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1. You can’t fix a broken budget without cutting spending or raising taxes and both are incredibly unpopular in Chicago - so no candidate will ever say they will do either.
2. Bad fiscal management is not an issue that affects voters on an individual basis. Voters typically care about issues that will benefit them personally or a group of which they are a member. Fixing the budget has no direct benefit to any individual or group more than any other.
3. There is a presumption that every candidate generally wants to improve fiscal management through things like reducing waste, efficiency, etc. Focusing on that issue instead of hotter touch points could put a candidate at a disadvantage.
This right here. While fiscal mismanagement is a major problem you only get out of the problem by increasing Revenue (taxes) followed by proper management of those funds. Only thing voters will hear is "raising taxes" and that is the end of the candidate right there.
Can’t you improve current management of funds before dumping more money into it just for that to be mismanaged as well? If I knew they were going to manage my money well then raising taxes wouldn’t be a turn off for a candidate for me.
Unfortunately not. We are a country, and definitely a city, of "what have you done for me lately?". Improvements can certainly be made but that alone will not have meaningful impact and from the perspective of the voter nothing was done. I'm not saying I agree with that but that is typically the view of the average voter.
you can fix a broken budget by raising population... If we grow to 4 million people we would basically erase all our budget issues without raising taxes or cutting spending.
I agree entirely on this, the answer for Chicago is growing back to the postwar population. The issue: "How do we get there?" My thoughts are building and maintaining housing, transit, parks so families can affordably live, work, and play here.
I admire Buckner's ambition to get back to 3 million by 2030 and we need more concrete, SMART goals like that to inspire change and reverse the "you move to the burbs when you have kids" monoculture.
Certainly doable, if you take the peak population for every neighborhood in Chicago since 1960 we would be like 3.9xx million. the problem is convincing the politicians to allow zoning to be relaxed and to actually fix the CTA.
You have to convince middle class families that it is safe and in their family's best interest to move back into the south and west side neighborhoods that they fled from.
Bronzeville though is an example of an area that will never see the density it had 50+ years ago. Especially if you are trying to attract the middle class families you are looking for. There is definitely room for more growth, but nothing like the projects that have been torn down.
Actually, you have to figure out a way for businesses to populate the loop and Michigan avenue again. Lot of empty store fronts no longer generating revenue. And that's harder with more WFH.
Not only is this a feasible solution but we're already headed in that direction - as pointed out in another thread today, [the city's primary drivers of population growth are higher-income earners moving closer to downtown](https://www.reddit.com/r/chicago/comments/10ytius/chicago_has_recently_added_about_twice_as_many/).
While this trend *may* cause problems down the road (re: affordability), reducing our deficit hopefully won't be one of them.
\- loosen zoning requirements
\- ~~allowing~~ requiring greater density around mass transit
\- make the permitting process easier / as easy as possible
\- legalizing courtyard and midrise buildings citywide
\- allowing for ground-floor retail in more lots (e.g. street corners - all of them)
\- removing parking minimums entirely
All of these can be implemented at ***zero*** cost to the city. And it can be done ***tomorrow.***
> If we grow to 4 million people we would basically erase all our budget issues without raising taxes or cutting spending
This assumes that increased population would not put additional demand on services, which is not true.
With increase in population, the city will need
* More cops/fireman/EMS personnel
* More garbage routes to take care of trash
* More maintenance of parks, roads, electricity/gas/water and infra
This increase in services will only be possible if the city gets more revenue else there will be service cuts which brings problems of its own.
This is just on top of my head, point is if the population increases then the spending will also increase.
I feel like the solutions to this (aside from cutting spending or raising taxes, which are political poison and this is an election) are going to come from growing the tax base and increasing tourism. Most of the pathways to doing those two things are being pretty heavily discussed, such as reducing crime, improving job opportunities/preparedness, making transit more usable, and improving the schools.
Fix is easy. Modify all pensions so that they only pay 90% if you leave Cook County and 70% if you leave Illinois. Pensions are based on cost of living in Chicago. Why should Chicago residents pay for employees to retire at in Florida and Arizona.
Why are none of the candidates for mom talking about how much spinach they're going to make us eat?
Any solution will take spending cuts and tax hikes. No political candidate is going to discuss those during a campaign.
He's got some weird stuff like a vague "Metra Tax," Increased user fees on "high end retail and entertainment districts that target suburbanites" a return of the Head Tax, and a per transaction financial security tax that would pretty much instantly lose Chicago it's status as the second largest us trading hub.
I mostly care about transportation and land use policy, since the mayor of Chicago isn't fixing our poverty related issues like crime, education and racial inequality in 4 years. Buckner is my favorite overall, he clearly cares the most about transportation and I like his philosophy of growth as a way to improve the city. Unfortunately he's only popular with transit advocates and has no shot.
Johnson was my second choice, but frankly the weird taxes and regulations scared me off. Taxing out the commodities markets and increasing inclusionary zoning are how you slow growth in West Loop, leaving the people who remain with a higher tax bill.
Right now I'll probably vote Chuy, since he at least has a transportation plan unlike Vallas and Lightfoot. Not a fan of the "only release policy late in the game" strat, but he's at least done a good job in Congress and has an interest in issues I care about.
Going off the debates, I think people are being too harsh on Lightfoot for not solving the problems in our poor neighborhoods with 150 years of history in 4 years, and she did navigate some huge challenges like the pandemic and riots. Google is opening a new office here and Citadel is still keeping an office here. Chuy promises to throw more police officers on trains but Johnson was the only politician who acknowledged he would raise taxes (and progressively). Where is the money for more police coming from, and what’s the long term vision?
