The one of last jobs I held in the City of Chicago, way back in the 1980s, we moved the data center out of the city to the suburbs, for several reasons. The way we justified it on paper was taxes. There were other crazy things about doing business in Chicago. I know things have gotten better, because more businesses have left, both the city and the State of Illinois.
Chicago has a budget deficit of nearly $1 billion. Tack on another $2.9 billion for a proposed teachers’ contract plus an unknown amount for firefighters.
Why do the have a deficit? Well they keep raising taxes, and can't understand why tax revenue goes down.
Budget Director Annette Guzman said the city is expecting continued drop in revenue from the personal property replacement tax – a tax on corporations collected by the state and passed on to local governments. The city saw a drop of $169 million in revenue from that tax in 2024, and is expecting an even bigger drop in 2025.
And then there are the pensions. As long as I've been paying attention to Chicago politics, they have been promising gold-plated pensions, but not funding them. This year the Chicago Public Schools will not make a payment to the pension fund for non-teachers.
The Chicago Board of Education also recently approved a Chicago Public Schools budget plan that does not include a $175 million payment for pensions for nonteaching staff at the district, a cost the city once covered, but that CPS had paid for over the last four years until now
Hat tip to Doug Ross.
They're just the tip of the iceberg. Blue and Red states have this problem.
ReplyDelete