The Chicago City Council fights an inferno with squirt guns
Well, it took 'em long enough.
Where was this City Council spirit of rebellion when Richard M. Daley was giving away the city's parking meter concession in 2008? Cutting off a major revenue stream for the next 75 years, leaving $4 billion on the table, a blunder called "the worst privatization deal in U.S. history."
A few days of review, and the Council rubber stamped the folly, 40 to 5.
No more. In a rare Saturday vote, the council voted 30 to 18 to send Mayor Brandon Johnson its own budget plan, rejecting his spending plan as unworkable.
Is it? Heck if I know. The details of municipal planning are a nosedive into the weeds.
But maybe we should peer into the undergrowth anyway. Given the entire future of Chicago is teetering on the edge of a cliff, ready to plunge into bankruptcy and ruin, we are obligated to put on our thinking caps and consider it, once again.
When I wrote about this in 2014, as Rahm Emanuel grappled with the issue, the unfunded pension obligation was $32 billion. Now, it's more than $50 billion.
That's the central problem. The city is on the hook for more pension debt than 44 states — Chicago has a bigger pension burden than Florida.
How did that happen? Politics. Chicago has 32,000 city workers. Whether those workers vote for you or an opponent can decide an election. Easy to promise them gravy you don't have.
And that isn't the only problem. COVID hollowed out the city's economic life while ramping up expenses. Texas started sending busloads of undocumented immigrants, and while housing them was the right thing to do, it still cost money.
Chicago sure needs the people. The city's population is 2.7 million. You know what it was in 2020? 2.7 million. In 2010? 2.7 million. The city population has roughly plateaued for the past 45 years. Chicago has has fewer people now than it did 100 years ago. Can't tax people who aren't here.
That's the deficit side. Now let's look at the proposed solutions.
The mayor wants to put a head tax on business — that, plus his lack of even a flicker of political savvy, stirred the Council to act against him. But their proposal is just as weak as his. Increase fees on plastic grocery bags. Sell advertising on city light poles. Video poker.
Do you see a difference in scale? The problems are enormous, involving billions of dollars in forced payments, hundreds of thousands of people wandering off or staying away. The proposed solutions are so feeble. The house is on fire, and the mayor and City Council are fighting over an array of squirt guns, arguing which will work best.
Sigh.
Christmas is this week. Maybe we should pivot away from brooding over looming disaster and squint into the past. This isn't the first holiday financial fix Chicago has been in.
"SORRY CHRISTMAS IN THE CITY HALL," read a headline in the Dec. 22, 1904, Chicago Tribune. "HOPE IS ALMOST GONE."
The hope was for their paychecks. The city had money, but it was all earmarked for mandatory year-end debt payments. Does nothing change? A last minute dodge, trying to tap the water system improvement fund, was declared illegal by the Illinois Supreme Court.
Six thousand municipal employees would go without pay, from the mayor to the humblest street sweeper.
City Treasurer Ernst Hummel figured a city with $10 million in the bank, even if untouchable, must have good credit. He headed over to LaSalle Street and borrowed $700,000 in cash, personally guaranteeing the loans. His staff of 20 worked all night, putting the money into 6,000 envelopes, finishing at 4 a.m.
Just before 7 a.m. Dec. 24, 1904, the City Hall doors were thrown open, and cheering clerks and secretaries, cops and firefighters, paraded inside to receive their salaries, some carrying banners reading "Hurrah of Hummel," who would later run for mayor; politics and double-entry bookkeeping have always been uneasy bedfellows.
How does this dusty tale apply today? The lesson I take away is this: They figured something out. They had a problem and solved it. True, it was temporary cash flow trouble and not the deep systemic rot that Chicago is currently facing — OK, not facing. But inspiring nevertheless.
As the City Council and mayor battle, keep this question in mind: Why hasn't this been solved yet? Despite attempts by several mayors, some with long government experience.
Answer: Because solving it is hard and requires sacrifice. Selling austerity demands leadership, always in deficit. Any proposed solution that isn't also tough to swallow is not really a solution. Jacking up the tax on plastic bags just won't do it.