Back in February, Steven E. Siebers and Emily Scheuring Jones wrote about Cain v. Hamer, a taxpayer friendly Illinois Appellate Court ruling. Cain effectively allowed snowbirds who spend time down south to continue to own their Illinois homes while being treated as nonresidents for Illinois income tax purposes. (A nonresident pays no Illinois tax on income from non-Illinois sources.)Well, the Illinois Department of Revenue was not amused. In the August ISBA Trusts and Estates newsletter, Siebers and Jones report that in response to Cain, the IDR changed its regs to make it tougher for Illinoisans to qualify as nonresidents. Here's what the new regs provide:

Asked and AnsweredBy John W. Olmstead, MBA, Ph.D, CMCQ. We are a 12-attorney firm in Houston with three equity partners and nine associates. Several of our associates have been with the firm for over 10 years. My partners and I are all in our early 60s and are beginning to think about succession and retirement. If possible, we would like to keep the firm within the family and not go the merger route. What are your thoughts concerning two-tier partnership structures (equity and non-equity partnership)? Should we consider bringing associates in first into a non-equity tier?A. I believe that a non-equity tier gives a firm a way to give associates the professional recognition and status of being a partner without conveying actual ownership and diluting ownership and control. Often a key differentiating factor between equity and non-equity partnership is client origination. Partners that don't originate a sizeable book of business often don't make it to the equity tier. For very small firms a non-equity often does not make sense - for others it often does. If you believe, as I do, that equity partners should be client originators and if you currently have a mix of client originator and non-client originator associates with 10 years or more time with the firm you may want to consider a two-tier structure. You should carefully define, and put in writing, admission criteria for each tier.Click here for our partnership blogClick here for articles on other topics

Chief Justice Thomas L. Kilbride of the Illinois Supreme Court and Chief Judge Dan L. Flannell of the Sixth Judicial Circuit announced on Friday that news cameras will be allowed in trial courts in six additional Illinois counties.The Sixth Judicial Circuit is comprised of Champaign, DeWitt, Douglas, Macon, Moultrie and Piatt counties in east central Illinois. With today's announcement, total participation in the pilot project rises to 35 counties within 13 judicial Circuits.“Cameras and microphones in the courtroom now reach citizens in more than one half of the judicial circuits and one third of the counties in Illinois," Chief Justice Kilbride said. "Chief Judge Flannell's application and approval by the Supreme Court to allow cameras in the trial courtrooms will bring more geographical diversity to the pilot project.

After Governor Quinn vetoed the appropriation for lawmakers' salaries until they fix the pension system, they responded with a lawsuit challenging his constitutional authority to do so. In the new issue of The Public Servant, newsletter of ISBA's Standing Committee on Government Lawyers, Tiffany Elking looks at the lawsuit and the reasoning behind it.The plaintiffs make several arguments. The most technical is that the actual line-item veto didn't go far enough, striking only the itemized compensation for members and not the total for their salaries (Elking nicely illustrates this by showing the Governor's strikethroughs). Consequently, "the lump sum for the base salaries [and] additional salary to party leaders" leaves money in the pot that must be used to pay legislators.And even if the veto passes that test, the plaintiff's argue, it violates Article IV, Section 11 the Illinois Constitution by making salary changes midterm ("changes in the salary of a member shall not take effect during the term for which he has been elected").But the most compelling argument is an appeal to common sense. "If one branch is able to unilaterally have so much power over another, where would it stop?" Elking asks. "[I]t does not seem to make sense to allow any Governor the ability to suddenly withhold the pay of the legislators based on a single legislative issue....[E]very single issue the legislature deals with is important to someone or some constituent."