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Summary and audio linked here.
Chicago’s political leadership is floating a pension buyout program as evidence it is seriously addressing the city’s thirty-six-billion-dollar unfunded pension liability, but Mark Glennon, founder of the Illinois policy research organization Wirepoints, said that the proposal moves debt from one column to another rather than reducing it, and that the broader fiscal picture facing the city continues to deteriorate across every measurable dimension. Audio here.
Expect no retraction or apology. This what they do.
The state’s existing buyout program for its own pensions is the precedent for Chicago, which should be a warning: Look out for similar exaggerated claims and shoddy analysis.
Full interview and summary linked here.
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Some years ago I purchased a piece of property in an arms length non related party sale. I approached the assessor with the sales data and was more or less told “I purchased the property at below market value” thus no reduction in assessed value. The Board of Review said the same thing. It took an expensive appraisal to get the value to what i paid for the property as it appears now the Assessor’s determine what is the market value not the market itself. Typical Illinois once again.
What good are rules that can be bent? How much wood could a woodchuck chuck …?
Squeeze the python is getting bigger. The downtown market is getting smaller, valuation dropping and they fiddle. The games keep getting played and squeezee
Tightens more. End game the python wins,
Checkmate!
Kaegi is looking at the blue sky and telling us it’s green. His feeble attempts at gaslighting are not going to sit well with sophisticated commercial real estate owners. He has actual sales market transactions, yet he has the nerve to say that they’re “not representative of where the market is”. If I look for a house in a neighborhood where all the home sales are over $1,000,000, do you think I can pick up a house for $500k by telling the realtor and seller that $1,000,000 is not representative of where the market is? Earth to Fritz: when buyers… Read more »
Maybe all those real estate developers shouldn’t have bought so much avocado toast and iced lattes.
Johnson is digging himself a hole.
Johnson is the kind of guy who doesn’t pay his Capital One card, water bill or traffic tickets, despite having the money to do so. The man doesn’t think about tomorrow, or secondary effects, he only thinks about what is in front of his face.
Why is there no talk about property tax reform? Just talk about increasing taxes on property. Homes for many people are their largest asset and it is taxed as much as they can. Last I checked there is no asset tax or net worth tax or personal property tax in Illinois. Our homes and properties are only ATM machines for all the taxing bodies. The occupants are not taxed as to what services they need only the building in most cases. The building itself only needs fire. The “occupants” need police and all the others services. How would they tax… Read more »
In the old days in a situation like this it would be easy for the property owners to hire the Madigan or Burke law firms to handle the property tax reduction mechanizations. Now, with Madigan and Burke out of favor it is time for a changing of the guard to handle property tax assessments. Perhaps Speaker Welch ca jump in to help out on this. Does he, or a very close friend, have a law office needing work? Nothing changes in the Chicago political cesspool; only the faces change.
Everyone goes to Martwick now.
The real issue Fritz is facing is trying to justify higher values when he knows they’re lower. Distressed sale or not I’m assuming these transactions were arms length which is what matters. Tossing out those sales helps him keep valuations higher than they should be.
My guess is that downtown valuations, and therefore taxes, will mostly stay the same. He’ll say that a handful of distressed sales should not and will not affect downtown’s tax structure. No way Kaegi is going let the out of state rich private equity and commercial real estate investors off the hook for higher taxes. Of course, higher taxes will make for higher rents, and keep vacancies high, and will only accelerate the doom loop. But Kaegi is an ideologue and the doom loop is merely a benefit of social justice. Stick it to the rich, lower the poor’s taxes,… Read more »
Nothing to see here folks. Any shortfall will be made up by residential property taxpayers per PPF.
Frightening, even for a chump senior citizen Chicago home owner (me). But CTU/Brandon and his equity hustle shakedown crew will make it all better with Bring Chicago Home transfer tax I’m sure??……..what in the world are they thinking, INSANITY!!