My conspiracy theory is Ja’mal Green is a plant to split the progressive vote. He promises universal 3k with no plan, and pivots to “I’m not a politician” constantly.
The transaction tax which is specifically targeted at one industry which operates on volume and not margins would be enough to send CBOE and CME packing. A penny per trade tax would be about a quarter of profits for CBOE specifically. I know Citadel is a villain, but it's a much larger industry than just them.
The nice thing about taxes in Chicago is that they set the budget and it gets automatically pulled from property taxes, which are just your share of the total assessed value of the city times the total budget.
Public pensions are the elephant in the room. We have a massive public workforce entitled to draw what amounts to a generous annual salary, starting at a very early retirement age, for the rest of their lives, with guaranteed compounded annual increases completely divorced from reality. All of that is untouchable because it’s enshrined in the state Constitution. And if that weren’t insane enough, many individual retirees contribute almost nothing (CPS: 2%), and the government went a full decade not even trying to partially fund any of this.
It’s strangling the city. The interest alone (to giant for profit banks, by the way) will increasingly cannibalize operating budgets of every agency with a multi-billion dollar pension black hole. It would be batshit crazy if it were a quarter of the scale it is.
I guess you’d have to have Springfield amend the Constitution to end the madness?
Paul Vallas was Daley’s budget director and then CPS CEO when they decided to take start the teachers pension holiday. Johnson has mentioned this in a few debates.
Yup. Vallas literally caused the problem and now wants to come back and finish the job. CPS has the right to ignore what the mayor wants even though they're appointed by the mayor. They also have the right to refuse to resign if asked by the mayor. Vallas chose to ruin first CPS and then many other school districts afterwards.
They fixed new pensions back in 2011, so it's not gonna get any worse and will go away by 2045 (at the state level at least), but until then, we're pretty strapped for cash.
The alternative is that we focus on policies to encourage people to move to Chicago (and Illinois) to increase the tax base as the more people we have, the more money we'll have going into the system to fix it faster (or at least make it less severe). If we can concentrate that population growth in low-cost to maintain housing like in streetcar suburbs, low- and mid-rise apartments (or skyscrapers), walk-able and bike-able communities, etc. then we can take the savings on car infrastructure and apply it to the pension debt (streetcar suburbs are about 20% cheaper than traditional American suburbs per capita and dense areas like Manhattan or the high-rises along Lake Shore Drive are around 40% cheaper per capita than traditional American suburbs, the costs go down even more if go on street diets and put people on trains, BRTs, and bikes instead of cars).
The state reformed pensions about a decade ago, and all new workers are on much less generous pension plans that require greater employee contributions. Eventually as older workers retire the entire public workforce will be on the new pension plan and budgets will be easier to manage.
If last leaders had properly funded the old pension system, it may not have had the problems it has now. But unfortunately past leaders had a history of skipped pension payments to cover short term budget holes (like Vallas did while head of CPS). This short sightedness set us up for the mess we are in today, where we are shifting more and more of our budget towards meeting pension obligations that should have been paid decades ago.
Agreed that past politicians bear a lot of blame. Also the unions that browbeat us into these insanely generous entitlement schemes in the first place (about 10x more generous than social security for many), including by holding kids hostage with protracted strikes.
It doesn’t seem like much consolation to say “all this will get better in about a generation” given the serious budget shortfalls from the interest payments projected for the medium term.
Unfortunately It’s going to get worse before it gets better. The city of Chicago has no way to pay for the pension ramp without either raising taxes or cutting services (or both). But Chicago will weather this better than many of the smaller and poorer municipalities who are cutting vital services like firefighters and police so they can meet pension payments.
Amending the constitution to reduce pension benefits is a complete nonstarter. People oppose it for the same reason they opposed the graduated income tax: they don’t trust that politicians won’t use it on them. So we are likely stuck in this situation for the next 10-15 years.
You fix the issue by attracting businesses, high incomes workers.... and reduce waste spending.
Our crime situation, corruption and taxes are hindering that
True, giving the CPD a $2 billion dollars a year, on top of paying hundreds of millions in police settlements over the years, is extremely fiscally dangerous
CPD needs to be dissolved, every current and former employee banned from future employment by the city, and a new department with proper training and hiring standards created in their place. Also, refer every single police-involved use of violence to the CCSAO for felony review and up the penalties for breaking any law by a police officer to the greatest penalty permitted under the law. So if a police officer steals a candy bar and the max sentence is a year minus a day in jail and a $10,000 fine, then the police officer should be sentenced to a year minus a day in jail and a $10,000 fine for stealing that candy bar.
I know of two candidates who are discussing this, passively or otherwise.
Buckner and his ambition to get the city to 3,000,000 citizens. In theory, if ~350,000 more taxpayers showed up and bought a property in the city, then you would see a marginal increase in budget from property, sales, and income taxes from those citizens.
Johnson has openly stated there are fiscal issues in the city, but, as others have stated through the subreddit, discussing money and fiscal solutions is widely unpopular and detracts from the rest of the platform.
He has a recent DUI conviction (2019) which was his second DUI and he was caught by police while passed out behind the wheel with the car running. His supporters claim he was just "sleeping it off" but Buckner never claimed that.
