IL Cook County Approves Sales Tax Increase The governing board of Cook County, ILLINOIS narrowly approved a one-cent sales tax increase that will push Chicago’s rate over that of four Alabama cities and Seattle on Jan. 1, making it the highest rate of any major U.S. city, at 10.25 percent (CHICAGO...

AL Approves $1B BP Settlement Spending Plan ALABAMA lawmakers approved a plan last week to spend most of a $1 billion settlement with BP over the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill on debt repayments, Medicaid and highway projects in Baldwin and Mobile counties. The plan is now with Gov. Robert Bentley...

Ten states started the 2018 fiscal year on July 1 without a budget in place, according to the Tax Foundation. A partial government shutdown in one of those states, Maine, ended on the 4th of July when Gov. Paul LePage (R) signed a budget compromise eliminating a controversial 3 percent income tax surcharge...

A federal judge in Indiana ruled this month that denying or delaying treatment of prison inmates infected with hepatitis C constituted cruel and unusual punishment, in violation of the U.S. Constitution’s Eighth Amendment. A similar ruling last year in Florida and settlements in Colorado and Massachusetts...

The older a state is, the more likely it is to have fiscal problems. That’s one of the findings of an analysis of state fiscal health by William Bergman, director of research for Truth in Accounting, a nonprofit that advocates for transparency in local, state and federal government finances. ...

In his budget address in late February, Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont (D) called for a tax increase on sodas and other sugary drinks. Soda tax legislation has also been introduced this year in California, Massachusetts New York, Rhode Island and Vermont, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures...