federal prisoners. The Senate’s vote was split largely along partisan lines, with most Democrats voting for it and Republicans voting against it...

The Illinois Senate passed a bill that could halt the construction of a private prison in Crete.   State Sen. Tony Munoz (D-Chicago) says when prisons are run like businesses they have a financial incentive to keep prisoners longer.

Corrections Corp. of America, the company that would run the prison, has been criticized for lobbying for stricter criminal laws...

Gov. Pat Quinn on Tuesday sought to ease concerns about a recent downgrade in the state's bond rating that cemented Illinois as the state with the nation's worst credit rating, saying he will push for major pension reforms this year to try to reverse it.

Quinn's comments came just days after Moody's Investors Service downgraded the state's rating from A1 to A2. The change "follows a legislative session in which the state took no steps to implement lasting solutions to its severe pension underfunding or to its chronic bill payment delays," Moody's said in its report.

The Democratic governor noted that Standard & Poor's and Fitch Ratings did not lower their ratings of the state's debt — they rank California as worst in the nation, with Illinois one notch above — but Quinn acknowledged the state's ranking should be improving after last year's income tax increase, not getting downgraded...

Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn pledged Tuesday to reform the public employee pension system "once and for all" this spring.

The Democratic governor said he's willing to take on the ailing program in a year when every seat in the Legislature is up for election because the state's contribution to five retirement plans is eating up more and more of the state budget.

The system is short about $85 billion what it will eventually need to cover all its liabilities. But repair could mean reducing benefits for state employees, something that's highly unpopular with powerful unions who contribute money to political campaigns...

Public employees can no longer rely on some loopholes to inflate their state benefits, including one that allowed two union officials to qualify for teachers’ retirement perks after a single day in the classroom, under a law signed Thursday. 

The law, which takes effect immediately, also aims to end the practice of double dipping. In some cases —notably in the Chicago area — employees took leaves of absence from city jobs, took full-time union jobs, then collected pensions from both. 

The legislation also says current union leaders can’t base public pensions on union pay checks; now their pay will be based on their salaries when they leave their government jobs...

When it comes to state pensions and Springfield, nothing really is a surprise anymore.

Lawmakers talk big about fixing the system and reforming an unsustainable model. But they do little about it. And they do even less to address the $85 billion hole the state is in for underfunding the pensions systems in years past.

Now, it appears, that even when lawmakers do enact some sort of pension reform, they want to take it back – particularly some House Democrats...

Gov. Pat Quinn halted the layoff of 2,600 state employees Monday - two days before it was to take effect - after a Southern Illinois judge said it violated a union contract covering most of them.

The development dealt a setback to Quinn's plans to pull the Illinois budget out of a morass.

Circuit Judge Todd Lambert issued an injunction in Johnson County to halt Quinn's proposed layoffs of members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees…

Six inmates at the Southwestern Illinois Correctional Center in East St. Louis filed suit against five Illinois Department of Corrections employees in federal court alleging their Fifth, Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment rights were violated.

Larry E. Starks, Jr., James Brown, Craig L. Spencer, David Coleman, Kevin D. Drysdale and Anwar S. Randle are each seeking at least $500,000 in damages, alleging they were denied due process, subjected to cruel and unusual punishment and for violations of the equal protection clause.

The inmates allege on May 13, prison officials authorized a "shakedown" of housing unit one which consists of 24 male dorms even though at the time there was no disorderly conduct or need to restore order. The prison's tactical unit conducted the operation…

Saturday, July 22, 1978, began as a peaceful day. Pontiac residents were going about their typical Saturday routine, some were playing golf, some were shopping. Lawns were being mowed.

Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Nothing, that is, until about 9:45 a.m.

It was at that time when armed inmates began a riot that lasted for most of the day. Three guards were killed and three more injured in what has been described as the worst riot in Illinois Department of Corrections history…

Even episodes of pouring rain could not stop more than 1,000 people from showing their support for keeping Pontiac Correctional Center open. Mayor Scott McCoy estimated 1,500 to 2,000 people showed up for a "Save Pontiac Prison" photograph. | Video

Everyone wore a navy blue shirt as they milled around the Livingston County Courthouse.

The photograph and a previous parade are part of an effort to convince Gov. Rod Blagojevich to keep the prison open. The governor has proposed closing the prison and moving inmates to a now-unused prison in Thomson was a way to save money…