The city has an 800+ million shortfall. What now? (Chicago, Union: bankruptcy, thefts)

[Grlzrl]

LIghtfoot has been clear. Raise taxes. Still no intention of cutting the generous pensions going forward.

[wase4711]

of course not; "reduce spending" is a phrase that is forbidden to be spoken by Illinois Democrats..

[Curly Q. Bobalink]

I was going to give a snarky answer such that with maybe a million "taxpayers" to balance the 2019 budget, the cost to each would "only be about $800.00 each, no problem" (snarky because to many people, an extra $800 a year is a BIG problem). But I wanted to know the actual numbers of taxpayers in Chicago (I'm assuming people between 18 and 62, if that's what a "taxpayer" is), so I used the Google, and came across this site. No idea who is behind it, but it looks to be a decent source of information on this subject. They claim the number of "taxpayers" is about 1.14 million.

https://www.statedatalab.org/state_d...s/city/chicago

[ZUMAN]

Originally Posted by fusillirob1983

He can’t afford the tab without a disproportionate of capital coming from Russia.

Maybe Obama should have a dropped a pallet of cash off on the O'Hara tarmac!

[dtcbnd03]

Why not cancel the $1.3B in TIF funds going to the Lincoln Yards? Can we realistically do that?

I'm all for economic development...and I realize pensions are a big problem...but this is what happens when we give tax breaks via corporate welfare. Everyone needs to pay their fair share cause a budget comes from one big pot of money.

[smegmatite]

Originally Posted by Curly Q. Bobalink

I was going to give a snarky answer such that with maybe a million "taxpayers" to balance the 2019 budget, the cost to each would "only be about $800.00 each, no problem" (snarky because to many people, an extra $800 a year is a BIG problem). But I wanted to know the actual numbers of taxpayers in Chicago (I'm assuming people between 18 and 62, if that's what a "taxpayer" is), so I used the Google, and came across this site. No idea who is behind it, but it looks to be a decent source of information on this subject. They claim the number of "taxpayers" is about 1.14 million.

https://www.statedatalab.org/state_d...s/city/chicago

you wanna be scared shartless Curly, read this article

https://wirepoints.org/why-chicagos-...pecial-report/

When you add it all up, Chicagoans owe $150 billion in total retirement debts, based on Moody’s most recent pension data. Split that evenly across the city’s one million-plus households and that comes to nearly $145,000 per household.

That’s already a massive amount, but if Lightfoot and other politicians want to try a more “progressive” solution to paying off that debt, the per household debt numbers jump even higher.

For example, if politicians demand that only households with incomes of $75,000 or more pay down the debts, the burden on those households would total an impossible $393,000 each.

And if politicians tried a progressive scheme that targeted only those households earning $200,000 or more? The burden per household would come to an impossible $2 million each.

[pvande55]

Any new taxes need approval by the Legislature- unlikely. Maybe they can make a casino viable, but revenue won't come for years. Probably a property tax increase and rolling over some of the deficit to next year.

[skeddy]

Legalize pot and raise taxes. Both need to be done to fix this.

[dtcbnd03]

Originally Posted by skeddy

Legalize pot and raise taxes. Both need to be done to fix this.

Pot has already been legalized. Taxes do NOT need to be raised because it's throwing good money after bad.

Think about it this way...we have an $800M+ shortfall this year. And we're in the hole say about $100B for pensions. So Chicago would need to come up with about $1.8B per year to cover the budget shortfall AND pension hole. And say we could do that...we would need to do that for the next 100 YEARS just to get back to even. And this is all while the economy and market are at record highs....just wait for the next recession and it will get laughable real quick.

Pension reform is the only answer.

[frostopsy]

Without a doubt, this math problem can’t be solved by raising taxes. Public pensions are choking out the budget and they need to be adjusted. Low hanging fruit would be to limit the people collecting multiple pensions. More than one public pension is excessive. Second, would be to cap the amount allowed to be paid in pensions, there should be a ceiling the amount paid per year. Public workers need to pay more in - teachers pay nothing, with the district picking up the tab, just as an example. Everyone paying for a pension has to pay a percentage + the amount they would pay toward social security. Most importantly, end the 3% annual COLA increase. I don’t get a 3% raise per year at my job, I don’t see why they should get one while they are retired. Factor in inflation and make any new COLA increases manageable and sensible.