-- Connecting the dots between our economy, government and business --
Rising commercial property tax assessments spark fears of big property tax hikes.
Today, the Near Northwest Side is the heartland of the liberal Noth Side. The Chicago Chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America has its headquarters in Logan Square. In the 2016 Democratic primary, Bernie Sanders’s strongest wards were on the Northwest Side. Three of the City Council’s six democratic socialists represent Northwest Side wards: Daniel LaSpata of the 1st, Rossana Rodriguez Sanchez of the 33rd, and Carlos Ramirez-Rosa of the 35th.
Comment: Still a bargain at $4,198/year for tuition and fees.
Shannon has partly blamed the rise in uncompensated care on other hospitals that send their uninsured patients his way, especially those who need expensive treatments. In recent months, he’s been vocal about imploring other hospitals to treat more people who don’t have insurance..
Besides facing financial pressures, Shannon has been caught up in a months-long volley with Cook County Inspector General Patrick Blanchard. In June, Blanchard released a damning report that accused Cook County Health’s Medicaid insurance business, called CountyCare, of sitting on nearly $700 million in unpaid bills owed to hospitals and doctors.
Presented without comment.
A short video on Illinois’ tardiness in releasing its annual Comprehensive Annual Financial Report.
The data is from the Illinois Department of Employment Security. Unlike most jobs numbers, it is based not on surveys and estimates but on an actual hard count of private-sector jobs covered by unemployment insurance that is considered highly reliable.
According to the report, the total number of jobs in the six-county metro area in the year ended March 31 grew just 1,361, to 3,598,232. That’s not even a tenth of a percent, and far and away is the lowest annual rise since the city and state began recovering from the subprime mortgage recession a decade ago.
Comment: Keep in mind that full doesn’t really mean full. It just means paying what was set by the legislature, which is far short of what’s needed even for the pensions to tread water. Taxpayer pension contributions have to double by 2033 just to get to the point where the growth in unfunded liabilities stops.
Held at the University Club in Chicago on November 21.
Illinois has nation’s worst pension debt. Maybe that’s because state lawmakers take a problem they aren’t sure exists, apply a solution they don’t know will work and never determine the cost.
Pritzker should have added something else to what he thinks isn’t politically feasible in Illinois: honesty.
United Working Families, which is marshaling opposition to her 2020 budget, is, she said, “closely aligned with” the Chicago Teachers Union.
A republication of our Wirepoints article.
Elizabeth Bauer, pension actuary: “Pritzker cannot reasonably pat himself on the back for a buyout and a consolidation of unrelated pensions, while simultaneously shrugging off true pension reform as too hard. Not, that is, unless he just doesn’t care.”
Comment: Pure bunk from Pritzker, for the reasons described herein.
Nearly 30,000 people moved to Alabama from Illinois since 2010, reversing the flow of the Great Migration and marking the largest surge from the Rust Belt to the Yellowhammer State in recent years.
Meanwhile, only half as many went the opposite direction.
Rob Grant, former special agent in charge of the Chicago FBI:
“I always wondered why, when I was here, why the attorney general of the state of Illinois and other prosecuting officials never tackled the corruption that was so endemic in this area,” Grant said.
“I never got a straight answer,” Grant said. “…But there’s a very low level of desire, it appears to me, in the state of Illinois and in Cook County, to actually take on this particular crime problem in this city and this state and it’s left to the feds to do that job. Part of
Mayoral allies beat back efforts to kill a $40 million congestion fee and a first-ever trash-collection fee for non-profits; the Finance Committee also approved a $1.5 billion debt refinancing package.
Michael Ferro, the largest shareholder in Tribune Publishing Co., sold his 25% stake in the newspaper company for about $118 million to Alden Global Capital LLC, a hedge fund known for making deep cuts to newsrooms.
The change is the result of Cook County’s falling unemployment rate. Illinois, like other states, received waivers for the entire state for many years.
Now Cook County’s unemployment rate is also too low to qualify for the waiver. Last month the Illinois Department of Human Services submitted a waiver request for every county in the state except Cook and DuPage
Comment: The law is a gift that keeps giving to Illinois plaintiffs’ lawyers.
Comment: Note the apparently prominent role of the US Attorney for Northern District of Illinois.
In an appearance at an Economic Club luncheon, Pritzker said he understands why some factions are pushing a “shared sacrifice” approach in which voters next year would vote on two amendments to the Illinois Constitution, one allowing his so-called “fair tax” and the other revamping a clause which locks in current payments for government workers.
But that won’t fly, either fiscally or politically, the Democratic governor asserted.
Since fiscal year 2000, after adjusting for inflation, state spending on education has grown by 21%. State spending on everything from child protection, state police, college aid for low-income students and more has fallen by nearly one-third during that time.
But state spending on pensions for government workers, meanwhile, grew by a whopping 501% – on top of a 127% increase in spending on health care costs for state workers.
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Foxx had others to blame: “Every day my office is under attack, from a president who uses our city as a punching bag. The NRA, hell bent on letting guns flood our streets. And the FOP, clinging to old ways. They’ll do anything to undercut progress, including attacking me personally over the Jussie Smollett case,” Foxx says.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot agreed Monday to raise the annual aldermanic expense — from $97,000 to $122,000 — to appease aldermen demanding more staff for their ward offices and build support for her 2020 budget.
Instead of budgeting $4.85 million for the annual aldermanic expense allowance, the city will spend $6.1 million — about a 26% increase. The additional $1.25 million will come from unspecified spending cuts and revenue increases, officials said, as the City Council’s Budget Committee approved the mayor’s $11.65 billion spending plan.
There’s no guarantee property taxes can be held down in the future, she said, especially if she can’t get state lawmakers next spring to make changes she wants to the proposed Chicago casino taxing structure.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s plan to raise Chicago’s minimum wage to $15-an-hour by 2021, but maintain a “sub-minimum wage” for tipped workers, cleared a key legislative hurdle on Monday to cheers from restaurant owners.
That’s not good enough to satisfy Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa (35th). He argued again Monday that eliminating the “sub-minimum wage” and phasing in a $15-an-hour wage for all workers was imperative to “reduce workplace sexual harassment” and eradicate a two-tiered system that “leaves black and Latino women in the service industry behind.”
The trust, launched with a flourish at the start of Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration, has been criticized for accomplishing little at a snail’s pace and depending on public financing, even though it was created with a goal of freeing taxpayers from the cost and risk of funding big infrastructure projects.
The Building Owners and Managers Association of Chicago has sued City Hall to try to stop the city from enforcing its Fair Workweek Ordinance, which regulates employers’ scheduling processes, and asking the courts to strike the ordinance down as unconstitutional for targeting only specific kinds of employers.
Democrats were not going to clean up corruption. The Illinois Republican Party was not equipped to do it. Voters definitely were not going to do it.
Drumroll: It is a Trump-Sessions appointee rescuing numb Illinois voters from a government on the take.
Tenant rep brokers say that widening gap isn’t enough to reverse or stop a suburban-to-urban trend alone, as real estate expenses pale in comparison to labor costs. But with the suburban millennial population expected to grow during the next decade and the rise of telecommuting and co-working allowing more workplace flexibility, the calculus companies are using to decide where they want to call home is changing.
Comment: And Treasurer Frerichs has a press conference to announce what he sees as a great success?
Comment: There’s a misspelling in here. It’s samich not sandwich.
WCIA’s examination of financial documents, interviews with top lieutenants and staff, and an investigation of his private business dealings reveals that behind the scenes, his caucus was devolving into a tailspin and his campaign operation was already in tatters.
Whichever of the 39 other Democratic senators should replace him in January will inherit a thorny tangle of ethical and legal headaches, as at least three sitting members of the caucus are either facing federal indictment, under investigation, or wiring up for the FBI.
Chicago Teachers Union officials earlier this year said the costs of a new contract would come from “rich people,” casino gambling, legalized marijuana and sports betting. Nope. Those revenues won’t cover the 16% pay raises and other promises. Money expected to be generated, eventually, from gambling and cannabis legalization would flow to the city budget, not the schools.
The burden will be borne by rank-and-file middle-class taxpayers and property owners. Same as it ever was in Illinois.
Dozens of Chicago and Cook County agencies fall short on Open Meetings Act and other open government standards, according to a City Bureau analysis.
Tax retirement income and expand the sales tax.
Kept in the dark and covered with manure, our mushroom legislators cast important votes without adequate deliberation.
Suburban businessmen linked to Ald. Carrie Austin and a federal investigation didn’t pay taxes on properties for years, then bought up $861,000 of their own tax debts — for $26,000.
Pritzker & Co. won a victory worth celebrating when they pushed through a deal to consolidate hundreds of police and fire retirement funds. But don’t think for a second the state’s problem is solved.
Comment: Oh, please, Ralph. The pensions covered by the new consolidation law discussed here represent only about 4.5% of our pension problems. The sponsors never offered a shred of analysis proving the claimed savings. Though this consolidation step is sensible in concept, the General Assembly mucked it up with other problems. See our own article on that linked here.
Governor J.B. Pritzker is pushing a plan to make energy production in Illinois 100 percent renewable by 2050. Currently about 6 percent of the state’s electric production comes from renewables. The idea that we can completely replace coal and natural gas by 2050 is a fantasy.
Discerning the difference between refreshing straight talk and intemperate broadsides should be on the mayor’s to-do list.
How the Nitchoffs avoided paying hundreds of thousands of dollars by paying a fraction of what they owed
Against this sorry backdrop — the certainty of ever more tax gouges, the worsening corruption eruption — Gov. J.B. Pritzker and his fellow Democrats want voters to approve their open-ended amendment to enable graduated income taxes. Higher tax rates would hit big earners first. What lawmakers refuse to admit publicly — just try asking them — is that they’ll next raise rates on middle-class taxpayers, too. That’s where the real money is.
Setting the stage for a potential battle with one of the state’s most powerful Democrats, a Northwest Side alderman and three other Democratic committeemen on Friday picked a successor for former state Rep. Luis Arroyo.
They did so with the use of Arroyo’s proxy votes — though he faces federal bribery charges, Arroyo remains the 36th Ward committeeman. That led another Democratic committeeman to leave the meeting, declaring “the fix is in.”