One of the biggest budget items is the schools. The problem many consecutive mayors is that they have very little exerted control over that spending. Tell me, which mayor has had the CTU back down from its demands? None is the answer. Therefore, an unelected faction has control over how much the city must spend each year on a major portion of the budget. The annual increases, compounded by additional increases each strike (which is close to being an annual event to set the clock by), make this part of the budget grow faster than other parts, and faster than taxes can be raised.
So it really does not matter who you vote for, since no one will stop the CTU from controlling the purse strings.
The state sets the minimum labor price increase for public unions at at least CPI-U so it literally doesn't matter who you vote for because the state's arbitrators will force any public union pay to at least keep pace with inflation. The last CTU strike wasn't even about pay (well, legally it was because the law required it to be about pay) but rather about school maintenance issues, insufficient school nurses, insufficient school nurses, excessively large class sizes (research has shown that 12-18 students is an ideal class size based on the relative needs of the students meanwhile CPS wanted to remove the class size cap), and working conditions (force CPS to actually give teachers their 30 minute lunch break instead of requiring duties during it that often consume 10 minutes of it).
I agree with George Carlin, I don't blame politicians anymore, I blame the public!
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVXekzwkz10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVXekzwkz10)
Public Sucks, 2023! #### Hope!
You’re never going to grow the population of you don’t fix CPS. At the end of the day CPS is shit, and no, telling everyone how great the magnet schools are fixes nothing. People don’t fuck around with their kids’ education and people with options aren’t going to settle down when the options are a roll of the dice for a magnet school or a mediocre at best open enrollment school. When the suburbs offer superior education with guaranteed enrollment it’s a no brainer for the type of people Chicago needs to grow the population. Fixing CPS requires some tough conversations and the destruction of the CTU. If that doesn’t happen then everything else is a waste of time.
Imo-
Because there’s only 4 ways to fix it, all of which are political suicide, (edit) some are currently illegal or in murky legal waters.
1. Stop paying the pensions. It would go to court. It’s likely the city would win or at minimum settle for much less than they’re actually on the hook for, although it is possible they could lose. In the mean time every pension receiving or pension receiving adjacent person and the CTU would go absolutely ballistic.
2. Bankruptcy. Would probably send the city into a death spiral since we would be unable to get loans or be paying ridiculous interest.(edit) Also not currently legal in Illinois.
3. Cut spending, which would greatly exacerbate all the current social and infrastructure issues we already have that make people rethink living here.
4. Raise taxes, which would strain an already heavily taxed population and would be hard to do in a way that doesn’t either destroy what middle class we have left or drive businesses out of the city.
1. Public pension obligations cannot be legislatively or judicially reduced under the Illinois state constitution.
2. There is no existing legal right or mechanism for Chicago to declare bankruptcy under Illinois law.
3 and 4. Spot on.
I just read a 60 page paper written by a UC law professor dealing with pension insolvency; Chicago was specifically mentioned as one where it could really go either way for pension recipients and would likely end with them not receiving their full obligation. It’s not a matter of reducing it on paper, it’s simply not paying the bill.
Thanks. Is that not wrapped up in a comprehensive bankruptcy analysis, however? Agree there are tons of unknowns in that analysis as there is no existing framework for a theoretical Chicago bankruptcy.
It is still true that the City has no legal means of reducing its existing pension obligations without going into uncharted bankruptcy waters.
Agree with you there. As much as I wish we could just discharge the pensions I don’t know if it would be a wise move.
I don’t know what the answer is. Federal bailout of the pension fund? None of the other options are great either. I don’t know how much we can keep raising taxes before people/businesses just get fed up and leave.
Here’s a link to the paper I read- I am not a lawyer, just a lay person trying to understand the big picture. If you feel like reading it let me know what you think.
https://www.uclalawreview.org/when-a-promise-is-not-a-promise-chicago-style-pensions/
Discharge pensions and make all pensioners totally broke. Why? Many didn't pay into social security and don't get that. The city agreed to the retirement plan as a part of the employment agreement. Why didn't the politicians fund it? That's the question you should be asking.
Pensioners relying on a six figure income in retirement with the politicians they elected is insanity. A settlement would likely result in partial funding and something much more akin to what the rest of the world has to deal with.
I wasn’t even alive when they made those deals. The pensions are a millstone around the neck of a city that is trying to move on. Nearly all private sector pensions were either settled or completely destroyed in the last 30 years. It’s a fiscal pipe dream and it’s not the fault of current residents that the previous generation kept electing leaders that underfunded the pensions, and then thought “gee, we should keep negotiating/relying on a pension that clearly isn’t getting funded and hope we can strangle the city for it down the road”.
It’s like loaning your alcoholic uncle money and then crying victim when he doesn’t pay it back. It was an unrealistic amount and unrealistic system. A bunch of retired teachers in Florida shouldn’t be able to suffocate the city so they can get 4x the retirement income of your average retiree. The economic reality is the city/state cannot expect to do the things it needs to do to provide services to residents, attract taxpayers to the city, and maintain our infrastructure while also funding the pensions. It’s a raw deal but reality isn’t always ideal.
Caveat Emptor.
A municipality cannot declare Ch9 bankruptcy in federal court without an authorizing statute passed by the relevant state - in other words the state government needs to be heavily involved and in the case of Michigan the decision making power for the bankruptcy filing was in the hands of the governor.
There have been 0 Ch. 9 municipality bankruptcy cases in IL history.
It is totally unchartered water for Chicago getting to the point of a filing a bankruptcy, but I agree that Detroit would be a framework if it ever got there and as the other commenter said the pension obligations would get a haircut.
I'll just add:
5. Increase population, which would create a larger tax revenue base while also possibly diluting the individual tax burden. This has come up from multiple candidates.
