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It’s in the nation’s best interest for any burning, looting and murder, like what overtook the country in 2020, be nipped in the bud. But if we learned anything from yesterday’s Congressional testimony by Gov. J.B. Pritzker, Illinois’ leaders will continue to push a climate of resistance, non-compliance and unrest.
The question is, can we say “Chicago finally growing again,” like Crain’s Chicago just did in its coverage of the census numbers? Is that two-year growth a pattern that can be sustained?
Ted Dabrowski joined Univision Chicago to talk about the ongoing battle between CPS and CTU. No matter which group loses, salaries and costs will jump. Meanwhile, nobody’s thinking about the Chicagoans who’ll have to suffer more property tax hikes to pay for these schools, most of them operating under near-zero accountability. (The interview is in Spanish, but we’ve added English subtitles.)
For a long time, the pain was felt more outside Chicago than in the city. Mayor Richard M. Daley knew to avoid the hated property tax, so he favored all kinds of other taxes and fees – a nickel and dime approach – to fund the city. But beginning with Mayor Emanuel, property taxes in the last decade have grown a whopping 3.5 times more than inflation. And that’s got Chicagoans livid and most aldermen finally pushing back.
Here’s one fact Chicagoans should know as the Chicago Teachers Union demands billions more for education: only half of the $10 billion spent at CPS each year makes it to classrooms and instruction.
Illinois’ Nov. 5 ballot will ask state residents this question: “Should the Illinois Constitution be amended to create an additional 3% tax on income greater than $1,000,000 for the purpose of dedicating funds raised to property tax relief?” To entice more Illinoisans to support the $4.5 billion tax hike referendum – advisory only – the proposal is sugar coated with legislators saying they’ll dedicate “funds to property tax relief.”
Ted joins Ray Stevens and Nick Gale to tackle the tough question: Is it time for a new direction for CPS? Ted breaks down why school choice is so important, why Mayor Brandon Johnson won’t support reforms even though parents are moving out, why the TIF surplus is a trap, why Chicagoans have to do better when electing officials, and more.
For years the CTU was the proverbial dog chasing the car. It attacked mayors and CPS administrators for not giving in to their demands – it thrived on always having someone else to blame. But when it won the mayoralship with Brandon Johnson last year, the union finally caught the car. Now it has no idea what to do as both the Chicago Public Schools and the City of Chicago flirt with $1 billion budget shortfalls.
More than 20 states across the country have delivered tax relief to their residents over the last three years. That includes every one of Illinois’ neighbors, which have made permanent cuts to their income tax rates. Meanwhile, Illinois continues to go in the opposite direction. The state just hiked taxes again, this time by nearly $1 billion.
If you’ve been in Illinois long enough to go through a school district tax hike referendum, you’ll understand what’s going on right now as state lawmakers prepare to vote on the 2025 state budget.
Details emerging about Chicago Teachers Union’s upcoming contract show just how divorced its demands, both extreme and expensive, are from the reality at Chicago schools. It’s not just about massive salary increases, but also about money for migrant students, climate initiatives, abortions and gender-affirming care. About blocking parental notification. Count on CTU’s demands to veer further from reality until the public finally says no.
Ted joined Dan and Amy to talk about a new law passed by the Democratic supermajority and signed by Gov. J.B. Pritzker that results in brazen election interference, keeping Republicans off ballots; about a referendum that tests the waters for a renewed progressive income tax hike; about how the Parental Notification referendum question was knocked off the ballot; and why laws like that pass so easily.
School choice in Illinois is dead. For now. The teachers unions were on a warpath to kill Illinois’ small tax-credit scholarship program, and their Democratic allies weren’t willing to cross them. Gov. J.B. Pritzker, House Speaker Chris Welch and Senate President Don Harmon failed to call a bill to a vote this week to extend the program and with that, the Invest in Kids Act sunsets at the end of this year.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker called critics of his decision to provide taxpayer financing to Gotion, Inc., a Chinese electric vehicle battery maker with CCP ties, as “xenophobes” and “MAGA Republicans.” That’s ironic given that some of the most urgent warnings about China on spying, intelligence and supply chain risks come from the top of his very own Democratic party.
That’s apparent in the material at the top of Think Big’s new website. First, the website says, “Think Big America builds on the progress that Governor JB Pritzker’s administration and its allies have made in Illinois and takes the fight to right wing extremists all across the country. A sentence on abortion comes next. Then there’s a link to a page labeled “JB Administration’s accomplishments.”