Arroyo didn’t attend, but 30th Ward Ald. Ariel Reboyras cast his own weighted vote and Arroyo’s proxy. In the end, Eva-Dina Delgado, an assistant to
Conducted by Ogden & Fry on behalf of the Illinois Opportunity Project, pollsters found 36 percent of respondents favor bankruptcy, compared to 21 percent of those in favor of raising taxes as a way of trying to tackle the deficit. Of the 534 respondents that were randomly selected from a pool of 2020 general election voters earlier this month, 42.7 percent were undecided on the issue.
Comment: Read his letter included in this article. Among the accomplishments he claims are pension reform (there was none), the school funding bill (which will never come remotely close to being funded) and two capital bills (one of which is the preposterously oversized new one for $40 billion, funded by taxes on the working class)!
Kass: “I figure that eventually, I’ll be spending time under those harsh fluorescent lights in the federal courthouse in Chicago, learning all about Madigan Electric lobbyists close to Illinois House Speaker Michael J. Madigan.”
Comment: What’s “big” about it? The pensions covered represent just 4.5% of our pension unfunded liabilities. Actual savings are speculative, but in any event will barely move the needle. And there’s this astonishing comment from a lawmaker: “We’re finally doing what Illinois is supposed to do, which is get ahead of these issues before it becomes a crisis,” said Sen. Linda Holmes, an Aurora Democrat.
Pritzker: “In passing this bipartisan legislation, the General Assembly has demonstrated a historic commitment to responsible and sustainable fiscal management.” The Bond Buyer: “The state has not produced any actuarial review to support [the savings it claims].”
Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Wednesday shot down an alternative congestion fee floated by Uber and accused the ride-hailing giant of offering black ministers $54 million to carry the ride-hailing giant’s water.
Lightfoot dropped the political bombshell at a City Hall news conference when asked about the tax plan that, Uber claims, would raise $21 million more than Lightfoot’s congestion fee in part because it would apply to taxis as well as ride-hailing.
“Is this the one where they’re paying off black ministers by $54 million? That one? Or is this a new one?” the mayor said.
Comment: National ridicule apparently wasn’t enough for them, so they are going for more.
Comment: No, scratch that. We are beyond words.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot has introduced her proposal to raise the city’s minimum wage to $15 by 2021 and boost base wages for tipped workers—but not to the full $15 that some employee advocates were hoping for.
Her proposal would boost the city’s minimum wage for businesses with 21 or more employees to $14 per hour on July 1, 2020, and $15 one year later. Those wages also would apply to the city’s sister agencies like the park district and Chicago Transit Authority and would rise with inflation. For those with fewer than 21 employees, wages would climb more slowly, rising
Monologue focused on the recent fiasco at Northwestern University, now getting many national headlines.
Illinois Municipal League Executive Director Brad Cole contends the amendment would shut out municipal governments from intervening in benefit allocation proceedings at the local level. In cases where benefits are abused, that could lead to a greater burden on their budgets and taxpayers, he said. Cole called language that was introduced Monday a “midnight provision that penalizes the taxpayer, the person we’re trying to support.” He said he communicated his stance to Pritzker earlier Tuesday that he described as “unwavering.”
An 88-member task force missed a key deadline to deliver a report on how to reduce the state’s high property taxes.
Comment: Who gets the money and for what? “It’s essentially to throw events, hand outreach materials to encourage people to get out and get counted,” said Shannon Anderson, a program manager at Teens Against Killing Everywhere (TAKE). The East St. Louis-based organization focused on nonviolence programs in the city received a $330,000 grant.
The Greater Chicago Food Depository hopes to make up to 17,000 scratch meals a day for Cook County’s aging population, which is on course to significantly increase over the next decade.
“Lightfoot finally agreed to a labor contract that is very generous to the teachers union. Making it affordable, however, won’t be easy. Nor will giving a higher-quality education to students now trapped in dying schools. Closing these half-empty buildings is one way to show she’s serious about both goals.”
Many people don’t want to hear it, but Illinois’ pension woes — despite record contributions by taxpayers — just keep getting worse.
“On Tuesday, lawmakers return to Springfield for the final days of their fall veto session. Legislation removing the sunset date of the Invest in Kids Scholarship Tax Credit should be filed and passed. The program deserves more support, not the current uncertainty.”
Irma Holloway, a 53-year-old real estate investor with a checkered financial past and a rap sheet that includes arrests for theft, forgery and bank fraud, resigned as economic development director for Hazel Crest Friday following inquiries from the Daily Southtown.
Comment: And when the pensions don’t meet their unrealistic assumptions, taxpayers are on the hook for the difference.
Comment: Lightfoot talks out of both sides of her mouth on this. Though she indicated here that she might support a constitutional amendment on pensions, Pritzker’s office says she told him she opposes it, as he does.
Bill Helm — a $125,000-a-year deputy aviation commissioner — also was a paid sales representative for SafeSpeed, LLC, while on the city payroll, the records show.
SafeSpeed paid Helm, who’d held the city aviation post since 2014, a commission on red-light tickets written in Matteson and also Glendale Heights, the records show.
SafeSpeed and Helm have been named in federal search warrants and subpoenas served on several southwest suburbs and on the offices of state Sen. Martin Sandoval, D-Chicago
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot is about to learn a lesson in state political dynamics. If she’s counting on Springfield to help balance her 2020 budget, she’d better have a Plan B. And probably a Plan C. Weeks ago, Lightfoot might not have predicted that her “asks” of Springfield would confront so much resistance. She often has said Chicago is the “economic engine” of the state, warranting the attention of all legislators. But that’s part of the lesson in governing here. Little consideration gets granted in Springfield without the counter question, “What’s in it for me?”
Comment: Good explanation of how the union skirted the law.
“As the democratic committeeman with the greatest number of weighted votes in the 3rd District and the recognized Chair of the 3rd Representative District Committee, I am calling a meeting of the democratic committeeman for the purpose of filing the vacancy created by my retirement from the Illinois House of Representatives,” his letter reads.
ComEd’s lobbying and contracting practices are now central to a wide-ranging federal criminal investigation into whether the power company hired politically connected employees and contractors in exchange for favorable government actions, including rate hikes.
A WBEZ analysis of federal regulatory filings found dozens of companies and individuals who’ve been on ComEd’s payroll and are connected to political A-listers like House Speaker Michael Madigan and indicted Chicago Ald. Ed Burke.
The agency’s junk rating on Chicago Public Schools debt in unchanged, but it warns the $1.5 billion deal “will widen a structure gap” in school finances that already were weak.
The Seventh Circuit’s ruling on remedies for Janus violations.
A bungle like approving the Corliss Avenue deal can cause public support to flag. The deal never should have happened. Not only should the county probe what happened in that case, it should conduct a deeper dive into the agency to see if any other too-cozy deals have escaped scrutiny. And it should set in place reforms that ensure public trust in the land bank doesn’t get undermined again.
If other states’ recent tax votes are any indication, Pritzker’s proposal could be a tougher sell than he thinks.
Comment: If Senator Terry Link indeed was wired or is singing, he would be a gold mine for the feds. Link has long been a go-to guy for public unions. Link has denied any cooperation wit the feds.
Dr. Nerissa Brown of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Gies College of Business analyzes the effects of political corruption on firm value. She and her colleagues found that in districts with high level of corruption, the value of firms in those areas declined by 4%.
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Illinoisans outside Chicago may be laughing at the city’s reckless new contract with its teachers, but the real joke is on them.
Greg Hinz: “I’m hearing Lightfoot’s plan still is in trouble, facing opposition both from Republicans and real estate groups that oppose tax hikes, and from downstate and suburban Democrats who see no reason to take a tough vote even if progressives may be climbing aboard.”
Chicago Public Schools says it’s confident it will be able to pay for the contract—but only with $100 million a year in new property taxes and aid from the state, aid that may be dependent on enacting a graduated income tax.
This is Illinois today: a place where government causes everyone to lose — and that’s perverse. The state has entered a self-reinforcing spiral of failure, with shrinking wealth, a shrinking population and shrinking pension funds too, despite the ever higher taxes to save them.
The progressives’ case for why taxes don’t affect migration. Presented without comment.
Illinois already has to pay up when the worst-rated state borrows money from Wall Street. Now, as the state kicks off a $45 billion capital spending plan, it will have to compete with a crowd of issuers flooding the $3.8 trillion municipal debt market trying to capture cheap rates.
Lots of Chicago teachers call in sick when they are not sick. Just because they can. That sad fact lies behind a little noticed provision in the teachers’ new tentative contract. The teachers will be allowed to accumulate as many as 244 sick days, which they can put toward an earlier retirement with a full pension. Some teachers will be able to retire about a year and half early.
Comment: It says something when the socialists are happy that CTU took another step to “revive a tradition of militant trade unionism based on strikes, solidarity, and social justice.”
“Don’t waste another dime on infrastructure for a pretend airport. Sell the land — another plus for Illinois taxpayers. Move on to projects that would actually benefit commerce and citizens.”
What would you name the federal investigation of Illinois politicians? Operation Greased Palms? Operation Pocket Square? Operation Racket Hall? City of Rigged Shoulders (see what I did there)?
As the bull market enters its 11th year, state and local pension plans are piling on risk, as they try to make up shortfalls.
Public plans had a median 47.3% of their assets in U.S. equities at the end of the third quarter. That is more than they have had since 2007 and up from 44.1% a year earlier.
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Chester Wilson’s delinquent property tax tab on a South Side building topped $200K. County land bank erased that — and gave the property to a Wilson business partner for $40,000.
Leaders of the Cook County Democratic Party on Monday voted unanimously to ask former state Rep. Luis Arroyo to step down from its ranks Monday — and will be sending a letter to indicted 14th Ward Ald. Ed Burke requesting he do the same.
Democrats hadn’t previously asked Burke or Solis to hit the road, although the chair of the party, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, had asked Burke to step down from his party post in January when Burke was first hit with federal charges.
Chicago Democrat Luis Arroyo, who resigned from the Illinois House on Friday after being charged with bribery Monday, is alleged to have offered kickbacks to an unnamed senator in exchange for the veteran lawmaker’s support for legislation that would regulate and tax so-called sweepstakes machines.
New research suggests that moral grandstanding may be a major source of conflict in the world today
Presented without comment.