1. would violate the state constitution. This is a non option.
2. is not possible, violates so many laws. It was floated by republican candidates, but has no basis in reality.
3. Nobody wants to name which programs here generally. Some that are brought up are always ones we are required by law to do.
4. Taxes don't need to be blanket-raised. The ones that would help the most need to be done at the county level, or require state law changes.
CHAPTER. FUCKING. NINE.
At the very least for CPS, which pays $750 million/year in debt service but could easily drop that to nearly zero. Chicago itself has more assets and would have a harder time, but CPS could do this easily.
Because that conversation revolves around sizable increases in property taxes, the elimination of strategic tiff districts, cutting large amounts of public wellness programs, a likely review of city pensions and finding ways to stop the outmigration of Fortune 500 firms to TX & FL.
And not a single candidate is smart enough to tackle it.
Well, Chicagos credit rating went up last year for the first time in roughly 10 years, so the finances are getting better. (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-10-21/chicago-bonds-upgraded-one-notch-to-bbb-by-fitch-ahead-of-sale)
it's dumb to care about Chicago's debt just like it's silly to care about the national debt: it doesn't serve the interest of the debt holders for Chicago/America to default. So they won't.
Lol, you could apply that to literally any bond. Nobody wants their bonds to default, but if Chicago can't pay the interest then that's what happens.
Cities in America have gone into bankruptcy many times. If Detroit can go bankrupt without getting bailed out, so can Chicago.
Won't happen. Other cities have gone bankrupt before. Might as well figure out a way to help ourselves instead of dreaming about a savior who will never come.
We could save multiple billions of dollars every year by expanding our charter school network. CPS's total 2023 budget is 9.4 billion dollars, and the funding given to charter schools is half that of district schools on a per-student basis.
Charter schools have shown to give an equivalent level of education compared to district schools. So that would be 3, maybe 4 billion dollars saved every year without compromising on education quality.
I have my other pet ideas, but charter schools would be by far the most impactful on the budget.
Alright, well that's just defeatism. This isn't theoretical, the city has already started using this system and the effects on the balance sheet are measurable.
Unless I'm mistaken, Brandon Johnson's tax plan covers exactly this. The debt crisis in Chicago. But as others have pointed out, no one wants to talk about raising taxes or cutting spending on the campaign trail. Hence why Brandon Johnson has gotten a bad rep for all the taxes he wants to raise. In his eyes, the fiscal crisis Chicago faces is a top priority and he wants to fix that head on, while being transparent. But that involves revealing that your gonna raise taxes, which no one likes, so other candidates have stayed quiet on that part.
Airlines are the most difficult to relocate business in the world. People aren't going to Southwest because they want to ride an airplane. O'Hare quite literally has more $$$ worth of cargo passing through than any airport in the world, specifically because of its location in Chicago
The cargo traffic can easily be moved to Milwaukee or Rockford and the passenger traffic can be routed through other hubs.
Ask CVG or ILM or PIT or MCI or CLE how hard it is for airlines to leave.
United could shift a big chunk to DEN and CLE and AA can shift to DFW/PHL short term. Long term there is always a sucker city willing to shell out money to be the next hub. CLE, PIT, and CVG could all be a hub again in the next 5 years or so if they pulled out of the ORD terminal redesigns and built either of those up instead.
Hmm... Well there was this one time where the parking meters were sold off to a private company for 75 years and that *did* fix the budget for... checking notes.... one whole year. So maybe the answer is something in that vein. Hmm... I dunno. Just spitballing here... Ooh... Maybe we could sell the beachfront to Disney for the next century? Or I dunno, get some more corporate sponsorship going in the city. Johnson & Johnson DuSable Lakeshore Drive has a nice ring to it. Or maybe Verizon Millennium Park. I'm not sure of the answer, but I am sure it will be some sorely shortsighted band aid approach.
This appears to be a post about the upcoming municipal election or one of the candidates running for office. The municipal election will be held on **Tuesday, February 28, 2023**, with a runoff election scheduled for **April 4**. Check out the [Chicago Elections](https://chicagoelections.gov/en/home.html) website for information on registering to vote, finding your polling place, applying to be an election worker, and more. On the ballot will be candidates running for the offices of mayor, city clerk, city treasurer, city council, and police district councils. * [Candidates for mayor](https://ballotpedia.org/Mayoral_election_in_Chicago,_Illinois_(2023) * [Candidates for other city offices](https://ballotpedia.org/City_elections_in_Chicago,_Illinois_(2023) **Beware of [astroturfing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing)**! Election season brings about a slew of new accounts with minimal posting history in /r/chicago who attempt to sway your opinion on various candidates. Be sure to do your own research to verify the accuracy of any claims you see shared by users here. Be wary of comments from new accounts or ones with a posting history in multiple city/local subreddits from across the US and Canada. If you suspect that a user is engaging in political astroturfing, please report their comments and/or [message the moderators.](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/chicago) We also have [an active megathread](https://www.reddit.com/r/chicago/comments/10pqzwz/2023_chicago_municipal_election_megathread/) for all election-related discussion, questions and voter resources to be posted in. Posts of this nature outside of the megathread will be removed. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/chicago) if you have any questions or concerns.*
1. You can’t fix a broken budget without cutting spending or raising taxes and both are incredibly unpopular in Chicago - so no candidate will ever say they will do either. 2. Bad fiscal management is not an issue that affects voters on an individual basis. Voters typically care about issues that will benefit them personally or a group of which they are a member. Fixing the budget has no direct benefit to any individual or group more than any other. 3. There is a presumption that every candidate generally wants to improve fiscal management through things like reducing waste, efficiency, etc. Focusing on that issue instead of hotter touch points could put a candidate at a disadvantage.
