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.
Remember, it costs money to have a losing team. You’ve entered a deal with chiselers!
Property tax isn’t a ‘deal’. It is not supposed to be a negotiation.
Illinois law requires all real property to be assessed at ‘fair market value’.
Then, the prevailing property tax rate (derived by dividing levy by total taxable property value subject to levy) is applied to assessment to arrive at property tax bill.
Illinois residents should quickly understand that property taxes are not supposed to be political or subjective: they are a mathematically-derived monetary obligation of property owner.
The property is taxed, not the owner.