Emanuel proposes water, sewer tax to shore up ailing pension fund

chicagotribune ^

[ChicagoConservative27]

Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Wednesday called for a new tax on city water and sewer bills to stabilize the city's largest pension fund, a move he portrayed as his latest tough decision to secure Chicago's financial future.

Emanuel's plan, which would increase the average water and sewer bill by 30 percent over the next four years, was quickly met with resistance from some aldermen who argued the city would be better off adding business taxes or even raising property taxes again to come up with the hundreds of millions of dollars a year needed to keep the city's municipal workers' pension fund from going bust.

Still, Emanuel projected confidence his plan ultimately would win approval in the City Council, which rarely rebuffs the mayor's proposals and has yet to independently provide its own solution to solidify any of the city's four major pension systems that have been woefully underfunded for more than a decade.

In a speech to about 200 financial investors Wednesday, Emanuel unveiled his water and sewer tax plan while making the case to Wall Street that his administration has done the hard work to brighten Chicago's dark financial picture.

[1Old Pro]

the Fed drive to zero interest rates

We have low interest rates becauuse there is no demand in Obama's great recession.

[zek157]

Rates have been driven lower since the 80s to support continued deficit funding. We could never have gone from $3T to $20T if rates stayed above 6-7%. Steadily reducing rates the last 25 years allowed ever increasing debt load to be serviced.

Average rates on a T-bill go above 4-5% and the whole game blows up. Negative rates do it too.

This is well beyond Zero.

[rcofdayton]

I agree that we should no longer offer new employees such good benefit programs. However, for those that have worked under the old system they should retire under that old system. I know that Congress determined that the old Civil Service Retirement program was too generous. So they created a new program that was not so generous and applied it prospectively. Congress later reduced it some more, again applying that prospectively.

[Jim from C-Town]

Eliminate it. We are bankrupt.