10 Things We Learned At The UIC Urban Forum (ft. DJ Ray LaHood)
By Caroline O'Donovan in News on Dec 9, 2012 4:00PM
In an enormous, frigid gymnasium this Thursday, the University of Illinois at Chicago invited top policy thinkers and students from across the city to gather and meditate on the problems facing this fair city. The top policy thinkers accepted the invitation. Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, Illinois Governor Pat Quinn and Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, however, couldn't make it. Here's what we learned.
10. Almost everyone is experiencing a fiscal crisis due to pension liability, but Illinois' is the worst. Chicago used to be one of the top 10 largest cities in the world. Now our growth speed is only the 127th fastest in the world. This is, apparently, the “new normal.” Or, as Deputy Mayor Steve Koch put it, “Business as usual is over. We couldn’t continue it if we wanted to.” Las Vegas City Manager Betsy Fretwell said that in the past, Las Vegas has been accustomed to new casinos opening and hiring 2,000 employees. She says they’re learning to appreciate a new downtown business opening with 200 hires.
9. There are three different kinds of people that are going to pay for the pension crisis, and none of them are politicians. Instead, they are:
a. owners of liabilities (people who have already had careers they spent paying into the pension system)
b. employers (the people who employed the people who have been paying into the pension fund; have probably also been paying into it, but don’t need it as much)
c. tax-payers (people who probably never realized that they were paying into the pension system, but are definitely aware of the problems it’s caused now)
8. Everybody reads the NYT, especially when the NYT is doing awesome stuff with data on government incentives to business and economic development. For example, who knew that Texas spends the most on trying to incent businesses to move there? Now, you do! What are Illinois’ leaders trying to draw here? Agriculture, manufacturing and retail. How much are they willing to spend to do it? Over 1.5 billion dollars!
7, Deputy Mayor Steve Koch thinks Rahm Emanuel is a calm, subtle man, which suggests that the two leaders may not be on the same page, plane, or planet. Rachel Weber of the UIC said there’s a disconnect between the politicians and “the people who are looking at the books.” She said at an event the night before the conference, Emanuel talked about all the awesome stuff Chicago has going on. Emanuel, despite being a co-chair, didn’t appear at the forum, but Koch did, and he had a much harsher perspective.
6. Chicago needs less government and more private businesses trying to invest in economic development. That’s not my opinion, but a fact, according to the OECD. Can YOU name three business trying to invest in their communities? But seriously, before you click on that, be warned, it contains sentences like this one: "If employment in the Chicago Tri-State metro-region had grown at the national rate over the past 20 years, the region would have almost 600,000 additional jobs today,” and other fun facts.
5. If you build it, they will come (Where “it” is sweet bike lanes and fast, convenient transport, and “they” is major technology hubs like Google’s offices in Pittsburgh, PA, as well as the greenest skyscraper in all the land.)
4. High Speed Rail is going to be Obama’s legacy [and Ray LaHood is a Republican {or, Happy Birthday, Ray LaHood}] Americans Love Infrastructure. Some Americans love Ray LaHood. Ray LaHood loves High Speed Rail. Europeans love High Speed Rail, so Americans should also love HIgh Speed Rail. I have met detractors on all sides, both of LaHoods and of High Speed Rail, but as Ray LaHood says (shouts): “WE WILL NEVER LOSE TO OUR DETRACTORS.” He’s a powerful man, of Lebanese origin, with Catholic parents, and a son on the no-fly list due to his work in Egypt, if you wanted to know more and for some reason can’t access Wikipedia right now.
***Bonus Round of “What Sec. Ray LaHood Loves”: PORTS. BARGES. INTERSTATE HIGHWAYS. But it should be noted, Ray LaHood does not know anything about hovercrafts, neither future, past nor present.
3. The city of Las Vegas doesn’t make money off of gaming revenue. They collect taxes on retail sales that are connected to gaming, but the city itself doesn’t technically profit from gambling. Which might make you ask yourself, if Chicago had a casino, who would stand to profit?
2. The downtown is in. And neighborhoods hate it. But why can’t neighborhoods see how “in” downtowns are? It’s like neighborhoods can’t even see that you love them, all they see is all this downtown investment. And you’re like “Listen, I love you!” but I just have to do some stuff downtown to draw the kind of stuff I need so I can get to work on the neighborhoods! But they just never get it and they’re always whining and don’t they realize all the hip kids are downtown anyway, GOD. (Sponsored by VisitColumbusOhio.com!)
1. The pension crisis is ironic, and therefore, possibly hip. Okay, it’s not hip, but it is ironic. I realized this when someone referred to creating automatic government mechanisms that would prevent governments from being able to avoid dealing with gnarly problems like pension liability for so long. The phrase employed was actually “make politicians eat their vegetables.” What’s funny about this is that the entire idea of pensions was invented to make employees eat their vegetables. The idea is that people naturally don’t plan for the future, so this was a government safeguard that would be there for them later on.