NOTE:  This is the second in an on-going series of Housing Policy Updates. Regional housing market trends during the third quarter of 2012 continued to mirror those found in the first half of the year , with growing permits and housing starts counterbalanced by a continued, but slowing, annual decline in existing home values. The region also continues to return to pre-recession... Read More

The 97th General Assembly adjourned sine die on Tuesday, leaving a number of issues unresolved -- most notably, pension reform. Legislation to address pension reform saw a glimmer of hope with SB 1673 - HA#10 , which cleared the House Pension and Investments Committee. With the clock ticking and no sign that HA#10 would get a vote on the floor, Governor Quinn proposed an 11th hour option... Read More

On January 9, 2013, the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) announced changes to the New Starts and Small Starts programs.  These reforms streamline the administrative review process for applicants to both programs and apply broader evaluation criteria to proposed projects.  More specifically, these changes expand the program’s environmental criteria to include measures of... Read More

In December 2012, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released a report on infill construction trends in America’s largest metropolitan regions. The analysis focused on the 51 Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) with more than one million people and analyzed changes in residential development patterns between two time periods (2000 to 2004 and 2005 to 2009). The report noted that,... Read More

The U.S. Congress passed H.R. 8 , the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012, on January 1, 2013, and President Obama signed the bill into law on January 2.  H.R. 8 represents the compromise between Congress and the President to avert the so-called “fiscal cliff,” a series of tax increases and across-the-board spending cuts originally scheduled to occur at the beginning of this... Read More