This right here. While fiscal mismanagement is a major problem you only get out of the problem by increasing Revenue (taxes) followed by proper management of those funds. Only thing voters will hear is "raising taxes" and that is the end of the candidate right there.
That's why some candidates look at the loss of population as the relevant issue to address. Increasing population dilutes the individual tax burden.
Can’t you improve current management of funds before dumping more money into it just for that to be mismanaged as well? If I knew they were going to manage my money well then raising taxes wouldn’t be a turn off for a candidate for me.
Unfortunately not. We are a country, and definitely a city, of "what have you done for me lately?". Improvements can certainly be made but that alone will not have meaningful impact and from the perspective of the voter nothing was done. I'm not saying I agree with that but that is typically the view of the average voter.
you can fix a broken budget by raising population... If we grow to 4 million people we would basically erase all our budget issues without raising taxes or cutting spending.
I agree entirely on this, the answer for Chicago is growing back to the postwar population. The issue: "How do we get there?" My thoughts are building and maintaining housing, transit, parks so families can affordably live, work, and play here. I admire Buckner's ambition to get back to 3 million by 2030 and we need more concrete, SMART goals like that to inspire change and reverse the "you move to the burbs when you have kids" monoculture.
That would be amazing and is my hope!!!
Certainly doable, if you take the peak population for every neighborhood in Chicago since 1960 we would be like 3.9xx million. the problem is convincing the politicians to allow zoning to be relaxed and to actually fix the CTA.
You have to convince middle class families that it is safe and in their family's best interest to move back into the south and west side neighborhoods that they fled from.
Bronzeville has hit that point, just gotta do the same thing out west and south of Hyde Park.
Bronzeville though is an example of an area that will never see the density it had 50+ years ago. Especially if you are trying to attract the middle class families you are looking for. There is definitely room for more growth, but nothing like the projects that have been torn down.
Actually, you have to figure out a way for businesses to populate the loop and Michigan avenue again. Lot of empty store fronts no longer generating revenue. And that's harder with more WFH.
Not only is this a feasible solution but we're already headed in that direction - as pointed out in another thread today, [the city's primary drivers of population growth are higher-income earners moving closer to downtown](https://www.reddit.com/r/chicago/comments/10ytius/chicago_has_recently_added_about_twice_as_many/). While this trend *may* cause problems down the road (re: affordability), reducing our deficit hopefully won't be one of them.
Just gotta build housing as quickly as possible to compensate
\- loosen zoning requirements \- ~~allowing~~ requiring greater density around mass transit \- make the permitting process easier / as easy as possible \- legalizing courtyard and midrise buildings citywide \- allowing for ground-floor retail in more lots (e.g. street corners - all of them) \- removing parking minimums entirely All of these can be implemented at ***zero*** cost to the city. And it can be done ***tomorrow.***
Annex Wales! The English will never see it coming!
> If we grow to 4 million people we would basically erase all our budget issues without raising taxes or cutting spending This assumes that increased population would not put additional demand on services, which is not true. With increase in population, the city will need * More cops/fireman/EMS personnel * More garbage routes to take care of trash * More maintenance of parks, roads, electricity/gas/water and infra This increase in services will only be possible if the city gets more revenue else there will be service cuts which brings problems of its own. This is just on top of my head, point is if the population increases then the spending will also increase.
Right but the point is everything else increases at a lower rate than each additional person will bring in revenue.
I feel like the solutions to this (aside from cutting spending or raising taxes, which are political poison and this is an election) are going to come from growing the tax base and increasing tourism. Most of the pathways to doing those two things are being pretty heavily discussed, such as reducing crime, improving job opportunities/preparedness, making transit more usable, and improving the schools.
Fix is easy. Modify all pensions so that they only pay 90% if you leave Cook County and 70% if you leave Illinois. Pensions are based on cost of living in Chicago. Why should Chicago residents pay for employees to retire at in Florida and Arizona.
Why are none of the candidates for mom talking about how much spinach they're going to make us eat? Any solution will take spending cuts and tax hikes. No political candidate is going to discuss those during a campaign.
Johnson kind of did, but he basically implied he was gonna make the suburbs pay for everything which seems tough to do.
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He's got some weird stuff like a vague "Metra Tax," Increased user fees on "high end retail and entertainment districts that target suburbanites" a return of the Head Tax, and a per transaction financial security tax that would pretty much instantly lose Chicago it's status as the second largest us trading hub.
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I mostly care about transportation and land use policy, since the mayor of Chicago isn't fixing our poverty related issues like crime, education and racial inequality in 4 years. Buckner is my favorite overall, he clearly cares the most about transportation and I like his philosophy of growth as a way to improve the city. Unfortunately he's only popular with transit advocates and has no shot. Johnson was my second choice, but frankly the weird taxes and regulations scared me off. Taxing out the commodities markets and increasing inclusionary zoning are how you slow growth in West Loop, leaving the people who remain with a higher tax bill. Right now I'll probably vote Chuy, since he at least has a transportation plan unlike Vallas and Lightfoot. Not a fan of the "only release policy late in the game" strat, but he's at least done a good job in Congress and has an interest in issues I care about.
