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Jay-Z Announces 2010 Tour Dates. Chicago Not On List.
Now that we've gone 21 days since legislators approved a budget, Governor Blagojevich is starting to talk like he really will veto parts of the bill. You may remember his promise to cut $500 million in pork and special projects from the bill, and to move money around to cover his universal health plan. According to the Associated Press, there's no shortage of ludicrous and silly spending in this budget, including hosting a sister city from Sicily. Along the way, however, there is special spending in the bill for more important resources for communities throughout the state, including new fire equipment, social service grants, and sanitation upgrades. Said Morris Mayor Richard Kopczick of $75,000 alloted for a water filtration system for his town, "We're not looking at building a 'bridge to nowhere' here. This is for the health and safety of the community."
With the economy still sluggish and the recent near-collapse of the housing market, Chicago is feeling the pain as well. It's no secret that the mayor has been eying a property tax increase. After rounds of budget cuts, Daley telling city workers that earn more than $75,000 a year to take a second unpaid furlough day, and the council considering a bottled water tax to close a budget gap of nearly $218 million, it isn't looking good for home owners in the city, (not that it's been looking good for homeowners for a while). The Sun-Times' Fran Spielman reported that an "anonymous source" at City Hall thinks the mayor is pissed at some of the aldermen for turning their backs on his idea to raise property taxes and speculates that he may "go to [a $30 million] cap. It'd be foolish not to."
With the state teetering on the brink of financial ruin, it remains to be seen how Blagojevich may punish legislators who turned against him in the budget battle. The sad thing is that the pawns in the macho game of chess are the people and communities of Illinois.
Image via the Gotham Gazette.
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I think Daley should raise property taxes. Maybe it would push more people with silly loans into foreclosure, and then I can finally afford to buy a place! Is that wrong?
>With the economy still sluggish
WRONG!
" target="new">WRONG!
WRONG!
Thanks for playing.
second link
I feel little sorrow for people who voted for Daley and now face higher property tax bills. You could see this coming at least five years ago, if you only paid moderate attention to the city budget. Daley should have raised the taxes little by little over the year--and done other things to reform the budget--rather than waiting until know. Why the voters of Chicago keep fallilng for this I do not know.
I don't know about you, but I am getting sick of paying for corruption and TIF slush funds and all the other shit that benefits the connected of this city while the residents worry about how to afford their homes or getting to work on time.
Thank you for stating the obvious.
5: Apparently it is not obvious to the people who keep voting for these people.
The people of Chicago are already taxed too much--and yet they want more. 11% sales tax for some places? High property taxes? Taxes that make no sense, if only to raise revenue, like the city amusement tax applied to any possible device or amusement?
The real problem is that Chicago's city workforce is too bloated, too inefficient, and can't be continued to be funded on the back of the people of Chicago. We can't fund another ghost payroller, another Teamster who only sits reading the paper in the truck and gets $30+ an hour, another full pension for a convicted crook.
We need reform, and it won't come by accepting more taxes.
Actually, 7, one of the reasons the state and city are in this mess is because everyone is sooo afraid to raise taxes, even as prices for services increase. Even without corruption, this would be the case. But raising taxes these day is like calling forth the spirit of Satan. People keep bitching about bad roads or the CTA but no one wants to pay for repairs.
Yo, guest #2. If you disagree with Kevin's point that the economy is still "sluggish," why would you link to three articles that seem to support that statement?
#8, I said the workforce was too inefficient.
Witness recently sidewalk repair in my neighborhood. Just a year ago they ripped up the sidewalks, left them for a month, then came back and laid poor quality concrete in a slipshod manner. The result? This year, they had to come back and put in "ADA-accessible" ramps, which are already falling apart, and in a few years new concrete will be needed. Meanwhile, a 1961 sidewalk in another area quietly sits as perfect as ever.
Why can't we make sidewalks that last, so we aren't redoing them year after year? What about ripping up roads and paving in a quick manner, instead of waiting a month for two separate crews to coordinate?
Peversely, the labor cost of the city's budget is huge--83% last year, I seem to recall. The Civic Federation called that expensive, and called the fact that the city funds a pension plan that would be unable to handle the future burden on it. Why give an sizeable income increase, independent of the consumer price index, if we can't afford it?
http://www.civicfed.org/articles/civicfed_221.pdf
Take a look at that report from last year.
Guest #10, remember the scene in Falilng Down, when Michael Douglas gets the road crew to admit they're working on the road to justify a big budget for working on the road?
Yeah.
(I mean, I think you knew that already, but it still pisses me off when I think about it.)
Chuck, can't you read?
Unemployment is where it was in the mid-90s.
Growth is where it was in 2000.
Kevin wishes the economy was in the toilet, but it just isn't the case. The third piece shows that pretty dramatically, with Democrats in particular claiming the economy to be in far worse shape than it really is.
I can read, vinny, and Kevin isn't wishing the economy in the toilet.
Although I'm questioning your ability to, since the third piece you linked to from the Journal (which, as a conservative economic newspaper, I expect them to spin the numbers in a positive light) runs with the headline "America's Economic Mood: Gloomy."
So, in your words, "please try again."
Chuck,
If you read the second paragraph of the article in the WSJ, it states that the American public feels that the economy is "gloomy" despite the fact that the economic data suggests otherwise. This is probably because the majority of the public only reads headlines like "America's Economic Mood: Gloomy" and assumes without actually reading the entire article that this is the case.
Uh, Chuck, if you are talking about WSJ (13) when you say, "which, as a conservative economic newspaper, I expect them to spin the numbers in a positive light"--well, you are wrong.
Yes, the editorial pages are right-wing, but the news pages hardly do conservative spinning. If you don't believe me, try reading the paper or even talking to some WSJ reporters. Papers often have a divide between their editorial pages and their news pages. One need only look to the Chicago Tribune as an example.
If this not what you meant, I apologize. The links were broken when I tried them.
Ah Chuck, reading the IP logs are we? I love it when Chicagoist posts something half baked then gets all defensive when commenters tear it apart.
If you had bothered to read the article or look at the graphs, you would know that the data shows the economy is doing quite well.
Aside from the bizarre fixation with sub prime mortgages, the outlook is as good as it has been in six years.
Strangely enough, this isn't what the polls show, with Democrats (by a wide margin) believing that we are deep in recession. Republicans are less concerned, but still report that the economy is worse than it is.
So...
Try again.
maybe if so much property tax money wasnt being diverted via TIF zones there would be more than enough tax revenue. TIF zones are what makes property taxes go up up up. TIF zones are just slush funds for the mayor to reward his friends with city subsidys. TIF money is used to subsidize a development and then the new development doesnt pay property taxes its taxes are diverted to the TIF to subsidize the next developer. Hundreds of millions of dollars are diverted every year. Thats more that any budget shortfall and money that should be going to the schools, infastruchor, parks, city pensions but is instead going to connected developers to get richer. Our taxs would not need to be raised if TIF money was collected and part of the budget instead of being set aside for friends of the mayor to build developments that would be built without subsidys.
It's true, TIFs are diverting revenues from critical projects into aldermanic slush funds.
But Kevin is very very wrong about one thing. The housing market is not in near collapse. It ain't what it was a couple of years ago, but median valuations remain within 5% of their peaks in the city proper and houses are on the market for what would once have been considered a slightly-above average time. You'll know when the housing market collapses: most of those storefront mortgage places will close up shop. (Also, the economy isn't doing too badly, either... low unemployment, decent growth, etc.)
Too much hyperbole, which seems kind of standard Kevin Robinson writing (remember how we were going to violently overthrow the U.S. government over Scooter Libby a month or so ago?).