If you can’t follow this economist’s reasoning, it’s not you.
See this Forbes article on the effects in California.
The tentative agreement reached Thursday between the city, Chicago Public Schools and the CTU allows union members to bank 244 sick days, up from 40.
That’s more than enough days to cover an entire school year — an increase that could allow a longtime employee to retire a year early and still receive their full pension.
“Ka-ching, k-not.”
Included in Lightfoot’s massive city budget expectation is $163 million federal dollars in ambulance service reimbursements based on the feds rewriting a section of the Medicaid formula. Political insiders are betting the ranch the Trump administration will nix the cash by turning a thumbs-down to approval of the formula rewrite by the U.S. Department of Human Services. Why? It’s pretty obvious this president, who is consistently bashing Chicago, doesn’t forget slights.
And Lightfoot’s decision not to greet Trump at the airport Monday, his first trip to Chicago since his 2016 election, probably stung. As a
That’s Wirepoints’ Ted Dabrowski.
Jesse Sharkey and Vice President Stacy Davis Gates sloughed off concerns about how a school system that has borrowed to the hilt can afford such a generous contract:
“So to hear this discussion arise about, ‘Oh, my God. It’s gonna cost too much money.’ No. quite frankly, it should be costing a lot more money.”
Pressed on where the money should come from, Davis Gates said, “Rich people. Reinstate the corporate head tax.
“[Lightfoot] has an opportunity to expand the tax base to include those who can pay more. She should do that,” Davis Gates said.
Comment: Yes, high taxes do cause flight and other behavioral responses, as this study shows, as if that weren’t obvious to Illinoisans. “Our results therefore predict that as of today, California is on the wrong side of the so-called Laffer Curve. That is, the only way that state authorities can reasonable increase revenues relative to what they would be without further policy action is to cut tax rates.”
Chicago TV/movie studio mogul Alexander S. Pissios was on the hook for more than $1 million when he began cooperating in a corruption case that took down a Teamsters boss. Now, he no longer owes that money.
Is there a whiff of something out of whack here? Former Smollett press adviser Rosen co-hosting a dinner for Tchen, whose involvement in the Smollett case raised heavy eyebrows? Former White House insiders tell Sneed Tchen and Jarrett are not only this/close and chummy on the Tinseltown scene, but they got to know Foxx as a frequent visitor at Hollywood fundraising events.
Smollett’s Chicago case, which still sparks of outrage in Chicago, is now in the hands of special prosecutor/mega legal eagle Dan K. Webb.
Will Webb discover a few former White House spoons were used to
Some high school districts serving the south suburbs seem to be more efficient with taxpayer dollars than others. That is among several takeaways from 2019 Illinois Report Card data released Wednesday by the Illinois State Board of Education. This year’s report cards include additional information about school district finances.
Arroyo was also Assistant Majority Leader in the Illinois House.
Paradoxically, the worse the policies that the unions foist on our cities, the more progressives need their muscle to get reelected.
Stacy Davis Gates said she was stopped at a City Hall elevator by the mayor’s security team.
James T. Weiss — a son-in-law of Joseph Berrios, the former Cook County Democratic Party chairman and county assessor — owns and operates sweepstakes machines. Weiss also runs the Alliance of Illinois Taxpayers, which has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars, largely from personal injury law firms allied with Madigan. Other donors include individuals with ties to Madigan’s political organization.
Around the time he was trying to get the village of Alsip to hire his clout-heavy insurance company, Andrew Madigan invited the south suburb’s mayor to a campaign fundraiser for his father, Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, the Chicago Sun-Times has learned.
That’s the five-year, high end estimate from the CPS budget office. “The union won the strike. They absolutely won,” says Paul Vallas, a former CPS CEO who was one of Lightfoot’s rivals in the February mayoral election. “It’s going to be impossible for them to come up with that much dough without major tax increases if (Gov. J.B.) Pritzker does not fully fund the state’s new school-aid formula.”
State Rep. Luis Arroyo’s foray into the shady world of sweepstakes machines is at the center of the federal bribery case alleging he agreed to pay off a state senator in exchange for support on legislation that would benefit the largely unregulated industry. Now other players linked to the alleged scheme are emerging, including businessman James Weiss, the son-in-law of former Cook County assessor and county Democratic Party boss Joseph Berrios, and an ex-Chicago cop who was fired for consorting with a drug trafficker, the Chicago Tribune has confirmed through state records and a source with
“The future of public education in Chicago is empty schools, $100K teacher salaries, and fake jobs.”
Estimated cost to follow, but you can bet it will be expensive. The agreement also includes new job protections for substitute teachers who going forward may only be removed after conferring with the union about “performance deficiencies.” Chicago Public Schools will become a “sanctuary district,” meaning school officials won’t be allowed to cooperate with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement without a court order. Employees will also be allowed 10 unpaid days for personal immigration matters.
“Paradoxically, the worse the policies that the unions foist on our cities, the more progressives need their muscle to get reelected.”
Having boxed herself in with an education platform that reads like the CTU playbook, Lightfoot had no choice but to essentially give away the store to a teachers union that backed her opponent, County Board President Toni Preckwinkle.
In a desperate attempt to honor her “not-on-my-watch” promise to avoid a teachers strike, she quickly agreed to a 14% pay raise over five years, then upped the ante to 16%, matching the recommendation of an independent fact-finder.
The strategy violated Negotiations 101: When facing a difficult adversary, hold something back. Give yourself room to maneuver.
Comment: With the higher transfer taxes not even approved yet, progressives are already proposing expanding the scope of the tax increase to homes valued at just $500k. “The plan from Rep. Will Guzzardi, D-Chicago, could spark a bit of a homeowners’ revolt on much of the North Side and other sections of the city where property values are relatively high. They could end up paying hundreds of dollars more in taxes on the sales of even rather ordinary houses and condominiums,” says Crain’s
Exelon disclosed that the agency notified the company on Oct. 22 of an investigation it had opened into Exelon and ComEd’s “lobbying activities,” according to the company’s quarterly filing today with the SEC.
The U.S. Attorney’s office in Chicago also is probing the lobbying practices of the two companies in Illinois. Exelon revealed in mid-July that it had received that subpoena.
State Rep. Elizabeth Hernandez, D-Cicero, said the idea that one of her colleagues had been wearing a wire was disappointing.
“Because for those who try and work in such a way to build that trust among the public, the unfortunate actions of a few really impact all,” she said.
The index captures business conditions across Illinois, Indiana and Michigan.
In his most explicit threat yet, Chris Crane said today that the company will move to shutter as many as four Illinois plants if Springfield doesn’t pass wide-ranging energy legislation next spring to funnel more ratepayer cash to the stations.
The Chicago Fed said that Ms. Pramaggiore stepped down from her position on Oct. 25. Ms. Pramaggiore abruptly retired on Oct. 15 from her job as chief executive of the utilities unit of Exelon Corp., the largest operator of nuclear plants in the U.S., less than a week after the company said it had received a second grand-jury subpoena from federal prosecutors looking into its lobbying activities in Illinois.
Ted was on the Illinois Channel discussing the origins of Chicago’s broken 2020 budget.
The fate of Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s proposed public safety pension fund consolidation and two state law changes pursued by Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot won’t be settled until the second half of the Illinois General Assembly’s fall veto session.
Evanston/Skokie School District 65 said they’re striving for inclusivity, but in their quest to make everyone feel comfortable, some families said they just feel sad.
Recreational cannabis sales are set to begin in Illinois at the start of the new year, but a lack of retail stores threatens to curtail the rollout of what could eventually be a $2.5 billion market.
Illinois has taken a restrictive approach to licensing adult-use businesses in general, and – combined with the ability of local governments to ban marijuana businesses – a lack of access to retail stores could persist indefinitely.
That would leave room for black-market operators to serve consumers.
In response to a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Illinois lawmakers want to put barriers on a public worker’s ability to leave a union.
Ahead of the curve on corruption, they are.
Joe Ferguson says Chicago is trimming fewer trees, more sporadically, and at a higher cost because city crews rely on 311 requests, instead of a grid system.
In August 2015, Chicago quietly shifted distracted driving tickets from administrative hearings to Traffic Court after being advised by its own attorneys that motorists caught talking on cellphones and texting behind the wheel were being denied due process.
Why, then, did City Hall continue to collect $3.2 million in fines from motorists whose tickets issued before then were “illegally” routed to administrative hearing officers and use those citations to suspend drivers licenses, deny permits and prohibit city employment for two more years?
The guide can be found here.
One piece of information is new this year: How much each school spends on each student.
The proposed FY2020 budget for the prosecutor’s office calls for adding 10 new positions to the unit that handles wrongful conviction claims, like the ones tied to Burge.
In total, the budget calls for about 22 new positions in the prosecutor’s office, including new positions to help with expungements based on the new Illinois law legalizing marijuana.
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Comment: Yes, public unions, whatever you’d like.
Chicago Police Department detectives do not have direct phone lines or individual voicemail. Until recently, they weren’t provided with cell phones. They don’t have their own computers or even their own desks. Their offices are so far from assigned neighborhoods it might take more than an hour to reach a murder scene
If this were a normal state with reasonable expectations and standards for the ethical conduct of public officials, the first reaction to the news of state Rep. Luis Arroyo’s arrest might have been:
What do you mean the state legislator was acting as a lobbyist on the side? How could that be legal?
Unfortunately, in Illinois, it IS legal for an elected official to be a paid lobbyist, as long as they aren’t lobbying the same branch of government they were elected to represent.
Of nearly 3,100 U.S. counties, Lake County ranks fifth for lost home value in the wake of the tax law changes, according to a list compiled by Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics and published earlier this month by ProPublica. Cook County ranks
Whether through tax increases or diverting money from other programs, taxpayers get stuck with pension debt.
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Comment: Now it’s worth $170 million of taxpayer money plus the free parkland, don’t you think?
Despite new concessions from CPS and Mayor Lightfoot, the union says it’s not enough, and appears to be set on continuing its strike into a 10th day.
Though the mayor says she’s not worried, a federal indictment may hinder her hopes to revive plans for a Chicago casino, and progressives vow to block her real estate transfer tax without more help for the homeless.
