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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Chicago has at least 20 multi-billionaires ripping off the taxpayers everyday in everyway, but it's the working stiffs promised pensions if they delayed real wages are the people that should suck it up, tighten their belts, sacrifice...
ReplyDeleteAren't those Florida rulers the folks in full dog position for Herr Trump and his billionaire trillionaire friends hoping his gold showers upon them while trickling last drops only on their working poor?
I believe that the parking meter contract is actually illegal, since the city adjudicates any fines from the tickets issued by either the city of the parking meter company.
ReplyDeleteI'm not a lawyer, but I remember reading that decades ago, the US Supreme Court ruled that a government can't enforce fines from a private entity, which the parking meters now are!
true, true, true and true.
ReplyDeletebut the people to blame for this mess are long gone from he political scene. the current administration and council members do not have the power to address the financial catastrophe the city is faced with.
workers have been stiffed for pensions owed by employers in the past . in this case protection for teachers, fireman, police and other municipal union workers is written into the state constitution. the courts have upheld these protections, and the state refuses to bail the city out.
a solution seems remote. when the city borrows money it pays enormous interest because of its abysmal bond rating. rich people get richer when the citizens of chicago pay back these loans and we never get out of the hole.
Paul Vallas is the answer.
ReplyDeleteWhy or How? Can he sashay down to LaSalle Street and borrow 40 billion dollars on his "personal guarantee" like the famous Ernst Hummel?
Deletetate
lol.
Delete"Texas started sending busloads of undocumented immigrants, and while housing them was the right thing to do, it still cost money."
ReplyDeleteI have always wondered why Chicago didn't simply keep the buses. Slap a mechanic's lien or similar on each one for the cost of housing a busful of people who didn't want to come here in the first place and were dumped here with nothing more than the clothing on their backs, give each driver a bus ticket to go home again, and sell the buses to the highest bidders.
Texas would have quickly run out of companies willing to provide buses that would never come home again. What would they do next? How about charter jets? That would be even more profitable, and Chicago would soon gain an international reputation as a seller of fine used transportation vehicles.
Andy:
DeleteFinally, a kindred spirit. I often thought the exact same thing. Our City on Make was being made by some wimpy hick cowboy governor who enjoys orange butt 3 meals a day, but, who regretfully and embarrassingly outsmarted us slickers. Impound the buses and send the drivers on their way. That friends is what we are talking about; Andy and me. It would have been so very easy to conjure up reasons or laws to keep those buses. Certainly with the local towing industry still and always a force around here, there would have been more than enough room to store them. Imagine the daily fees. Mouth watering, ah yes! Looks like we really missed the boat, uh, I mean bus on this one.
In my opinion, what we tend to overlook in local politics, is the outweighed effects national and other local politics play into our ability to collect taxes.
ReplyDeletePost Nixon, Republican's have stood for a few key issues: The rich shouldn't pay taxes; corporations are people, and rich, and therefor should not pay taxes; State's rights are key, unless they do not follow republican ideals, the the federal government can step in and tell you that your law violates the "constitution;" and Christian Nationalism is the only thing that matters.
In a country (and world) where profits matter more than anything else, why would anyone or company stick around a city to pay more, when they can avoid that tax but still reap the rewards?
We can see this fight play out nearly everyday regarding professional sports teams and their publicly funded stadiums. Endless data suggests the financial benefit to the public does not support a tax breaks or public funding to build a billionaires cash pot. But, when a city pushes back, another city quickly picks up the torch.
When Charles Comiskey built Comiskey Park, he did so as a show of wealth. Of the 30 current stadiums that host NFL teams, only three have been paid for by private funds --SoFi Stadium (home of the rams and chargers); MetLife Stadium (home to the giants and jets); and Gillette Stadium (home to the patriots). I haven't heard anything from anyone about Stan Kroenke, Robert Kraft, or the New Jersey Sports Authority about not making enough money... which begs the question, why do you need public funds? The answer? you don't, but why not take free money?
Unions work until there are enough scabs to fill the jobs the union represents. The rich have ganged up on everyone else because they know how desperate people can become. Why would you risk not getting paid a fair wage when you could get paid something?
Chicago, and the rest of the country, will continue to suffer until the rich are taxed and have nowhere to hide. only then will populations grow. Only then will tax revenues grow. only then will we truly be a civilized country. After all, Switzerland has some of the highest taxes on the planet, and the rich haven't fled.
We are just cowards. Republican's are cowards. Anti-American Cowards.
True patriots pay taxes. Frauds like griffin, and musk, and Bezos are anti American. Companies like Uline, AT&T, Tesla, GM, Netflix, BoA, FedEx, and Amazon are cancers that are slowly killing American Democracy. The welfare queens that we've been warned about by republicans for 60 years are the republicans. And legacy media is a close second.
I wish there was a like button.
DeleteStood up to the mayor, did they? Courage! Now if our slouch Congress in DC will stop kowtowing to the orange idol, maybe we'll get the country back on track. Throw a pail of water on him. You'll never know if you don't try.
ReplyDeleteTony, I loved your little blurb in today's S-Times about hat hair. Like you, it isn't my problem.
DeleteThanks. I've got a some left but it's in comb-over mode. Also, I've stopped caring about hair. When it's gone, it's gone
DeleteDon’t forgot the Skyway too. He was thinking about Midway too but stopped. Should have just increased the property taxes we would be much better off. "Pension Holiday", that's what they called it. And we felt he was the smart one.
ReplyDeleteThis "crisis" has been coming for years. When you trade votes for money/benefits that you don't have time is not on your side. I could be wrong but I predict the pensions will not be paid because the money simply will not be there.
ReplyDeleteThe money is there. It's just in the pockets of millionaires, billionaires and their henchmen.
ReplyDeleteThis is from AI overview. But in looking a few other sources this does seem to be true.
ReplyDeleteWhile there's no exact 1925 figure in the snippets, Chicago's population was around 2.7 million in 1920, growing from 2.7 million in 1920 to over 3.3 million by 1930, meaning it was likely well over 2.7 million in 1925, showing massive growth from the early 1900s. Chicago is not the only city lose population. It stands to reason that as transportation improved and more people were owning cars that people would move out of cities. I looked up the population of Evanston, Skokie and Northbrook between 1920. Evanston had 37,000 in 1920, 63,000 in 1930. 70 thousand today. What is now Skokie and Northbrook were barely villages. Less than a thousand in each in 1920.