First some background about the government of Chicago's budget
“Daley was a national leader in privatization and the lease and sale of public assets to private corporations. Daley was criticized when family, personal friends, and political allies seemed to disproportionately benefit from city contracting. Mayor Daley took office in a City with regular annual budget surpluses and left the City with massive structural deficits. His budgets ran up the largest deficits in Chicago history.”
“Daley's approval rating was at an all-time low of 35% by late 2009.[156] On September 7, 2010, Daley announced that he would not seek a seventh term
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“Daley was supported by Chicago's traditionally Republican business community.[191][192]He came under criticism for focusing city resources on the development of businesses downtown, the North, Near South, and Near West Sides, while neglecting neighborhoods in the other areas of the city; in particular the needs of low-income residents.[191]
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
My Bold Long before Rahm was Mayor 1% and gave Chicago a debt rating 2 levels above junk bond status in a to be fair Bad Economy he swore he would fix.
Mayor Daley was doing the impossible and turning annual budget surpluses into annual deficits in a Good Economy. Tax cuts for the rich and City of Chicago funds cough invested with Cronies and Relatives have not resulted in more jobs or a balanced budget in a Bad or Good Economy. How can anyone be in the Democratic Party so long and never have heard of Keynesian Economics?
Embarrassingly, Chicago’s debt rating is just two steps above junk status because of looming pension liabilities. Meanwhile city residents are furious about closed schools, a rash of red light and speed cameras with steep fines, an increase in homicides and police shortcomings.
http://qz.com/...
Rahm argues that you must cut spending and increase revenue when the economy slows down and Rahm has certainly done that.
55 schools absorbed students from 49 schools that closed.
http://www.cnn.com/...
46,000 students impacted by school closures 88% were black, 10% were Latino, and .7% were white
http://dianeravitch.net/...
Rahm cuts spending on the poor and minorities those who most need spending even though he risks their lives doing so.
Kids have to walk further to schools in neighborhoods often controlled by gangs hostile to their neighborhoods gang, given Chicago's record murder rate Parents have every reason to be nervous after all people are getting killed even in Obama's neighborhood. Also Rahm claims he is improving Chicago schools but won't send his son to one not even a Chicago Charter school which he claims to love so much.
Now then maybe there would not be so much killing if Rahm had not cut police funding? Yes I know Rahm claimed when he first ran for Mayor he would hire 1,000 more police but well he lied and he keeps on lying.
Chicago, IL -- Rahm Emanuel, four years ago, ran on a platform of putting 1,000 new cops on Chicago’s streets. However, he's cut hundreds, and is weaseling ways to claim he’s kept his promise. The consequences? More than 10,000 shootings and 1,800 homicides on his watch.
The Mayor’s first budget reduced the police funding by $190 million. eliminated 1,252 police vacancies, closed three district stations, reduced the number of police dispatchers by 10% and cut the fire communications operator positions by more than 16%.
A January 2015 review of Emanuel’s record confirmed that police strength, rather than increasing, is down by hundreds of officers.
• Two months after Emanuel touted new police recruits, radio station WBEZ reported that city payroll records dating back to the day before Emanuel took office show that the number of cops is down by almost 400.
http://es.chicagoforchuy.com/...
Parents of kids walking to school heck everyone who does not ride around with a police detail in Chicago has every reason to think Rahm plan to reduce crime is not working and its time to try something else....like actually hiring an other 1,000 police officers instead of paying current police officers overtime. As anyone who has worked overtime knows you just don't do as good a job when you are working overtime as when you don't because you are more tired and you do make more mistakes and sleep more when you are tired. 1,000 police taking naps in their squad cars once a week or so Rahm has proved does not reduce crime.
Chicago has the largest red-light camera program in the U.S., and charges a cool $100 every time a driver is cited. Red-light camera tickets have raised nearly $500 million for the city in fines, according to the Tribune.
https://www.illinoispolicy.org/...
Notice Rahm is taking cameras out of minority areas cynical election pandering or is he trying to avoid comparisons with Ferguson raising money for their city government off of African Americans. I tried but could not find what percent of red light traffic cam tickets were given to minorities.
Mr. Emanuel has taken pressure off the city operating account by paying expenses with borrowed money that will not come due until long after he's out of office. As a result, the city's general obligation debt—the total amount taxpayers are on the hook to pay in principal and interest—has risen 11.7 percent in four years, to $14.70 billion, including borrowings in 2014. By a different measure, counting just what needs to be paid between now and 2041, it has leapt an eye-catching 22.6 percent. (Until this year, the city did not have debt due past 2041.)
http://www.chicagobusiness.com/...
Interest rates are low now they will not stay this low until 2041. The sad thing is Rahm has the money there is no need to borrow any money!
The report shows that in 2013 Chicago’s pension costs were $385 million whereas Emanuel’s slush fund that year received $457 million.
The new report, from the taxpayer watchdog group Good Jobs First, shows how Chicago’s roughly 150 “tax increment financing” (TIF) districts divert property taxes out of schools and public services and into what is now known as Chicago’s “shadow budget.” That’s a slightly nicer term for what is, in practice, Emanuel’s very own sovereign wealth fund.
Living up to his billing as “Mayor 1%,” Emanuel has used the fund to (among other things) offer up $7 million of taxpayer cash for a new grocery store, $7.5 million for a proposed data center, $29 million for an office high rise and $55 million for a huge new hotel (and that latter project is on top of $75 million more in tax money Emanuel has offered up to build a private university a new basketball stadium). And these are just a few of the corporate subsidy proposals in a $300 million spending spree Emanuel has championed at the very moment he has pled poverty to justify pension cuts, property tax increases and the largest school closure in his city’s history.
http://pando.com/...
My bold In economics people talk about opportunity costs if I buy a grocery store for $7 million or a new University basketball court for $75 million for then I cannot use that money to buy something else. Something that might give me a better return on my investment. Given that Walmart is building stores in Chicago now and that the local Dominick's grocery store chain just went out of business is investing in a grocery store in this economy really a good idea?
$75 million for a University basket ball court unless you have a championship team most schools loose money on their athletic teams anyone care to lay odds that the school will have a championship basketball team for all the years they need too to pay back the loan?
Pension Funds to Pensioners however are spent largely in the local economy almost as soon as they get it, then other people in the local economy get paid and they then spend that money in the local economy.
Given the decades long example of Mayor Daley in both good and bad economies and the example of Rahm bad economy only taxing the poor and middle class with gas, tobacco, alcohol taxes underfunding pensions to pay for the business adventures/get rich quick schemes of your cronies never results in returns high enough to pay back the pension funds much less create more jobs.
Why borrow money and pay interest if you have the money? Because Rahm wants to cut pension funds and never pay the Pensions money. Rahm has created a false Shock Doctrine event.