Comment: Madigan bravely roots out wrongdoers (after they’re indicted).
Comment: This hasn’t gotten the press coverage it deserves.
Comment: Note the pageview counter in the lower right on the republication of our Wirepoints article.
The 13-page criminal complaint, made public Monday, revealed that the state senator allegedly targeted by Arroyo first began cooperating with the FBI in 2016 but was terminated as a confidential source after it was revealed he had filed false income tax returns. The senator later agreed to cooperate with the FBI again in the hopes of winning a break at sentencing on expected tax fraud charges, according to the complaint.
The senator was not named in the complaint, but a source identified
The Chicago Tribune reported state Sen. Terry Link was the cooperating witness. The newspaper cited an unnamed source. Link denied it on Monday. On Tuesday, he declined to answer questions about it directly.
Comment: From the pro-union Sun-Times, no less: As we write this editorial, the stumbling blocks include two big demands by the Chicago Teachers Union: More prep time for teachers, and political support from Mayor Lori Lightfoot for a fully elected school board. Lightfoot and her negotiating team have said no to both, and we’re with them.
The Supreme Court ruled in the case of Janus v. AFSCME that unions could not extract what’s called an “agency fee” from non-members who happened to work in the same place a union had “exclusive representation” rights. But one group argues that in saying it was unconstitutional to force people to fund labor unions’ speech with their own money, the high court also indicated that the legitimacy of “exclusive representation” itself could be up for debate.
Chicago teachers remained on strike Monday, freezing 300,000 students out of crucial instructional time. Why? The reasons are growing, but they aren’t about pay or working conditions.
The latest reason: President Donald Trump visited Chicago to speak to police chiefs before heading to a ritzy fundraiser hosted by Chicago Cubs co-owner Todd Ricketts. No way could Chicago Teachers Union leaders miss out on the opportunity to protest Trump and a 1-percenter, together, on the same day. That was a double aphrodisiac
Aldermen from across the city demanded to know how a budget that makes a series of rosy assumptions will be balanced in the event that Lightfoot doesn’t get what she wants?
What if the Illinois General Assembly fails to authorize a graduated real estate transfer tax and a casino gambling fix during its abbreviated fall veto session?
What if the federal government refuses to sign off on the $163 million windfall that the mayor assumes she’ll get by increasing ambulance fees paid by private insurers and from reimbursements administered by the state for ambulance transports for low-income
A natioal republication of our Wirepoints article.
At a time when union leaders claim another $38 million could end the teachers strike, Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s 2020 budget requires the Chicago Public Schools to reimburse the city for $60 million in pension contributions previously covered by City Hall. The historic about-face is buried in the mayor’s budget overview. It states, “In 2020, an additional $60 million is expected from Chicago Public Schools to cover a portion of its share of the city’s annual contribution to the Municipal Employees’ Annuity and Benefit Fund.”
Using fuzzy math, the CTU claimed on Monday that the negotiating gap on a new contract stands at $38 million. Using real-world math, that gap is about 2 1⁄2 times bigger — $98 million. Chicago just doesn’t have that kind of money. Really and truly.
Comment: Note that this is about structure — how taxes are assessed — not tax burden.
Thanks to Michael Gillespie, an obscure programmer at a Nerds on Call repair store, hundreds of thousands of ransomware victims have recovered their files for free.
Prtizker politicized the release of the state’s five-year projections by releasing it under this headline: “GOMB Releases Five-Year Forecast Showing Significant Long-Term Challenges Without Fair Tax.”
The Chicago Democrat faces one count of bribery.
Governor, this is a good time to remember that you, your wife and brother-in-law are still under federal criminal investigation for that residential property tax appeal based on toilets removed so the property would be deemed uninhabitable. Should the state boycott all the companies you’re invested in?
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot needs to achieve her 2022 target of structurally balancing the city’s books to preserve the city’s BBB-plus rating, S&P Global Ratings said in a special report Friday.
Comment: This is the socialist’s perspective. For our own views on “bargaining for the common good,” see our own article from last week.
Alliant/Mesirow Insurance Services and company executive Andrew Madigan — neither of which has been accused of any crime — add an intriguing link to people federal authorities appear to be interested in.
Among them: Cook County Commissioner Jeff Tobolski, who doubles as the mayor of McCook and whose office was raided Sept. 26. McCook village records show Tobolski invited Andrew Madigan in 2011 “to submit a proposal” to help secure liability coverage.
Eager developers are now painting rosy images of vast new entertainment complexes — ones that are now allowed to break ground on land without any aquatic pretenses — costing hundreds of millions of dollars in this latest gaming growth, which Pritzker is banking on to help fund his signature $45 billion capital plan for statewide construction projects.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/NSK98OZ5NHBWGLdSjpElN1pX0uI=/0x0:1024x517/1200x800/filters:focal(446x145:608x307)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/65556760/CASINO_GAMBLE.0.jpg" sizes="(min-width: 1221px) 846px, (min-width: 880px) calc(100vw - 334px), 100vw" srcset="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/l0FJqMw_dFP_sqzP4zy95NIanvA=/0x0:1024x517/320x213/filters:focal(446x145:608x307)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/65556760/CASINO_GAMBLE.0.jpg 320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/haJbkSspvGDKZYjvmZDqvYjNFQE=/0x0:1024x517/620x413/filters:focal(446x145:608x307)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/65556760/CASINO_GAMBLE.0.jpg 620w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/k7j4QhYhTXoAul74N2RlfxdnCiM=/0x0:1024x517/920x613/filters:focal(446x145:608x307)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/65556760/CASINO_GAMBLE.0.jpg 920w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/XEDV4z1MFEtZy1BIFEqjgVPiBgo=/0x0:1024x517/1220x813/filters:focal(446x145:608x307)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/65556760/CASINO_GAMBLE.0.jpg 1220w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/gwGXpmnpqICz9LyaDKpQYHgV790=/0x0:1024x517/1520x1013/filters:focal(446x145:608x307)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/65556760/CASINO_GAMBLE.0.jpg 1520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Dlidr1vWOyNDbGEfHq64N4SXhAI=/0x0:1024x517/1820x1213/filters:focal(446x145:608x307)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/65556760/CASINO_GAMBLE.0.jpg 1820w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/UmKNgXSrGMs-trDGb1cOVBHbO7I=/0x0:1024x517/2120x1413/filters:focal(446x145:608x307)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/65556760/CASINO_GAMBLE.0.jpg 2120w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/cRdoQNFi-FqwIfnfFGDUQLVPNJg=/0x0:1024x517/2420x1613/filters:focal(446x145:608x307)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/65556760/CASINO_GAMBLE.0.jpg 2420w" alt=" Illinois’ first authorized casino riverboat, the Alton Belle Casino" width="233" height="155"
Gov. J.B. Pritzker just bumped up funding for road construction to a non-existent airport to $205.5 million, paid in part with his doubled gas tax. The airport remains a distant idea, but the road will soon be concrete.
Bankrate, a financial services company, ranked Illinois the 4th worst state in the nation to retire in.
The chairwoman of the board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago can continue in that role while her former employer is the subject of a federal probe, the regional Fed bank said.
Anne Pramaggiore abruptly retired Oct. 15 from her job as chief executive of the utilities unit of Exelon Corp. , the largest operator of nuclear plants in the U.S., less than a week after Exelon Corp. said it had received a second grand-jury subpoena from federal prosecutors looking into its lobbying activities in Illinois.
Ms. Pramaggiore has served on the
Presented without comment: Jackson Park is in terrible shape and needs a fix. “Beyond that, the OPC will enrich the souls of our families and our children. Mothers and fathers can beam with pride and see the museum as a beacon of hope, as a light that tells them that yes, it is possible for their child to grow up and become president.”
By Pippenburg’s account, Tobolski used the taxpayer-subsidized dining spot, Alta Grill, as his private hangout, often staying past closing time to drink with pals while running up tabs he sometimes didn’t pay. Tobolski regularly went behind the bar to pour himself a drink or wandered into the kitchen to order up items not on the menu — and insisted the restaurant always be prepared to serve him his favorite dish: grilled octopus, she said.
Lightfoot has discovered that there is no limit to the appetite of the constituencies generated by government spending. She has learned that the special interests bargaining for higher benefits also desire policies that make such benefits unattainable.
Data shows she’s dismissed thousands of felonies that would have been pursued in the past.
Here’s what should infuriate Chicagoans: This strike is about power and relevancy for leaders of the Chicago Teachers Union. It always has been….
Additionally, CTU keeps pushing for a three-year deal, even though Lightfoot’s offer of a five-year contract would protect teachers from the potential damage of a recession and rising health care costs. But CTU, being CTU, wants the shorter contract.
Why? To maintain its relevancy. To guarantee that it has leverage during and after the 2023 mayoral election.
“The Chicago Teachers Union uses the rhetoric of social responsibility to extract monopoly profits from the City. CPS is so emotionally committed to the CTU’s progressive agenda that none of its counterproposals try to restructure the basic institutional arrangement.”
The BGA joins the Civic Federation, the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability and others in calling for a tax on retirement income.
Next week former President Barack Obama’s eponymous foundation is hosting a summit meeting to promote its planned Obama Presidential Center in Chicago’s historic Jackson Park. But a hardy band of conservationists, determined to save local birds and trees from the designs of our nation’s 44th President, is planning a Friday court filing and a weekend protest. The Obama tree removals have not yet been scheduled. But once they are scheduled, he believes as many as 500 trees could be doomed by the Obama plan, counting land for the center and related transportation projects.
The union indicated it will return to the picket lines at 6:30 a.m. Thursday and would plan to provide civil disobedience training at CTU headquarters “taking a page from the civil rights movement,”
Lightfoot’s budget proposes to boost the city’s tax on cloud-computing services, which was wildly unpopular when it was instituted in 2015, is going up to 7.25 percent from 5.25 percent.
In-fighting among members of the Maine Township Board continued this week as elected officials resumed their dispute over the assessor’s interest in receiving a municipal pension.
The voting members of the board argued with and shouted at each other during a lengthy meeting. At the heart of Tuesday’s disagreement was a desire by three of the five elected officials to appeal the latest determination by the Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund Board that Township Assessor Susan Moylan Krey is pension-eligible.
