Posted on 05/28/2014 2:42:40 PM PDT by reaganaut1
Chicago residents who are worried about a $250 million property tax hike because of the pension bill Gov. Pat Quinn is weighing don’t know the half of it. Or maybe three-quarters of it.
It’s time Chicagoans confront the fact that there’s a nuclear property tax time bomb already set and ticking away here. There’s the potential for another $600 million property tax increase coming in December to fix police and fire pensions. And then maybe another $696 million needed next year for Chicago Public School pensions.
Back to police and fire. Public Act 096-1495, passed in 2010, reads, in part, “The city council … shall annually levy a tax upon all the taxable property of the municipality at the rate on the dollar which will produce an amount which … will equal a sum sufficient to meet the annual requirements of the police pension fund.”
Yipes. That’s the law for Chicago. The rest of Illinois needs to wake up and confront this, too. Hundreds of police and fire pension funds all around the state are as badly underfunded or worse. Even if they weren’t, Illinoisans need to understand that if Chicago collapses, Illinois sinks with it. Chicago is the powerhouse of the prairie state, period.
That 2010 law that sweetened pension benefits for Chicago police and fire was approved by Springfield politicians before Rahm Emanuel was mayor. Emanuel has insisted he won’t be levying all those property taxes on Chicagoans, but the $250 million compromise for the municipal and laborers pension funds awaits Quinn’s action and there’s no sign of movement on the other two funds with five days left in the spring legislative session. This mess will be pushed right up against the ticking clock after the November election and before the December levy time.
(Excerpt) Read more at politics.suntimes.com ...
All that for pensions and not for actual services being rendered. Soon enough it will all go for pensions.
While FReepers point and laugh at the rickety handcart of Detroit rolling down the tracks, a locomotive is bearing down on us from behind with a full head of steam.
Two. Social Security and Obamacare.
Yes CC, Detwaa was a cake walk compared to IL, Chicago, California, and CALPERS, to name a some of the biggies head for Chapter insert number......
The sooner it collapses, the better.
bump
“All that for pensions and not for actual services being rendered. Soon enough it will all go for pensions.”
NJ and CA are looking at the same grim future; it would be foolhardy for anyone to open a business in these places. You’d just be suckered into buying a piece of a huge IOU...
“All that for pensions and not for actual services being rendered. Soon enough it will all go for pensions.”
From cases all across America, getting serviced by a “Law Enforcement Person” is something one will live longer without.
I suggest bankrupting all such Trough Feeder pensions. Let the CopPersons live off their stored adipose - all that donut derived fat should be good for something.
Let Illinois bail out Chicago.
>>While FReepers point and laugh at the rickety handcart of Detroit rolling down the tracks, a locomotive is bearing down on us from behind with a full head of steam.
The sooner it collapses, the better.<<
All us older folks will probably die off in the first six months or maybe a year then you can handle the rest.
Being a neighboring state to Michigan, I tend to pay attention to their well-being (or lack thereof) and the Detroit problem pales in comparison to the Chicago and etc. pension/tax locomotive coming down the tracks...
Query: why are all those people so worried about "sustainability" in the environment (etc.) not at all worried about "sustainability" in the economy??
Public pensions equal big fat burdens. Here’s a solution—have govt employees enrolled in 401-k plans and have govt fund a generous 60%-75% of the max yearly contributions allowed. That way each employee is funded for future retirement during their active working years only and from that years budget allocation only. When the job ends so does the retirement funding. No more pensions for life that heavily burden the public taxpayers for retired government workers.
Sue the Democrat Party. They caused this and they have lots of money.
I don't think it needs to come to that! We just need a major reorganization of our financial system, which supports the Progressive nanny-state with debt and money printing. Give us real money, and you immediately end the government's ability to run all its social engineering schemes.
Hey, it's not like I just got done graveling out the bomb craters in my paved alley half an hour ago, on my own dime & time, because the city won't...
Oh, wait...
and they will probably fine people who do that too.
The day my State finally crashes I’m going to laugh and laugh and laugh....
I believe it was Saginaw Michigan that ditched some 500 city employees by privatizing services leaving the city with only 20 full time employees.
Illinois is a vital part of the “blue wall” of Democrat electoral votes.
They’ll get federally guaranteed state bonds before any real pain is inflicted.
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