Ted was on The Chicago Way with John Kass and Jeff Carlin to talk about his recent visit to the Chicago Police Station at Division & Larrabee, where he met with Venezuelan migrants who’d been recently bused from the US/Mexico border. What he found was nothing but chaos and a city with no plan for how to take care of thousands of migrants – never mind the city and state’s “welcoming” sanctuary status.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s reelection campaign claimed in a recent TV ad that “on crime, she’s got a plan”, and that “she’s put more police on the streets.” But there’s actually 1,400 fewer cops actually assigned to district patrol duty than at her term’s start.
And as the latest evidence shows, crime’s not down. It’s up. Way up. Any useful plan has to first stop the bleeding in the short-term – and then address long-term violence
City data shows total violent crime on Chicago’s transit system is on track to hit a five-year high by year’s end, even with full-year 2022 CTA ridership headed for just half of what it was in 2019. To cut CTA crime and street crime, Chicago needs to re-deploy many more of the 5,500 armed city police officers assigned to non-patrol units.
The voting results for Amendment 1, dubbed the “Workers’ Rights” Amendment, are still up in the air as of this morning. Whether it passes or not is too close to call.
In another example of how education data continues to be bastardized in Illinois, take the recent spin Gov. J.B. Pritzker put on Illinois’ 2022 Report Card data. Rather than give a sober, realistic assessment of the still dismal results – namely, that so few of Illinois’ children can read and do math at grade level – the governor grasped at a host of other metrics to put a spin on how well Illinois is doing.
WSJ: “No one thought Illinois schools were a shining beacon in the education landscape, but we didn’t know how truly awful so many of them are. A new report by Wirepoints using the state’s data shows that an epidemic of indifferent instruction and social promotion has left children unable to perform at even the most basic educational level.”
Attacks on Chicago Police reached alarming proportions before and during the July 4th weekend. Words and actions toward police matter. The department has lost 1,725 sworn officers since January of 2019. A city cannot continue to sustain serious challenges to its basic everyday police powers. It’s a recipe for ongoing criminal disorder.
With Chicago’s ongoing weekend shootings, killings, and teen mob scenes in the streets drawing national attention, the difficult subject of parenting is surfacing. It’s plain to see: Chicago and Illinois will never thrive as long as many or most children in some populations are born to single mothers and raised in fatherless homes.
Chicago voters need a chance to weigh in on term limits because their city is plagued by endemic government corruption often involving city officials who have long overstayed their welcome. The city’s intractable corruption destroys trust. And a public vote on term limits – first for Chicago’s Mayor and later for the City Council – is the first spoonful of needed medicine.
The fiasco surrounding Illinois’ unemployment insurance fund is a perfect example of state’s brand of incompetence. What’s likely to result is a major tax hike on businesses and fewer jobs for Illinoisans.
UPDATED TO REFLECT DEVORE MOTION AGAINST CPS: As part of a “safety” agreement signed between CPS and the CTU to resolve four-day January teacher walkout, Mayor Lori Lightfoot agreed to keep Chicago’s 330,000 students masked through August 2022. Never mind that kids across the state are shedding their masks. The “safety” agreement is another example of a collective bargaining agreement gone awry.
From Wilmette parent Chris Beer, “All we want is choice in our schools. We respect those that want to continue to mask their own children, but after two years and everything we now know about the virus, it’s time for individual families to make their own masking choice.”
Wirepoints’ Ted Dabrowski was Mary Ann Ahern’s guest on NBC5 Chicago discussing reports that Aurora Mayor Richard Irvin could run for Illinois Governor, potentially with the backing of Illinois billionaire Ken Griffin.
So much baloney in an interview of just 18 minutes makes this worth going through in full.
Two weeks ago the City of Chicago dug its fiscal hole deeper with an irresponsible budget and now it’s Cook County’s turn. Cook County President Toni Preckwinkle has proposed spending $8 billion in 2022, $2.2 billion more than the $5.9 billion the county spent in pre-COVID 2019. That budget sets Cook County residents up for a fiscal cliff once the free federal money is gone.
At OpenNewTrier, we’re in full support of returning to normalcy when New Trier High School opens its doors again in August. And that means no mask mandates, no saliva testing, no tracking of students and no singling out of the unvaccinated.
Politico reported this morning that administration officials say Illinois is “on the cusp of being in the best shape it’s been in 30 years…,” largely due to direct federal support for the state, cities and individuals. What’s fascinating about that comment is just how untrue it is.
