Ted joined Ray and Nick to talk about why big companies are reticent to invest big money in Chicago, mainly due to a widening pension shortfall and inability to preserve public safety.
Read more from Wirepoints:
- Nation’s highest real estate taxes: Six Illinois cities are in nation’s top 20, including the top two
- Illinois lawmakers shouldn’t burden taxpayers with Tier 2 pension “fixes” until they know what they’re doing
- A bit of Chicago truth-telling: Actuaries warn of insolvency, businesses fear crime
- As Illinois politicians keep pushing progressive tax schemes, other states keep dumping them. Louisiana is the latest.
- Electric vehicle adoption rate slams into reverse in Illinois
Audio and summary 
If this bill passes, say goodbye to local control over all Illinois parks and expect to see open drug and alcohol use, needles, no sanitation and fire hazards, but no ordinary park users.
Chicago’s congestion is on its highways, not on the streets of downtown. The Loop is empty; Michigan Avenue lightly trafficked. Those vehicles are merely driving through downtown, not as destination but rather only as traffic route. If City Council and Johnson administration seriously consider “congestion tax”, then it’s only further evidence that City Hall has a series case of FOMO, wannabes yet again trying to catch-up with Big City NYC.
It’s a terrible and uncompetitive idea. That’s how we know they will do it.
Chicago wishes it needed a congestion tax. They should be paying people to drive back into town.
In latest contract, JB granted permanent remote work status for are state AFSCME heroes. (Not sure how many city , cc, etc workers are now allowed to heroically work remote)….so thank goodness, they won’t have to worry about paying congestion tax while diving thier polluting cars to empty loop gov offices on taxpayers dime…just chump taxpayers
By all means, pile on another reason for businesses to leave, or not come to Chicago, to burden residents of the city and suburbs just to feed the beast the democrats created and choose not to fix.
Mark and Ted will be retired in Florida in 10 years, authoring a book called Chicago Resurrected. I chose, reluctantly, to leave a number of years ago after reading the long term future for the city in the bond offering documents. What drove the real point home was the outsized ratio of retirees to current employees contributing to the pensions, as well as long term bond debt. People have no idea how bad the pension obligation bonds are going to bite them, it’s staggering.
No. It’s a great idea. Hit those idiots with as much tax as possible. They vote for it, they should get it. Chicagoans and Illinoisans are not really humans. They can’t be educated to understand that they are beasts of burden working for their democrat masters. So tax the crap out of them. When the pain becomes too great, they are so brain dead and institutionalized that they will vote for more of the same. In fact, draft animals have more dignity.