Speaking to the Chicago Sun-Times Editorial Board after her first budget address, the mayor showed no signs of caving to end the work stoppage that put 300,000 students out of class and led to tens of thousands of striking Chicago Teachers Union and SEIU Local 73 members shutting down the Loop during her first budget address to City Council Wednesday.
The most meaningful change sets a minimum retirement age of 65 for men and 62 for women. That’s up from averages of 56 and 53, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, a club of nations whose populations on average retire at about 66.
The overhaul also introduces progressive brackets for contribution amounts as well as limits for survivor benefits and includes a period for transition to the new system.
A Morning Consult poll found his favorability at 44%, with the latest poll clocking him at 43%. His disapproval rating has grown from 35% earlier this year to 42%. Unsurprisingly, the disapproval is coming from Republicans, who watched the political newcomer rush in a bevy of progressive measures, including his push for a graduated income tax question on the 2020 ballot. Of those polled, 14% said they were undecided.
His design would have split Illinois into three states, clumping Chicago in with Michigan City, Kenosha, and New Buffalo.
Comment: Oak Park just can’t miss a chance to embarrass itself.
Democrats in California have raised taxes on the rich again and again, and liberals claim it has no effect on taxpayer migration and does no harm to state tax revenue. A new study finds the opposite. In sum, the study estimates that outward migration and taxpayer behavioral responses erased 45.2% of the expected revenue gains from the tax hike on top earners.
Comment: $538 in spending cuts and savings, $352 million of new taxes and $52 million in additional programs and spending. Keep in mind this is a cash budget only that does not include accruing debts, especially for pensions, which continue to be funded less than tread-water amounts, so the unfunded liabilities will continue to grow.
We will have review and commentary posted soon.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s 2020 budget includes a $300 million tax-increment-financing surplus — the largest in Chicago history — just to help bankroll the $500 million offer the striking Chicago Teachers Union has already rejected, a top mayoral aide said Wednesday.
By closing out five TIF’s and scouring all of the others, Lightfoot has managed to generate $163 million for Chicago Public Schools. That’s $66 million more than the school system received last year.
The city will get $31 million of that new money to help defray its $838 million budget gap.
On average, to earn a full pension, a teacher must remain in the same state or district for 25 years — a condition that less than half of teachers nationally will meet. In Illinois, where the vesting period for the pension system is 10 years of employment, only half of new teachers will ever vest in the system. And only 1 out of 5 teachers in Illinois will ever break even from their pension plan.
Investors want comprehensive plans that set up the city for more revenue and lower costs going forward. Chicago’s fiscal woes don’t end in 2020. The city is struggling with $30 billion of unfunded pension liabilities. And its required payments to the cash-strapped retirement system ramp up this year and keep climbing, topping $2 billion in 2022, city documents show.
Tucked into the $23.5 billion five-year transportation program Pritzker unveiled yesterday was a whopping $205.5 million for road construction work on Eagle Lake Road and Interstate 57. Instead, the money is allotted to Peotone, an airport that may never actually be built. You might dub it a case of build it and they will come.
Her goal: To curry favor with progressives and organized labor by intervening in a teachers strike she really doesn’t know much about, intervening against Lightfoot—an African-American woman and a progressive herself who understands (in a way Warren doesn’t) that driving Chicago Public Schools back to near-bankruptcy will only harm the city’s children.
Warren seemed oblivious to that.
“I’m here to stand with every one of the people who stand for our children every day,” Warren said to thunderous applause and cheers.
Ms. Lightfoot will deliver her first budget to the city council Wednesday. Her efforts to make the math work as Chicago’s pension payments increase rapidly will provide a window into the challenge of addressing the burdensome legacy costs weighing on many older American cities.
The chief financial officer of Cook County Health system was given a $60,000 pay raise this year, lifting his salary by 25% from $240,000 to $300,000, according to a recent watchdog report.
Calling it “perhaps the most important time to be a state attorney general,” Kwame Raoul said Monday that he is confronting the Trump administration on several issues critical to Illinois residents.
“We perceive the urgency of this moment,” Raoul said in explaining his actions taken in concert with other attorneys general against what they regard as overreaching federal initiatives. “When the
As Chicago teachers marched into Week Two of their strike Monday, Chicago Teachers Union leaders pursued their strategy of moving the goal posts. One indicator: Contract demands that started with pay now include rent control, a policy the state legislature has been debating.
Come on, CTU. Quit playing games.
$200 million of savings to be booked in the first year on $1.3 billion bond refinancing in a highly controversial form.
Comment: See our own article on this fishy proposal linked here.
Lightfoot accounced that the city would realign “more than $750 million in public funding over the next three years” toward 10 neighborhoods on the city’s South and West sides as part of the INVEST South/West program.
A republication of our Wirepoints article.
Comment: Very fishy. We will be taking a closer look.
The referenced report is by The Civic Federation and is linked here.
A network of area churches this summer banded together to take on the debt collection system that profits “on the backs of poor people”; to help restore bad credit marred by medical debt; and to inspire joy, said the organizers, the Rev.
Illinois Chamber of Commerce CEO Todd Maisch said state funding is there for five years under the Rebuild Illinois plan. However, he said the federal government, which sends tax dollars to Illinois for infrastructure, wants to see a ten-year infrastructure plan.
What they cannot accomplish legislatively or at the ballot box they seek to implement by holding students hostage.
Wirepoints’ Mark Glennon: The biggest risk of the new plan is that it might pave the way for full consolidation of local pensions, with the state assuming liability. That would eliminate the key benefit of municipal bankruptcy, which is the power to adjust pensions, and authorization of municipal bankruptcy is probably inevitable.
Members of the Chicago chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America met Sunday morning to coordinate efforts to assist the Chicago teachers and school support staff whose concurrent strikes are likely to stretch into a second week.
“It’ll be very difficult to avoid a property tax increase if we do not get help from Springfield. … There are limited tools that a mayor can use to generate substantial revenue. Property tax is really chief among them,” the mayor told the Sun-Times.
Biden spoke about teachers’ strikes and called them courageous, and he specifically brought up the strike by members of the Chicago Teachers’ Union that began this past Thursday.
A few hours after unveiling a $40 million tax on rides from Uber, Lyft and other ride-sharing firms, Lightfoot’s office confirmed that she’ll also seek a $20 million new tax on restaurants. The quarter-percentage-point levy would apply to all food and beverages sold at retail establishments. Combined with levies by other governments including Cook County and the Metropolitan Pier & Exposition Authority, the tax on restaurant bills would rise to as much as 11.75 percent.
The company is part of a federal investigation targeting potential illegal dealings with Illinois state lawmakers in Springfield. The company’s stock dropped to a year-to-date low Thursday after the latest news in the ongoing legal saga.
An online post by the Fraternal Order of Police notes that cops have been without a contract for far longer than teachers and have been offered smaller raises.
After being reassessed, commercial and industrial properties now represent 44 percent of the $24.6 billion in total assessed value in north suburban Cook County, up from 34 percent last year. Residential real estate accounts for 56 percent, down from 66 percent in 2018.
A Chicago Tribune review of the campaign fund created for Angie Sandoval’s unsuccessful Cook County Board candidacy shows that more than a dozen of her donors — individuals and companies — were named in federal search warrants executed in September at Sen. Sandoval’s Capitol office and the village halls in west suburban McCook and Lyons. Both towns are in Sandoval’s Senate district.
Teacher strikes are illegal in 8 of the top 10 largest school districts in the nation. Maybe that’s why the Chicago Teachers Union is on strike for the third time in seven years.
Many customers of the failed bank, Washington Federal Bank for Savings, had connections to the Daley family and the 11th Ward Regular Democratic Organization, run by Cook County Commissioner John Daley and his nephew, Ald. Patrick Daley Thompson.
Without government involvement and compulsion, civil society steps up and quickly mobilizes to care for children and families.
A CPS lawyer sent a note asking union leaders to spend more time in negotiations and less at rallies prompted got an angry response from the union vice president.
“Rich white men tell black women with children in the Chicago Public Schools what to do all the time,” Vice President Stacy Davis Gates said.
She also complained attributed her misspelled name to racism and sexism:
“[T]he nation’s most ominous governance problem is the unsustainable trajectory of the entitlement state because of the unfunded promises that have been made regarding pensions and medical care. Everyone understands what must be done: a mixture of increases of taxes and reductions of promised benefits. Everyone also knows that there is insufficient political will for either part of this remedy.”
“We need to get something more than glorified daycare for that $694 billion we spend on education every year. Perhaps this strike in Chicago will get more of us thinking of a better alternative.”
“Wonder why CPS is losing students by the thousands? This is why.”
This is the only good news in Illinois we have to report today (and we are plugging a nice family that went to high school with Wirepoints’ Mark Glennon).
Do what Michigan did for Detroit schools. It’s called “reconstitution” and it’s a regular process in the private sector, often called “oldco/newco.”
Ride-share trips in Chicago currently are assessed a flat 72 cents per ride in taxes and fees. Under Lightfoot’s plan, that would drop to 65 cents for shared trips and increase to $1.25 for single riders.
There are as many reasons for leaving as there are people fleeing, the weather not being the least of them. But little is to be done about Chicago’s weather. Unlike how the city and state have been ravaged. By the greedy, incompetent and power-hungry. By the boodlers, gonifs and crooks who fancy themselves as the feudal lords and we their vassals. By public employee unions that have turned the idea of “public service” into a joke on the taxpayers, who, in fact, have become the public servants. By voters whose party loyalties, ideologies and self-serving have made Chicago not just
The property taxpayers, who are the serfs of the new Democratic machine. Because we serfs live to serve the masters, don’t we? Powerful public workers unions are the spine of this new machine. And Democratic politicians rely on votes from public unions to get elected.
“All seats at the table might be equal if they had their way, but the table would be empty, and so would most of the seats.”
Comment: Ridiculous waste of taxpayer money on self-serving. The local pension boards are simply trying to retain their gigs and boondoggles, instead of making the system more efficient.
Comment: Finally, she got one right.
A DePaul economist: Although there is a perception by some that the state of Illinois is in decline, the reality might not be quite so bad, at least at the moment.
A republication of our Wirepoints article.
Chicago teachers’ strike, salary demands ignore what Chicagoans can afford
Another view from the left, presented without comment.
