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Chicago is known globally for its striking skyline. But now many of the impressive towers that make up that awe-inspiring cityscape are going for a song. Is the property-value carnage happening regularly downtown registering appropriately with Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi?
Summary and audio linked here.
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.
Expect no retraction or apology. This what they do.
The state’s existing buyout program for its own pensions is the precedent for Chicago, which should be a warning: Look out for similar exaggerated claims and shoddy analysis.
Full interview and summary linked here.
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Kaegi shows up to the office, parrots the same tripe his bosses tell him to and goes home. There is always an excuse for the dismal numbers ( covid, the economy, Trump) to gloss over the fact that no one wants to be in an overtaxed, crime ridden environment.
“The firm paid $6.25 million in cash for the property at 707 S. Second Av., according to sources familiar with the deal. The building last sold in 2016 for $200 million.” This in Minneapolis.
The Fall of Minneapolis Continues | Power Line
Wow. Good article. Thank you. I knew Minneapolis was in trouble but I don’t track it like I do Chicago.
Walz just didn’t care.
It all makes sense after accepting that these people want to live like this. They will never fix their problems on their own because they do not want to. The Minneapolis mayor was rewarded with reelection after letting the city burn during the St. Floyd riots. The city will need outside intervention to even begin to address their problems. In many ways, all of the worst people in Minnesota congregate in the Minneapolis/St. Paul region. I have family in the Twin Cities and they avoid Minneapolis like the plague, their boycott of the downtown area is even stronger than the… Read more »
Nothing a congestion tax can’t fix.
Part of the problem is that, by County ordinance, commercial and industrial properties pay 2.5 times the percentage of value that residential and vacant properties pay. There are of course several kinds of special favors that owners might be able to obtain.
It’s a little more complicated than that. Commercial properties assessed values are determined by their net income and residential is based on valuations determined by the triennial reassessment which is based on recent sales. Then, there is the appeal process which greatly favors comercial over residential due to the dollar amounts and attorneys on the commercial side.
Downtown is now deadtown. Hope it comes back, but first has to be made safe and so does public transportation. It is only getting worse, so it may take a long while to happen.
Kaegi can’t devalue downtown commercial properties to what they are actually now selling for because it would raise residential property taxes astronomically. Will these commercial properties win appeals for the loss of value of these properties? Would there be lawsuits? If they win, where’s the lost revenue going to come from?
Ed Burke probably wants his sentence commuted so he can come back and file tax appeals and then skim a little of the top. The business he’s losing in the joint has got to be killing him.
Yep, Cook County really painted itself into a corner this time. It taxed the crap out of residents and businesses. If it keeps the ridiculous over-assessments in place for businesses, that would likely be overturned via the appeals process or in court. If it drastically lowers the business assessments, it would likely need to drastically raise residential assessments or go wild creating or increasing other taxes and fees, risking significant population loss. The Three Stooges episode called “Pop Goes the Easel” has a good skit of them painting themselves into a corner.
Sadly, the Democrats in charge do not see themselves in a corner. The Democrat controlled IL Supremes said in regards to modest pension reform to reduce debt that ‘Hey the sate of IL can confiscate citizens private property if need be, so just keep raising taxes’ This is the baseline for all Democrats – just keep raising taxes.
I guess they either don’t acknowledge or don’t care about the correlation between raising taxes and reducing population in Illinois.
They know and they lie about it. And worse, they want anyone who complains about taxes to leave the state.