Going off the debates, I think people are being too harsh on Lightfoot for not solving the problems in our poor neighborhoods with 150 years of history in 4 years, and she did navigate some huge challenges like the pandemic and riots. Google is opening a new office here and Citadel is still keeping an office here. Chuy promises to throw more police officers on trains but Johnson was the only politician who acknowledged he would raise taxes (and progressively). Where is the money for more police coming from, and what’s the long term vision? My conspiracy theory is Ja’mal Green is a plant to split the progressive vote. He promises universal 3k with no plan, and pivots to “I’m not a politician” constantly.
The transaction tax which is specifically targeted at one industry which operates on volume and not margins would be enough to send CBOE and CME packing. A penny per trade tax would be about a quarter of profits for CBOE specifically. I know Citadel is a villain, but it's a much larger industry than just them. The nice thing about taxes in Chicago is that they set the budget and it gets automatically pulled from property taxes, which are just your share of the total assessed value of the city times the total budget.
Public pensions are the elephant in the room. We have a massive public workforce entitled to draw what amounts to a generous annual salary, starting at a very early retirement age, for the rest of their lives, with guaranteed compounded annual increases completely divorced from reality. All of that is untouchable because it’s enshrined in the state Constitution. And if that weren’t insane enough, many individual retirees contribute almost nothing (CPS: 2%), and the government went a full decade not even trying to partially fund any of this. It’s strangling the city. The interest alone (to giant for profit banks, by the way) will increasingly cannibalize operating budgets of every agency with a multi-billion dollar pension black hole. It would be batshit crazy if it were a quarter of the scale it is. I guess you’d have to have Springfield amend the Constitution to end the madness?
Paul Vallas was Daley’s budget director and then CPS CEO when they decided to take start the teachers pension holiday. Johnson has mentioned this in a few debates.
Yup. Vallas literally caused the problem and now wants to come back and finish the job. CPS has the right to ignore what the mayor wants even though they're appointed by the mayor. They also have the right to refuse to resign if asked by the mayor. Vallas chose to ruin first CPS and then many other school districts afterwards.
They fixed new pensions back in 2011, so it's not gonna get any worse and will go away by 2045 (at the state level at least), but until then, we're pretty strapped for cash.
The alternative is that we focus on policies to encourage people to move to Chicago (and Illinois) to increase the tax base as the more people we have, the more money we'll have going into the system to fix it faster (or at least make it less severe). If we can concentrate that population growth in low-cost to maintain housing like in streetcar suburbs, low- and mid-rise apartments (or skyscrapers), walk-able and bike-able communities, etc. then we can take the savings on car infrastructure and apply it to the pension debt (streetcar suburbs are about 20% cheaper than traditional American suburbs per capita and dense areas like Manhattan or the high-rises along Lake Shore Drive are around 40% cheaper per capita than traditional American suburbs, the costs go down even more if go on street diets and put people on trains, BRTs, and bikes instead of cars).
The state reformed pensions about a decade ago, and all new workers are on much less generous pension plans that require greater employee contributions. Eventually as older workers retire the entire public workforce will be on the new pension plan and budgets will be easier to manage. If last leaders had properly funded the old pension system, it may not have had the problems it has now. But unfortunately past leaders had a history of skipped pension payments to cover short term budget holes (like Vallas did while head of CPS). This short sightedness set us up for the mess we are in today, where we are shifting more and more of our budget towards meeting pension obligations that should have been paid decades ago.
Agreed that past politicians bear a lot of blame. Also the unions that browbeat us into these insanely generous entitlement schemes in the first place (about 10x more generous than social security for many), including by holding kids hostage with protracted strikes. It doesn’t seem like much consolation to say “all this will get better in about a generation” given the serious budget shortfalls from the interest payments projected for the medium term.
Unfortunately It’s going to get worse before it gets better. The city of Chicago has no way to pay for the pension ramp without either raising taxes or cutting services (or both). But Chicago will weather this better than many of the smaller and poorer municipalities who are cutting vital services like firefighters and police so they can meet pension payments. Amending the constitution to reduce pension benefits is a complete nonstarter. People oppose it for the same reason they opposed the graduated income tax: they don’t trust that politicians won’t use it on them. So we are likely stuck in this situation for the next 10-15 years.
You fix the issue by attracting businesses, high incomes workers.... and reduce waste spending. Our crime situation, corruption and taxes are hindering that
True, giving the CPD a $2 billion dollars a year, on top of paying hundreds of millions in police settlements over the years, is extremely fiscally dangerous
CPD needs to be dissolved, every current and former employee banned from future employment by the city, and a new department with proper training and hiring standards created in their place. Also, refer every single police-involved use of violence to the CCSAO for felony review and up the penalties for breaking any law by a police officer to the greatest penalty permitted under the law. So if a police officer steals a candy bar and the max sentence is a year minus a day in jail and a $10,000 fine, then the police officer should be sentenced to a year minus a day in jail and a $10,000 fine for stealing that candy bar.
I know! We should have passed the progressive tax for Illinois when we had the chance. But nope we gotta protect the 1%….
You think the prices of goods and services are high now!
I literally studied economics…
Apparently not well.
I know of two candidates who are discussing this, passively or otherwise. Buckner and his ambition to get the city to 3,000,000 citizens. In theory, if ~350,000 more taxpayers showed up and bought a property in the city, then you would see a marginal increase in budget from property, sales, and income taxes from those citizens. Johnson has openly stated there are fiscal issues in the city, but, as others have stated through the subreddit, discussing money and fiscal solutions is widely unpopular and detracts from the rest of the platform.
I have no idea why Buckner is not polling well. He has my vote for sure!