Rising costs for Illinois’ 650 local pension funds are wreaking havoc on city budgets, taxpayer wallets and the retirement security of hundreds of thousands of police, firefighter and municipal workers and retirees.
The report’s final warning shouldn’t be ignored: “Were the proposed graduated-rate income tax adopted, Illinois would trail its peers in just about every aspect of its tax code. If businesses and individuals are leaving the state now, these policies can only make the problem worse.”
Flat and no-income tax states are beating out progressive tax states in the contest for people and their incomes. The nation’s seventeen flat and no income tax states won a net 1.9 million residents and $120 billion in Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) from progressive tax states during the 2000-2018 period.
Thirty-one states are already reopening, while 11 other states are reopening on a regional basis. Six additional states – Connecticut, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Mexico and Vermont – are set to reopen next week. Notably, Illinois was one of the first to shut down and it will be one of the last to reopen.
The bond markets are already trading Illinois bonds as if they were junk rated. As deficits and pension debts pile up in Illinois, let’s see how long it takes for the rating agencies to catch up.
Illinois has no financial reserves to weather a recession. The state had no plan to stop the state’s rapid fiscal decline even before the virus and it has no plans now. It’s impossible to know how the impact of the virus will play out and whether a recession is imminent or not. But one thing we do know. Illinoisans are totally exposed to the risks.
Illinois’ combined state and local pensioner debts have reached absurd levels. When divvied up between Illinois’ households, the “shadow mortgage” each one is on the hook for now totals hundreds of thousands of dollars per household, if not more, depending on who politicians target to repay those debts.
Illinoisans’ pain from punishing property tax burdens has been building for decades. Property taxes per household in Illinois increased by 109 percent since 2000 and household incomes have failed to keep up, rising just 37 percent over the same time period.
Finding a law that reduces regulation and cuts costs within Illinois’ 255 new laws wasn’t easy. But I found one.
Do a quick scan of the 255 new laws taking effect in Illinois on January 1 and it won’t take you long to realize that Illinois pols have done nothing to fix the state’s broader mess. None of those laws stop Illinois’ deep fiscal dive and the record flight of its residents.
Teacher pensions have not been a point of discussion during the recent Chicago Teachers Union strike, though they should be. After all, it’s pensions that are threatening the solvency of both the City of Chicago and Chicago Public Schools.
In yet one more snub to Illinoisans, state politicians are ready to go on another borrowing binge.
Maine Township, located in Chicago’s northwest suburbs, has agreed to give property owners a $1.25 million tax break. That’s thanks to the efforts of two trustees who fought to prove the township’s reserves were bloated and far higher than what the township needed.
If Mendoza was joking, then it’s yet another example of politicians not taking seriously Illinois’ increasing flight of residents. And if she wasn’t, then it’s an example of just how out of touch Illinois politicians really are.
Blame whatever you want: pensions, corruption, property taxes or perpetual budget crises, but there’s no denying Illinoisans are fleeing the state. New U.S. Census data shows that Illinois’ population declined by 45,116 in 2018, a record loss for the state.
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has floated a new $10 billion POB plan. It needs to be slapped down for two key reasons. First, it simply won’t work. Second, it requires Chicago to sell parts of its financial future.
Illinoisans knew CPS wouldn’t do the right things if taxpayers were forced to bail the district out. They were right.
Illinois’ failed policies discriminate against no one. People are being forced to do what’s best for their families. And if that means leaving, they’re doing it.
State lawmakers impose one-size-fits-all government benefits and local governments – meaning local residents – have no choice but to pay them. For some cities, that’s bringing on bankruptcy.
Most reporting usually focuses on the underfunding of state plans and blames the crises on a lack of taxpayer dollars. But a Wirepoints analysis found that it’s the uncontrolled growth in pension promises that’s actually wreaking havoc on state budgets and taxpayers alike. Overpromising is the true cause of many state crises. Underfunding is often just a symptom of the underlying problem.
After years of credit downgrades that pushed Chicago Public Schools’ rating to B3, deep into junk territory, the district finally got a one-notch upgrade to B2 from Moody’s. Expect Mayor Rahm Emanuel to sell that as good news on the campaign trail, even if a B2 rating is still five notches into junk.
Don’t think that the Janus ruling by the Supreme Court will change how credit agencies rate Illinois. The decision, which allows public workers to opt out of union membership, didn’t fix any of Illinois’ problems overnight and the state is still on a trajectory towards a junk rating – now just one-notch away.
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