The Chicago City Council fights an inferno with squirt guns

 

     Well, it took 'em long enough.
     Where was this City Council spirit of rebellion when Richard M. Daley was giving away the city's parking meter concession in 2008? Cutting off a major revenue stream for the next 75 years, leaving $4 billion on the table, a blunder called "the worst privatization deal in U.S. history."
     A few days of review, and the Council rubber stamped the folly, 40 to 5.
     No more. In a rare Saturday vote, the council voted 30 to 18 to send Mayor Brandon Johnson its own budget plan, rejecting his spending plan as unworkable.
     Is it? Heck if I know. The details of municipal planning are a nosedive into the weeds.
     But maybe we should peer into the undergrowth anyway. Given the entire future of Chicago is teetering on the edge of a cliff, ready to plunge into bankruptcy and ruin, we are obligated to put on our thinking caps and consider it, once again.
     When I wrote about this in 2014, as Rahm Emanuel grappled with the issue, the unfunded pension obligation was $32 billion. Now, it's more than $50 billion.
     That's the central problem. The city is on the hook for more pension debt than 44 states — Chicago has a bigger pension burden than Florida.
     How did that happen? Politics. Chicago has 32,000 city workers. Whether those workers vote for you or an opponent can decide an election. Easy to promise them gravy you don't have.
     And that isn't the only problem. COVID hollowed out the city's economic life while ramping up expenses. Texas started sending busloads of undocumented immigrants, and while housing them was the right thing to do, it still cost money.
     Chicago sure needs the people. The city's population is 2.7 million. You know what it was in 2020? 2.7 million. In 2010? 2.7 million. The city population has roughly plateaued for the past 45 years. Chicago has has fewer people now than it did 100 years ago. Can't tax people who aren't here.
     That's the deficit side. Now let's look at the proposed solutions.
     The mayor wants to put a head tax on business — that, plus his lack of even a flicker of political savvy, stirred the Council to act against him. But their proposal is just as weak as his. Increase fees on plastic grocery bags. Sell advertising on city light poles. Video poker.
     Do you see a difference in scale? The problems are enormous, involving billions of dollars in forced payments, hundreds of thousands of people wandering off or staying away. The proposed solutions are so feeble. The house is on fire, and the mayor and City Council are fighting over an array of squirt guns, arguing which will work best.
     Sigh.

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