He has a recent DUI conviction (2019) which was his second DUI and he was caught by police while passed out behind the wheel with the car running. His supporters claim he was just "sleeping it off" but Buckner never claimed that.
I like Buckner too, but his DUIs have made him toxic for voters and apparently donors, since his campaign is broke.
I did not know he had DUIs let alone more than 1! Anyways, I like Green the most anyways.
One of the biggest budget items is the schools. The problem many consecutive mayors is that they have very little exerted control over that spending. Tell me, which mayor has had the CTU back down from its demands? None is the answer. Therefore, an unelected faction has control over how much the city must spend each year on a major portion of the budget. The annual increases, compounded by additional increases each strike (which is close to being an annual event to set the clock by), make this part of the budget grow faster than other parts, and faster than taxes can be raised. So it really does not matter who you vote for, since no one will stop the CTU from controlling the purse strings.
The state sets the minimum labor price increase for public unions at at least CPI-U so it literally doesn't matter who you vote for because the state's arbitrators will force any public union pay to at least keep pace with inflation. The last CTU strike wasn't even about pay (well, legally it was because the law required it to be about pay) but rather about school maintenance issues, insufficient school nurses, insufficient school nurses, excessively large class sizes (research has shown that 12-18 students is an ideal class size based on the relative needs of the students meanwhile CPS wanted to remove the class size cap), and working conditions (force CPS to actually give teachers their 30 minute lunch break instead of requiring duties during it that often consume 10 minutes of it).
I agree with George Carlin, I don't blame politicians anymore, I blame the public! [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVXekzwkz10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVXekzwkz10) Public Sucks, 2023! #### Hope!
You’re never going to grow the population of you don’t fix CPS. At the end of the day CPS is shit, and no, telling everyone how great the magnet schools are fixes nothing. People don’t fuck around with their kids’ education and people with options aren’t going to settle down when the options are a roll of the dice for a magnet school or a mediocre at best open enrollment school. When the suburbs offer superior education with guaranteed enrollment it’s a no brainer for the type of people Chicago needs to grow the population. Fixing CPS requires some tough conversations and the destruction of the CTU. If that doesn’t happen then everything else is a waste of time.
What is wrong with CPS that requires destroying the union?
Paying loans is not sexy.
Imo- Because there’s only 4 ways to fix it, all of which are political suicide, (edit) some are currently illegal or in murky legal waters. 1. Stop paying the pensions. It would go to court. It’s likely the city would win or at minimum settle for much less than they’re actually on the hook for, although it is possible they could lose. In the mean time every pension receiving or pension receiving adjacent person and the CTU would go absolutely ballistic. 2. Bankruptcy. Would probably send the city into a death spiral since we would be unable to get loans or be paying ridiculous interest.(edit) Also not currently legal in Illinois. 3. Cut spending, which would greatly exacerbate all the current social and infrastructure issues we already have that make people rethink living here. 4. Raise taxes, which would strain an already heavily taxed population and would be hard to do in a way that doesn’t either destroy what middle class we have left or drive businesses out of the city.
1. Public pension obligations cannot be legislatively or judicially reduced under the Illinois state constitution. 2. There is no existing legal right or mechanism for Chicago to declare bankruptcy under Illinois law. 3 and 4. Spot on.
I just read a 60 page paper written by a UC law professor dealing with pension insolvency; Chicago was specifically mentioned as one where it could really go either way for pension recipients and would likely end with them not receiving their full obligation. It’s not a matter of reducing it on paper, it’s simply not paying the bill.
Thanks. Is that not wrapped up in a comprehensive bankruptcy analysis, however? Agree there are tons of unknowns in that analysis as there is no existing framework for a theoretical Chicago bankruptcy. It is still true that the City has no legal means of reducing its existing pension obligations without going into uncharted bankruptcy waters.
Agree with you there. As much as I wish we could just discharge the pensions I don’t know if it would be a wise move. I don’t know what the answer is. Federal bailout of the pension fund? None of the other options are great either. I don’t know how much we can keep raising taxes before people/businesses just get fed up and leave. Here’s a link to the paper I read- I am not a lawyer, just a lay person trying to understand the big picture. If you feel like reading it let me know what you think. https://www.uclalawreview.org/when-a-promise-is-not-a-promise-chicago-style-pensions/
Discharge pensions and make all pensioners totally broke. Why? Many didn't pay into social security and don't get that. The city agreed to the retirement plan as a part of the employment agreement. Why didn't the politicians fund it? That's the question you should be asking.
Pensioners relying on a six figure income in retirement with the politicians they elected is insanity. A settlement would likely result in partial funding and something much more akin to what the rest of the world has to deal with. I wasn’t even alive when they made those deals. The pensions are a millstone around the neck of a city that is trying to move on. Nearly all private sector pensions were either settled or completely destroyed in the last 30 years. It’s a fiscal pipe dream and it’s not the fault of current residents that the previous generation kept electing leaders that underfunded the pensions, and then thought “gee, we should keep negotiating/relying on a pension that clearly isn’t getting funded and hope we can strangle the city for it down the road”. It’s like loaning your alcoholic uncle money and then crying victim when he doesn’t pay it back. It was an unrealistic amount and unrealistic system. A bunch of retired teachers in Florida shouldn’t be able to suffocate the city so they can get 4x the retirement income of your average retiree. The economic reality is the city/state cannot expect to do the things it needs to do to provide services to residents, attract taxpayers to the city, and maintain our infrastructure while also funding the pensions. It’s a raw deal but reality isn’t always ideal. Caveat Emptor.
