- What the City of Chicago spent in each of the last several years on tax-increment financing funding exceeded what it owed in pension costs, so any proposal to raise property taxes to fund pensions should consider TIFs, wrote the authors of a study to be released Friday titled, “Putting Municipal Pension Costs in Context: Chicago.”
For 2012 alone, the city owed $385.8 million to its pension funds while putting $457 million in property taxes into its TIFs, wrote Thomas Cafcas and Greg LeRoy, of Good Jobs First, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank that examines public subsidies. TIF revenue more than tripled since 2000, when it was about $129 million, they said, and once the money comes out of the city’s general fund, its uses are curtailed by law.
Meanwhile, in a pension deal that must be approved in Springfield, Mayor Rahm Emanuel has proposed raising property taxes and pension reform for retired laborers and certain other city workers, including school clerks and classroom aides.
This has been suggested many times. We've heard it would require a change in state law, which wouldn't be difficult, except that then Rahm (and Madigan and Daley and who knows who else) wouldn't have money to award in crooked/rigged/clouted contracts to political supporters. And who knows, the money might run out....except that Ben Joravsky of The Reader points out an interesting sidebar to Rahm's proposed property tax increases:
- As you may or may not have read in the papers, Mayor Emanuel's in a big hurry to have the state enact his pension plan. He says it's good for the city.
Uh-oh—beware of anything the mayor says is in your best interest.
The Sun-Times first reported on the plan yesterday, and by today he'd already had a bill passed out of a House committee.
Be really worried when the mayor's in a hurry.
The bill will, among other things, cut payments to municipal retirees, jack up property taxes, and give the mayor more slush funds to play with.
Actually, the mayor doesn't mention that final point about the slush funds. Nor is he ever likely to, as it involves a certain program he supposedly reformed.
And that program goes by an acronym that begins with a T, ends with an F and has an I in the middle. Let me pause while we all figure it out . . .
Yes, sweet taxpayer, there's a TIF angle to the mayor's pension plan. It benefits the mayor and screws you, as the tax increment financing program generally does.
Rahm has plenty of money and is plotting to get plenty more. Hold the line and make the city live up to its obligations.
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