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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.
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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This just means a 25+ per cent increase of relatives on the payroll and on the bankrupt pension plan.
Maybe this will reduce the amount of bribes they take…probably not.
Eat, drink spend and be merry because tomorrow the gold egg laying goose may be dead (insolvent).
Finally! Someone is thinking of The Children!
Since 2008, the aldermanic expense allowance has nearly quadrupled:
2008: $33,280 to $73,270
2014: $73,270 to $97,000
2019: $97,000 to $122,000
Chicago is already 20 wards too heavy. NY and LA have higher populations and smaller city councils. How do they survive?
If Groot was a hetrosexual, she would constantly be pregnant. No ability to say “no”.
And what about our alderscum? No ability to say no during the time of a financial crisis, either.
More money given to teachers and alderman. What budget crisis?