A coalition of groups is organizing support for two state house bills that’ll be back before legislators this spring.
The Socialist perspective.
“Equity is about fairness. We’re not talking about equality, which is about sameness.”
In rare bipartisanship, Illinois Republicans and Democrats united on Wednesday to oppose President Donald Trump’s removal of troops from Syria, clearing the way for Turkish forces to attack Kurds who had been allied with the U.S.
House Speaker Mike Madigan dipped into his campaign funds for more than $418,597 in legal fees over the past three months, bringing the total he has spent on lawyers since last year to more than $1.5 million.
The Southwest Side Democrat’s legal headaches heated up in February 2018 amid allegations made by political consultant Alaina Hampton that one of Madigan’s longtime political aides sent her barrages of unwanted texts.
“We consider everybody who works for us, no matter nationality, race, sex or interest, to be family,” she said. “I think that’s what made us successful.” Midland Metal Products President Marcus McDonald said the company “desperately needed a new location” in order to continue to deliver products on time and at the right price to customers. He said the company faced too much uncertainty about its costs in Illinois. “This location and this facility were the perfect solution,” he said.
Any remaining doubt that the Chicago Teachers Union strike that parents have dreaded will happen has vanished, as negotiations between the union and Chicago Public Schools officially broke off today and both sides spoke with certainty of the strike set to begin tomorrow.
It is no coincidence that virtually all of the new employees CTU wants would be eligible for union membership.
People don’t always connect the dots between the contracts that have to be negotiated for teachers, police, and fire, and their property tax bills says Ted Dabrowski. “But their tax bills keep going up. People are leaving. And you’re not actually helping teachers, police and fire if we’re heading toward bankruptcy. Rather than helping the system, we’re making it more top-heavy, and it will collapse on itself.”
Heidner’s plans had been cut short Tuesday morning by a terse letter from Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s administration informing Tinley Park officials that the piece of state-owned land Heidner needed for his “racino” project no longer was for sale. The letter came days after a Tribune investigation detailed Heidner’s longstanding business relationships with a banking family whose financial involvement with mob figures helped sink a Rosemont casino, as well as a convicted bookie.
Even so, Pritzker — as an heir to the Hyatt hotel fortune — is No. 250 on this year’s Forbes 400 list with a net worth of $3.4 billion
Federal agents wanted to know more about heating and air conditioning at the home of Cook County Commissioner Jeff Tobolski when they swept through the southwest suburbs late last month. That’s according to a set of search warrant documents released Tuesday without redactions by the Village of McCook, where Tobolski doubles as mayor.
“The goal is to expand labor’s scope of bargaining beyond wages and benefits to advance a broad, working-class agenda and go on the attack against shared enemies, including Wall Street and corporate America. Chicago remains at the cutting edge of this effort.”
A republication of our Wirepoints article.
A proposed permanent fix from Cook County’s Pension Fund board would cost $267 million more than expected and would achieve full funding only a few years earlier, Toni Preckwinkle’s CFO says. In draft legislation, the pension fund proposed the county make a $588 million payment in 2022, $650 million in 2023 and $717 million in 2024—about $267 million more than the county was planning on.
Alderman David Moore (17th Ward) is sponsoring an ordinance to rename the iconic street “Jean Baptiste Point du Sable Drive” from the north end at Hollywood Boulevard south to 71st Street.
According to CTU’s own filings, $380 million from a property tax increase and $211 million from the state went specifically to shore up the fiscally weak Chicago Teachers Pension Fund. And revenue from the property tax hike is expected to bring in almost an additional $100 million a year on top of the $380 million.
That, for those who know how to add, makes up more than two-thirds of that $1 billion in increased tax dollars. For pensions. And for those who have forgotten, CTU members pay just 2 percent of salary for their defined-benefit pension.
The survey found 49% of voters either strongly or somewhat support a walkout, while 38% are opposed.
While the “exclusion zone” for recreational pot shops would stretch slightly farther north under the revised ordinance, dispensaries could now open much closer to the Magnificent Mile on Michigan Avenue.
Ten are in Illinois, including Chicago metro area.
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After months of unapologetically and fiercely demanding solutions at the bargaining table that the mayor has said don’t belong in a labor contract, Davis Gates says she isn’t looking for attention or power. She says she’s just fighting for the same thing she has been for years: Permanent social and educational
The CTU’s latest offer would allow the district to phase in changes to class sizes and staffing over the life of the contract.
After recently telling fellow trustees to ‘shut up,’ Trustee Susan Buchanan’s comments spread on social media. She also told Mayor Anan Abu-Taleb, a native of Palestine, that his “skin was white enough,” when he tried to intervene.
More than half of Illinois’ state schools are on the ropes enrollment-wise. Meanwhile, the cost of operating them is going up. Student enrollment at Illinois public universities is down again this year, but state budget outlays for the 11 schools is up.
It’s not the paradox it seems. Intense competition for students today is forcing states to spend more on recruiting, financial aid and facilities. Illinois has been on the losing end of that battle, with a net outflow of college-bound students in a trend that shows no signs of letting up.
Comment: The socialist publication seems mighty proud of the CTU. “CTU has established a new gold standard for unions, teaching labor what a “rank-and-file” strategy means in practice.”
Comment: A can-kick and a horrible idea in our view, but Chicago will be tempted.
The CTU won’t agree to the money until it gets the other items on what Jackson calls its “social justice bargaining” agenda.
That includes everything from affordable housing and a dramatic increase in “community schools” to enforceable caps on class size, mandatory hiring of support personnel written into the contract and more teacher preparation time with potential to shorten the elementary school day.
A threatened strike by Chicago teachers would be the latest test of teachers’ unions strategy to expand contract talks beyond members’ pay or benefits and into broader classroom issues.
“[P]roponents and opponents of [the recently proposed plan to consolidate local pension investing] need to be given an extended opportunity to explain why they have concluded this proposal does or does not offer an improvement in the present situation. Of particular importance to consider are the transition costs of merging separate police and fire pensions funds into two investment vehicles.”
“This is a very, very good example of the difference using a racial equity lens when creating laws and codes for this village and not doing, how something can gently become a real problem,” said one resident. And from another: “If we’re truly a progressive community, we should be limiting police interaction.”
Red-light cameras, video gambling, road contracts, family businesses, real estate developments and the state’s largest public utility are all caught up in some way in Sandoval’s suspected mischief.
Comment: Chicago not mentioned, but it’s no doubt another factor challenging the city. “For the fourth consecutive year, U.S. census figures have shown that thousands of millennials and younger Gen Xers are leaving big cities.”
Lightfoot said she has two priorities for the veto session: a casino fix and authorization to raise Chicago’s real-estate transfer tax on high-end home sales.
The companies now are being asked for records of communications with state Sen. Martin Sandoval, whose offices were recently raided. It’s the second federal subpoena they’ve received in the past three months.
With newly legalized sports betting stuck behind the starting gate in Illinois, sportsbooks across the border in Indiana have sprinted to a lucrative launch, Hoosier gambling regulators announced Thursday.
It’s known as uncompensated care – the amount of medical care Cook County Health provides without getting paid for it – and it’s set to hit nearly $600 million next year.
“The principle challenge that we face is around uncompensated care,” Preckwinkle said. “Believe me. That’s something that I’ve talked to our health care managers about and intend to talk to the board about. What is their strategy for addressing this significant challenge?”
As for solutions? To be determined, she said.
See our own commentary on this new proposal linked here.
An honest actuary’s perspective.
Preckwinkle laid the blame for the county’s health care problem on other hospitals, President Donald Trump and former Gov. Bruce Rauner, “bless his rotten heart.” She was at a loss to explain how she planned to handle a looming nearly $600 million cloud next year for health care that the county provides but for which it is not paid.
Comment: And what will Illinois pensioners get? Most receive an automatic 3% per year, regardless of inflation, which effectively doubles their pension in about 24 years.
Each police or fire department would maintain a separate account within the funds, and the money would be held in a pair of trusts separate from the state treasury. Assets and liabilities would not be shifted from one municipality’s plan to another. But the funds would be able to pool their assets for investment purposes and cut down on administrative fees currently paid separately by each local fund.
Vouchers. Yes, vouchers, to give parents the freedom to take their children — many who are minorities from low-income neighborhoods — out of substandard schools, and allow parents and grandparents to send them to charter or private schools where they will be safe and where they can learn.
The CTU will hate it.
Restructuring Chicago and other Illinois municipalities is inevitable, so sooner rather than later is best for Illinoisans. It’s the right move for government workers worried about their pensions, too: the stronger the tax base, the better and more sustainable a new pension deal will be.
Wall Street, on the other hand, benefits from a later bankruptcy filing because bond holders collect their premium interest rates longer, which mitigates their eventual losses.
In our lifetimes, Illinois succumbed to government of the corrupt, by the machine, for the benefit of its political leaders and others in government. The Land of Lincoln can
Must-watch. “You shouldn’t have an opinion on that. That is the point. Why do you have an opinion on equity? You’ve never experienced oppression so shut up…. Just stop… You are not oppressed…. Enough… You stop it! You are a white male. Your skin is light enough. Stop it.”
As of Thursday, Bremen, Oak Forest, Tinley Park and Hillcrest (all of which are in District 228) along with Chicago, Murphysboro, DeKalb, and Blue Ridge face a walkout by teachers in the coming weeks if they can’t reach deals.
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Majority Leader Kimberly Lightford, D-Maywood, on Wednesday joined Senate President John Cullerton in taking a wait-and-see attitude on Sandoval, whose home and Senate offices have been searched by federal agents.
“What’s at stake really isn’t money, at least in the form of pay hikes. The outcome of the standoff will determine who will have the power over Chicago Public Schools—who will control and set priorities…. This confrontation, whether it leads to a strike or not, pivots on both sides’ willingness to change the nature of the relationship between City Hall and one of its major labor unions.
“Lightfoot wants the power to remain where it has resided for decades, with the mayoral-controlled Chicago Board of Education…. The CTU, meanwhile, wants a rewrite…CTU’s demands stem from and in
Illinois’ housing price growth remains well below the national average because of lagging demand, caused in large part by tax policies that make people hesitant to spend.
