On Sept. 5, a plan formulated nearly 10 years ago to deregulate the electric industry in Illinois came crashing down on consumers' heads. While Ameren president Scott Cisel had been predicting a price increase of 35 percent, the reverse auction produced prices considerably higher, jumping from 7.5 cents per kilowatt hour to more than 10 cents/kwh.
   What went wrong?
   According to Leigh Morris, spokesman for Ameren, consumers are just now seeing the true cost of electricity. Morris said prices had not only been frozen for the past nine years but, in the case of Ameren, actually rolled back by 20 percent. Ameren and its customers were protected somewhat from increasing costs of electric because Ameren had [continue]

   Although Illinois Democrats claim the state's pension systems today are more secure than they were three years ago when Gov. Rod Blagojevich took office, Republicans argue the future of the pension systems - and the increasing liability of the state taxpayer - is becoming less secure with each passing fiscal year.
   What neither political party will dispute is the vast complexity of the system itself. There are 658,000 members of the state [continue]