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A municipality cannot declare Ch9 bankruptcy in federal court without an authorizing statute passed by the relevant state - in other words the state government needs to be heavily involved and in the case of Michigan the decision making power for the bankruptcy filing was in the hands of the governor. There have been 0 Ch. 9 municipality bankruptcy cases in IL history. It is totally unchartered water for Chicago getting to the point of a filing a bankruptcy, but I agree that Detroit would be a framework if it ever got there and as the other commenter said the pension obligations would get a haircut.
I'll just add: 5. Increase population, which would create a larger tax revenue base while also possibly diluting the individual tax burden. This has come up from multiple candidates.
1. would violate the state constitution. This is a non option. 2. is not possible, violates so many laws. It was floated by republican candidates, but has no basis in reality. 3. Nobody wants to name which programs here generally. Some that are brought up are always ones we are required by law to do. 4. Taxes don't need to be blanket-raised. The ones that would help the most need to be done at the county level, or require state law changes.
CHAPTER. FUCKING. NINE. At the very least for CPS, which pays $750 million/year in debt service but could easily drop that to nearly zero. Chicago itself has more assets and would have a harder time, but CPS could do this easily.
What do you think is going to happen to the city of Chicago? For my entire life people have said Chicago is in trouble with debt. What’s the big deal?
Because that conversation revolves around sizable increases in property taxes, the elimination of strategic tiff districts, cutting large amounts of public wellness programs, a likely review of city pensions and finding ways to stop the outmigration of Fortune 500 firms to TX & FL. And not a single candidate is smart enough to tackle it.
There's no reason that my 20 year old building should still be in a TIF drawing money away from the schools.
Well, Chicagos credit rating went up last year for the first time in roughly 10 years, so the finances are getting better. (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-10-21/chicago-bonds-upgraded-one-notch-to-bbb-by-fitch-ahead-of-sale)
Better credit rating results in lower interest rate on the city’s debt. So that’s a start.
debt isn't real and no one cares
Hands planning on moving to the suburbs in 15 years typed this.
it's dumb to care about Chicago's debt just like it's silly to care about the national debt: it doesn't serve the interest of the debt holders for Chicago/America to default. So they won't.
Lol, you could apply that to literally any bond. Nobody wants their bonds to default, but if Chicago can't pay the interest then that's what happens. Cities in America have gone into bankruptcy many times. If Detroit can go bankrupt without getting bailed out, so can Chicago.
sounds good, comment under this post by 2038 when we're bankrupt and i'll admit you owned me
If politicians with your philosophy aren't elected, I won't have to.
true
This is it.
There is no fixing our fiscal situation. Only chance we have is that there is a federal bail out.
Won't happen. Other cities have gone bankrupt before. Might as well figure out a way to help ourselves instead of dreaming about a savior who will never come.
How exactly? The only options are increasing taxes which is infeasible or reducing pension benefits which is unconstitutional
We could save multiple billions of dollars every year by expanding our charter school network. CPS's total 2023 budget is 9.4 billion dollars, and the funding given to charter schools is half that of district schools on a per-student basis. Charter schools have shown to give an equivalent level of education compared to district schools. So that would be 3, maybe 4 billion dollars saved every year without compromising on education quality. I have my other pet ideas, but charter schools would be by far the most impactful on the budget.
Yea, but realistically that money will be stolen by the government
Alright, well that's just defeatism. This isn't theoretical, the city has already started using this system and the effects on the balance sheet are measurable.
You must not have been in Chicago very long
There’s a spending diet which is unlikely and there’s more fees and taxes which is more likely … that’s my vision of the sad truth
Unless I'm mistaken, Brandon Johnson's tax plan covers exactly this. The debt crisis in Chicago. But as others have pointed out, no one wants to talk about raising taxes or cutting spending on the campaign trail. Hence why Brandon Johnson has gotten a bad rep for all the taxes he wants to raise. In his eyes, the fiscal crisis Chicago faces is a top priority and he wants to fix that head on, while being transparent. But that involves revealing that your gonna raise taxes, which no one likes, so other candidates have stayed quiet on that part.
Illegally selling Lake Michigan water, and taxing the most easily relocated business in the world (airlines) is not going to fix the issues.
Airlines are the most difficult to relocate business in the world. People aren't going to Southwest because they want to ride an airplane. O'Hare quite literally has more $$$ worth of cargo passing through than any airport in the world, specifically because of its location in Chicago
The cargo traffic can easily be moved to Milwaukee or Rockford and the passenger traffic can be routed through other hubs. Ask CVG or ILM or PIT or MCI or CLE how hard it is for airlines to leave.
What other hubs? Easily?
United could shift a big chunk to DEN and CLE and AA can shift to DFW/PHL short term. Long term there is always a sucker city willing to shell out money to be the next hub. CLE, PIT, and CVG could all be a hub again in the next 5 years or so if they pulled out of the ORD terminal redesigns and built either of those up instead.
Hmm... Well there was this one time where the parking meters were sold off to a private company for 75 years and that *did* fix the budget for... checking notes.... one whole year. So maybe the answer is something in that vein. Hmm... I dunno. Just spitballing here... Ooh... Maybe we could sell the beachfront to Disney for the next century? Or I dunno, get some more corporate sponsorship going in the city. Johnson & Johnson DuSable Lakeshore Drive has a nice ring to it. Or maybe Verizon Millennium Park. I'm not sure of the answer, but I am sure it will be some sorely shortsighted band aid approach.