Richard Porter, Republican National Committeeman: “[When asked about bankruptcy for Chicago] Lightfoot replied: “That can’t be done legally.” Lightfoot is correct: The legislature in Springfield needs to pass a law to authorize municipal bankruptcies. Lawmakers need to pass a law; that’s what lawmakers do. Indeed, Democrats just passed 591 laws; Lightfoot needs her friends in Springfield to pass one more. She doesn’t need help from President Donald Trump, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell or any Republicans; there’s no gridlock preventing this from happening.”
Comment: Nothing on the structural remedies we discuss here. Mostly a compilation of economic development plans already known.
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If you think smoke-filled back rooms are a thing of the past for Chicago-area politicians, think again.
An upscale cigar shop and lounge in southwest suburban Countryside is proving to be an intriguing — and, until now, little-known — link to political players involved in an ongoing federal corruption investigation.
The business,
Since Justice Burke joined the Supreme Court in 2006, a WBEZ analysis has identified 10 cases in which she participated at the same time her husband’s firm was being paid by parties in those cases to cut their property tax burdens. Those entities included banks, a big Chicago landlord, a suburban shopping mall, a prominent downtown hospital and ComEd.
Federal authorities subpoenaed Schiller Park for records about the $5,000-per-month lobbying contract the northwest suburb had with retired Chicago Ald. Michael Zalewski, the Better Government Association and WBEZ have found.
Federal prosecutors said Tuesday they have turned over more than 40,000 pages and 100 discs of evidence in the corruption case against powerful Ald. Edward Burke — and they’re not done yet.
In a brief hearing before U.S. District Judge Robert Dow, attorneys for Burke and his two co-defendants asked for another three months to review the “voluminous” discovery before setting deadlines for pretrial motions and possibly a trial date.
Comment: “The enacted tax plan has a $100 million increase for local governments.” For a little context, that’s about three-tenths of one percent of what local governments collect in property taxes, so the answer is clearly No.
A special carve out for data centers is bad policy, Competitive Enterprise Institute Senior Fellow Ryan Young.
The renewables industry knows who to use.
Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi is under fire from a court-appointed monitor for delays in implementing new hiring policies meant to keep politics out of his office and failing to understand what needs to be done to escape the federal microscope.
Susan G. Feibus, the Shakman monitor for the office, said in her report, which was filed in federal court last week, that Kaegi’s office has “not grasped the level of scrutiny” that comes with being under federal oversight.
Comment: It’s called pedophastry. See our article linked here.
Highest. The City of Chicago is the only city of the five in this analysis that charges an additional surcharge on home share rentals.
According to Michael Frisch, Lightfoot’s point person on the contract talks, just the pay hike she’s put on the table would cost the district $350 million over the five years in play. CTU’s proposals to hire hundreds of other staffers and slash class sizes would cost more—in the billions, according to some board sources
However, the survey finds the number of respondents who have considering moving out of the state in the previous 12 months has risen to slightly more than six in ten (61%) compared to 53% or respondents a year ago
“[T]his problem is particularly pronounced in rural and urban school districts. However, the reasons for the pay disparities differ between rural and urban districts. Rural districts have lower average salaries and thus less valuable pensions. Urban districts offer salaries comparable with the suburbs, but have a greater share of educators who do not qualify for benefits in the system, and a greater share of educators with fewer years of experience overall, which also results in lower pension benefits.”
A story being repeated in dozens of towns and cities across Illinois.
Comment: Martire’s primary point is that “the state must both reform its tax policy as championed by the governor, and reamortize its pension debt. Why not just say what he means by that, which is raising taxes and putting more money into the pensions sooner?
“We are out of here. Can’t take it anymore… Firm plans in place to move to Southern Utah in 2020.”
Aldermen are poised to make it easier for themselves to order investigations into the financial impact of proposals pending before the City Council.
An ordinance that cleared the Budget Committee this week would allow any alderman to trigger a study by the Council Office of Financial Analysis, which was created to give members of the body a way to learn how measures they’re considering affect Chicago’s finances.
“The prevailing attitude among black people in Chicago is that, to move up, you’ve got to move away.”
Comment: Miller apparently took a smart, careful look at the redactions in the warrant to come to that conclusion, which confirms what he is no doubt hearing on the grapevine, which is consistent with what we, too, hear.
A venture capitalist who bankrolled City Hall deals that secretly benefited Patrick Daley while his father Richard M. Daley was mayor has agreed to a court settlement that will see him repay less than 10% of the $290,596 he owes the U.S. Small Business Administration.
After eight years of legal wrangling, the SBA has given up on trying to collect the money from Patrick Daley’s friend Joseph M. McInerney, whose firm Cardinal Growth was seized by the federal agency eight years ago.
The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, aka RICO, made law in 1970, is a powerful federal tool designed to take down the bosses of a vast political enterprise, not just the lowly soldiers.
It allows prosecutors to go back years, stitching a fabric of seemingly unrelated crimes, and wrap up the boss.
For some reason, the same towns have been having the same problems for decades, despite federal investigations that try to throw the bums out.
“The Chicago Teachers Union President is the only person we contacted who failed to respond to our inquiries. We made multiple attempts to contact him by phone, by email, and through his assistant and office, during both our preliminary and follow-up evaluations,” Hickey wrote in a footnote to her 134-page report.
Sharkey also publicly questioned the district’s new procedures for reporting employees suspected of sexually grooming students, saying the requirements could put educators “under a cloud of suspicion.” District CEO Janice Jackson said at the time that she
Prosecutors have said Boone-Doty, Morgan, and a third man — Kevin Edwards — plotted to kill Tyshawn because his father was a member of a rival gang they suspected of killing Morgan’s brother weeks earlier.
Few things are as easy to debunk than the claim that the Fair Tax would materially reduce property taxes.
In the fall of 2006, Chicago held an auction to sell taxi medallions, the permits that let people own and operate cabs. The city raised millions of dollars. Officials declared the sale a success.
But there was something strange about the auction: None of the winning bidders lived in Chicago.
Almost all of them lived hundreds of miles away, in New York.
Over the next decade, New York taxi industry leaders — fleet owners, brokers and financiers — steadily seized control of Chicago’s medallion market and squeezed it for huge profits. Using
https://chicago.suntimes.com/2019/10/2/20895692/sports-betting-chicago-illinois-stadiums-wrigley-soldier-field-united-center
Comment: Whoa. Lightfoot said citywide lead pipe replacement is a “complicated issue,” potentially costing $8.5 billion that the city does not have.
The socialist perspective.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot said Thursday that the city would not add extra school days to make up for possible time lost in a teachers strike, a decision that would break with past practice in school walkouts.
“No. There’s no plan to make up any days,” the mayor told reporters at City Hall. “If you look at the CPS website on contingency plans, there’s zero plan to make up any days that might be lost as a result of a work stoppage. We want to make sure we get a deal done.”
State Rep. Will Guzzardi is preparing a California-style bill that would require firms like Uber to treat staffers as employees and not independent contractors, with pay and benefits to match.
Comment: Surprise, surprise. Cook County County Democrat Lang was a long-time supporter of expanded gambling.
Will become the Kenneth C. Griffin Museum of Science and Industry. His $125M gift is the biggest in the museum’s history.
“The looming threat of a Chicago Teachers Union walkout confounds rational work-a-day folks who can’t understand why a government contract packed with a 16 percent pay hike is strike-worthy.”
The report also includes discussion of Illinois’ comparatively low consumer debt level.
“Imagine these three different groups of workers all being on strike together in the city of Chicago. That has the potential of being an extraordinarily disruptive moment.”
Illinois No. 1.
Illinois Senate President John Cullerton on Tuesday released a federal search warrant related to last week’s FBI raid of Democratic state Sen. Martin Sandoval’s legislative offices, but virtually every key detail about what agents seized from Sandoval’s statehouse office was blacked out.
Federal agents who blitzed several southwest suburban towns last week were asking questions about a politically connected red-light camera company, the Chicago Sun-Times has learned.
Through September, there’s been a 10% reduction in the number of murders for the year. Shootings were down 11 percent.
Comment: But the key portion is this: “Illinois is now in its third year under the Evidence-Based Funding system and the state has added hundreds of millions of dollars in additional school funding in the past two years. But it won’t be known for another two years how much of an impact that money has on the tax inequities and achievement disparities that were evident in 2017-2018.” [Emphasis added.] It will be interesting to see if it makes any difference.
FBI agents were looking for evidence of kickbacks in exchange for official actions as well as information related to five Illinois Department of Transportation employees and several lobbyists when they raided the Springfield office of State Sen. Martin Sandoval last week, records show.
Items named in a heavily redacted search warrant released Tuesday include those related to a highway company, a construction company, “any business owned and controlled by Martin Sandoval,” several municipalities and a political organization, among other entities.
Didech also cited the limits on abortion access as potentially dangerous to traveling government employees. “As a member of the Legislature, I have the responsibility to protect our state employees,” he said of the measure.
Another study confirms Illinois is over twice the national median rate.
The Flash Index is a weighted average of Illinois growth rates in corporate earnings, consumer spending and personal income as estimated from receipts for corporate income, personal income and retail sales taxes.
“As Illinois continues its path toward putting equity at the forefront of the state’s new adult-use cannabis expansion, it’s important to create opportunities in communities that have been hardest hit by the war on marijuana,” Pritzker said. “Not only will social equity applicants receive points on their applications, but many applicants will also get grants, technical assistance, low-interest loans and fee reductions and waivers.”
Three of the first seven recreational growing facilities licensed by the state will soon be owned by a publicly traded real estate investor with hundreds of millions in assets.
In most places education spending is rising. It isn’t showing up in teachers’ paychecks because so much of it gets diverted to pay for expensive retirement benefits for former teachers. Politicians’ overly generous past promises, sometimes made at the behest of teachers unions, are now coming back to bite the education sector.
The Chicago Public Schools have a pension shortfall of $11 billion. Retirement costs devour more than 25% of the money the system receives from the state. Such costly benefits constrain it and other school systems from offering higher salaries to teachers, increasing support staff, and reducing
That’s Chris Cleveland, the GOP committeeman of the Lincoln Park 43rd Ward, who announced in recent days that the search is on for his successor because “the time has come for me to get back to the private sector,” specifically running the software company he owns.
