Aldermen Balk at Lightfoot’s Proposal to Hike Property Taxes, Spend Federal Relief – WTTW (Chicago)

In order to fund programs, the mayor has proposed borrowing an additional $660 million — even as the city pays off other high-interest debt it incurred last fall, as the second surge of the pandemic crested. Chief Financial Officer Jennie Huang Bennett defended the mayor’s spending plan as a thoughtful plan to “build a bridge toward financial stability while the economy continues to recover...This is good debt, like taking out a mortgage to buy a home."
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JimBob
4 years ago

“This is good debt, like taking out a mortgage to buy a home”

I guess the opposite of “good debt” must be “bad debt.” I wonder how Moody’s would rate this debt?

I doubt that even a payday lender would make a loan to those who receive funds from this program.

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Mark Glennon on AM560’s Morning Answer: Chicago pension buyout plan mostly shifts debt rather than eliminating it, property tax surge doubles inflation over three decades

Chicago’s political leadership is floating a pension buyout program as evidence it is seriously addressing the city’s thirty-six-billion-dollar unfunded pension liability, but Mark Glennon, founder of the Illinois policy research organization Wirepoints, said that the proposal moves debt from one column to another rather than reducing it, and that the broader fiscal picture facing the city continues to deteriorate across every measurable dimension. Audio here.

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