Highlighting Illinois vs. Missouri: State borders have become arbitrary dividing lines between Medicaid’s haves and have-nots, with Americans in similar financial straits facing vastly different health care fortunes. This affects everything from whether diseases are caught early to whether people can stay well enough to work.
Many Chicagoans wouldn’t trade the city — its lakefront, skyline, energy and diversity — for the world.
Others, after sticking it out for years or decades, opt to leave for neighboring states like Indiana and Wisconsin for a variety of reasons.
The Principal: “While we recognize that Halloween is a fun tradition for many families, it is not a holiday that is celebrated by all members of our school community and for various reasons. There are also inequities in how we have traditionally observed the holiday as part of our school day. Our goal at Lincoln is to provide space and opportunities for all students to be part of the community — not to create an environment that may feel exclusive or unwelcoming to any child.”
Several schools have eliminated Halloween events this year as part of a commitment to equity and an inclusive environment.
“If the plan is passed and ends up having the desired consequences, it could become a model for states like Illinois that have considerable debt of their own.”
Charles Thomas: “I can’t believe that her administration does not have its arms around this [fiscal] situation already,” he said, noting that while Emanuel claimed to have fixed the city’s structural deficit, he left his successor with a larger financial deficit than his predecessors left him.
State officials have identified areas of Illinois where applicants to grow and sell marijuana legally would get preference under the law’s social equity provision.
Instead of assisting DHS upon request, officers are instructed to wait for their supervisor to arrive, the memo said. Once the supervisor arrives, “if the request is to assist with an immigration arrest or detention, CPD personnel will leave the scene as directed by the CPD supervisor,” according to the memo. CPD confirmed the memo came from an internal superior but would not say if the directive came from the mayor. “See what happens when that happens and a DHS agent is injured because of a lack of response by CPD. Sickening what’s happening here,” a ranking CPD source told Fox News.
A measure of business conditions in the Chicago region contracted for the third time in four months, reflecting ongoing struggles by American manufacturers as well as the two-week-old General Motors workers strike.
PowerPoint presentation linked here.
The discussion is returning and this time it will be informed and rational, if Friday’s New York Times article is an indication.
A comprehensive look at the Contract Clause and other legal issues.
See our own article on this NYT story and more on the topic linked here.
“And now the pension crisis, in Springfield and locally, is spinning off other problems. The Illinois Exodus is more than a population issue. It is pillaging many Illinoisans’ greatest asset: the value of their homes.”
Incomes overall in America are growing smartly, but some states and regions are doing better than others.
One not so surprising exception is Illinois where growth was revised down 1.2%. Its neighbors Indiana (1.5%), Michigan (2.5%) and Wisconsin (2.6%) experienced modest upward revisions. Illinois incomes have grown faster over the last year (3.7%) than during the late Obama years amid an uptick in manufacturing, but the state still lags in the Great Lakes region.
Manufacturing earnings in Illinois have increased 4% over the last four quarters, but workers and businesses have been fleeing. Last year
Thank you, Richard M. Daley.
The Chicago Department of Housing proposed at a Sept. 11 City Council committee meeting a series of reforms to the Chicago Community Land Trust, which provides affordable homes to city residents that meet certain income restrictions.
Strenuous opposition came almost immediately from the very neighborhood groups Lightfoot had courted throughout her campaign.
“Local political leaders act as if mismanagement just doesn’t matter. Could there be lessons here for Chicago?”
Illinois is No. 5 at $67,836/year.
City Treasurer Kurt Summers announced the Chicago Community Catalyst Fund in 2016 with much fanfare — the city would earmark $100 million to jump-start investments in struggling neighborhoods, providing the seed money needed for ventures in places where many banks had been reluctant to put their money. None of it was spent. In fact, it wasn’t until Summers was about to leave office this
Comment: In short, nobody has a plan.
Funding for a third Chicagoland airport was included in the latest state budget. The controversial plan brings a risk for more corruption and overspending that will cost taxpayers millions.
A bullet hole through my apartment wall? Oh, that, just something made by a screwdriver. No, wait, by son did it. Shot gun by accident.
Comment: A must-read by Richard Porter, a lawyer in Chicago and member of the Republican National Committee:
“Chicago is in a hole that tax hikes only deepen; the only way out of Chicago’s death spiral is debt reduction… We need financial first aid in Illinois now. Waiting and wishing as prosperity bleeds away is cruel and immoral. Chicago needs to restructure and reduce debt now. Give Chicago the benefit of a bankruptcy
Democratic State Senator Martin Sandoval represents both communities. Federal agents searched Sandoval’s offices earlier this week, reportedly looking into whether Sandoval, who chairs the senate’s transportation committee, received kickbacks from companies. But it’s unclear if Thursday’s raids were connected to the Sandoval investigation.
Capital bills are a feeding frenzy for special interests. And Sandoval held the keys to the kitchen. “Governor signs Sandoval’s $45 billion infrastructure improvement package,” boasts a June press release from the state senator’s website.
Might the feds want to have a word about some of those projects? According to the Chicago Tribune, authorities are looking into allegations Sandoval used his public office to steer business in exchange for private kickbacks.
The Chicago Teachers Union voted in overwhelming numbers to authorize a strike, union officials announced late Thursday. The union is planning to set a strike date next Wednesday. Teachers likely will walk out in mid-October if no deal is reached by then.
Data visualization by an actuary.
A republication of our Wirepoints article.
The Chicago Teachers Union should accept the latest offer from the Board of Education, a sweet deal that most Chicagoans would love to get
Eighty-five percent of Chicagoans are in favored categories getting preference in city contracting. The remaining 15% — white males with no disability — are effectively disfavored.
Chicago among the places hardest hit. “The scar reverse mortgage failures leave on neighborhoods can be seen on a drive through Chicago’s South Side with longtime resident and community organizer Pat DeBonnett. A cluster of six ZIP codes together have endured more than 1,000 reverse mortgage foreclosures over the past five years – higher than many entire states. Boarded up homes and empty parcels followed.”
The single family home index credits the area with a mere 1.5% annual appreciation rate, the lowest rate in 44 months.
While Democrats rush toward impeachment over an anonymous whistleblower complaint accusing President Donald Trump of requesting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, many have ignored the fact that last year, Senate Democrats wrote to Ukraine’s prosecutor general asking Ukrainian officials to investigate Trump.
The road builders accused Cook County’s attorneys of attempting to “rewrite” the transportation funding amendment, “so that its restrictions and prohibitions are reduced to a mere suggestion that people should follow statutes.”
When Ald. Susan Sadlowski Garza (10th) signed on to Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s City Council leadership team, she did not agree to forfeit her independence or sever her deep roots at the Chicago Teachers Union.
“That’s right, mother-f—er!” Garza said, raising her fist in the air.
After describing herself as the first CTU member ever to win a City Council seat, Garza shouted, “Queen Mother of God, I see people ready to strike. Right out here.” On Wednesday, Garza acknowledged she “got carried away” introducing Bernie Sanders and probably should not have used profanity.
“It wasn’t appropriate.
New reports from rating agencies shine unwelcome light on Chicago’s and Illinois’ “outlier” status on pension debts and the growing risks of heat-related climate change on some local Illinois governments.
“Let’s look at Evanston, Illinois (home of Northwestern) and Naperville, Illinois (western suburbs of Chicago) and their two different approaches to achievement.”
Chicago’s park district workers announced Tuesday evening that they have voted in favor of a strike, putting added pressure on Mayor Lori Lightfoot as she’s already facing looming teachers and school support staff strikes. SEIU Local 73 also represents the more than 7,000 school support staff workers who also have voted in favor of a strike. The CTU, meanwhile, is in the middle of its own vote on whether to enact a work stoppage.
The Federal Aviation Administration opened an investigation in July after someone reported that unqualified firefighters were staffing the federally mandated, specialized aircraft rescue vehicles at both O’Hare and Midway airports. Separately, the city inspector general’s office is investigating whether any city rules were broken.
It’s not clear what either investigation has found. A spokesman for the FAA declined to comment, citing its ongoing investigation.
Illinois is home to nine housing markets out of the study’s 50 that are turning ugly. One of the biggest downsides to homeownership in Illinois is the state’s high property taxes. In some areas of Illinois, property tax rates rise above 3%. Peoria and Aurora are among the ten worst.
Federal agents on Tuesday raided the Springfield and Cicero offices of longtime Democratic state Sen. Martin Sandoval as part of an ongoing criminal investigation, according to a source. The FBI led the raids at Sandoval’s office in the state capitol as well as his regional offices in the 5800 block of West 35th Street in Cicero, the source said. The exact nature of the investigation was not disclosed.
A little more than 7.8 percent of Chicago-area homeowners with a mortgage had negative equity, meaning they owed more on the loan than the home was worth on the current market, according to a Sept. 20 report from property information firm CoreLogic. That’s more than twice the rate of “underwater” homeownership nationwide.
With an ‘F’ grade and labeled a “sinkhole state,” Illinois ranks second from last.
A 2017 analysis of Illinois pension spending data found that the state contributes $566 more per student in the wealthiest schools than in the poorest. Wirepoints, too, published a special report on the same issue, linked here.
There were two more pension setbacks last week, this time associated with local communities’ often underfunded fire and police pensions. Slowly, the noose is tightening around the necks of taxpayers and public officials statewide, proving once again that ignoring pension woes won’t cause them to go away but, instead, to get worse.
Wall Street has a number of reasons to be concerned about the credit quality of Illinois, the lowest-rated U.S. state: mounting pension obligations, billions of dollars in unpaid bills and a shrinking population. Now investors can add climate change to that list.
The full PWC report is linked here.
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled it is unconstitutional to require non-union state workers in Illinois to pay “fair share” fees to a union, but a Chicago federal appeals panel is considering whether a union must refund millions of dollars in fees already collected.
Comment: The distressed municipal laws are a waste of time for truly distressed towns and cities. Only debt reduction or reorganization will help them, and only bankruptcy law has that power.
East St. Louis was recently subject to a filing to intercept state money owed to it, to be diverted to its pension, which we wrote about here.
“Once you start seeing dispensaries pop up on pinnacle real estate corners in Chicago, it’s going to have a real impact on culture and it’s going to bring a whole new set of folks into the space.”
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