My Blog

Category: Politics

  • Rosemont Homeowners get $3,000

    [S]uburban Rosemont is offering its homeowners $3,000 grants.

    The village may not have landed the big casino, but it has lots of commercial development and relatively few residents. Mayor Brad Stephens likens this year’s grant — the village has parceled out money for 15 years in a row — to a “dividend” a company would grant its stockholders.

    (Full story here.)

    Wow!  Say what you want about Rosemont and it’s creepy mayor’s family (Hummel Museum, really?) but this guy provided for the citizens.  Massive taxes flowing into the city coffers from private industry, residents get paid to live there.

    I for one, am impressed.

  • BGA on the Size of the City Counsel

    The BGA is not the first, nor the second or third, to write about reducing the size of the city counsel.  But in this story here they do a better job than just about anyone I’ve seen.

    The wrap-up is equally important.  These ideas need champions who will talk about them and bring them to bare.  Else, nothing will ever happen.

  • Meeks vs. Tax Law

    Meeks says he’s long been mindful of the rules laid out by the Internal Revenue Service, but it’s clear he chafes at restrictions that prevent churches and other charitable groups from endorsing and contributing to political campaigns.

    “I am running for office, and you know that. … I can take all the money I want from the National Rifle Association, from the pharmaceutical companies, from the riverboat people, from the tobacco industry and from the liquor industry. I can take all the money. … I can take it, it’s legal. But I can’t take one dime from a church,” he told the Salem Baptist congregation.” Something is wrong with that picture.”

    Churches are prohibited from such political activity as a condition of maintaining their highly beneficial tax-exempt status with the IRS.

    (Full story here.)

    Well, if Meeks don’t like the law, then he can incorporate his church as a for-profit, begin paying income tax and property tax, and maybe even go public and deal with the SEC filings and disclosures.  They he can give his money to whomever he likes, and as much of it too.

    But for a guy who a few years ago admitted that his “church” was going to buy a jet plane to complain about his tax treatment is laughable.  Open up the books reverend and let’s see where all the money’s coming from and going to.

  • Little do to in Property Tax Battle?

    In an article with technical problems over at the Sun-Times, Terry Savage writes under a headline, “Little you can do in property tax battle”:

    While home values are down, many homeowners are shocked by the increases in second-half-of-the year tax bills. Fingers are pointing at the assessor’s office, the Cook County Board and the state’s tax equalization factor.

    (Full story here.)

    I disagree.  There is plenty you can do.  You can vote out of office every corrupt self-serving politician who’s served more than two days in office and create a fresh start.

    On the city level you get that chance in less than 90 days.

  • Berrios Puts Family on Payroll

    Just days into his tenure as Cook County assessor, Joseph Berrios has hired his son and sister to work for him.

    …

    Carmen Berrios, the assessor’s sister, is director of taxpayer services at Berrios’ new office. She is making about $86,000, the same salary she made at the Board of Tax Review, where she headed up taxpayer outreach, Berrios said.  Joseph “Joey” Berrios, the assessor’s son, now is a residential property analyst, similar to the job he held at the Board of Review, where he also made about $48,000 a year.

    (Full story here.)

    When are people going to say enough?  When is our do nothing Attorney General and Cook County State’s Attorney going to investigate what’s really going on inside these offices?  It’s just amazing, simply amazing.

  • How Can the Park District be Broke?

    Park visitors may soon see advertisements on Chicago Park District property such as lifeguard stands, garbage cans and tennis courts, as officials look for ways to plug a $22 million hole in next year’s budget.

    (Full story here.)

    The Chicago Park District owns Solider Field; that big ugly thing many Second Ward residents can see from their windows.  It’s the place that the Bears — the Chicago franchise of the National Football League — pay a pretty penny to play there.  (They better, because every time there’s a game traffic and parking become a nightmare.)

    The Park District also controls Grant Park where… let’s see: all the summer festivals happen, the Chicago Marathon starts & stops, Lalapolooza occurs, and countless other functions are held.

    It also earns revenue from every boater in the city as it controls nearly every single inch of public shoreline from Pratt on the north to 95th on the south.

    Can someone say audit?

  • You Owe $11,647, & That’s Just for Pensions

    Part 1 of 2 on just how completely broken the City’s pension system has become.

    Chicago’s public pension funds are teetering on the brink of insolvency in large part because city officials and union leaders repeatedly exploited the system, draining away billions of dollars in the last decade to serve short-term political needs….

    As a result, the funds soon may not be able to keep promises that are codified in the state constitution, threatening the retirements of tens of thousands of rank-and-file union members and leaving taxpayers on the hook for billions of dollars owed to teachers, police officers, firefighters and others.

    …

    Even if all retirement benefits were cut off today, every man, woman and child in Chicago would owe more than $7,000 to cover obligations already incurred — an amount that doesn’t include state pension debt of about $60 billion.

    (Full story here.)

    According to the U.S. Census Bureau there are 12,910,409 people living in the State of Illinois.  Take the state’s pension debt of $60 billion and divide and you get $4,647.41 in state pension debt per person.  Add that to the $7,000 for us city folk and you get $11,647.

    But that’s not all the debt.  Oh no, far from.  According to these people here, the state debt per citizen is $12,136 (as of this writing.)  So us city folk owe at least $19,000 a-piece in debt between the city and state.  That doesn’t include any Cook County or Federal debt either.

    Think about that — nearly $20,000 every person in this city already owes.

    If you’re not already very angry, you will be shortly when you’re asked to start paying the bill.

  • City Pension Funds Poorly Managed

    Part 2 of 2 on just how completely broken the City’s pension system has become.

    Trustees of Chicago’s failing public pension funds have funneled hundreds of millions of dollars into highly speculative investments that not only have failed to realize outsize returns but also saddled them with underperforming, long-term assets that can’t be sold off, a Tribune investigation has found.

    The investments, which involved buying equity stakes in businesses ranging from fast-food franchises in Mississippi to a Los Angeles grocery chain, were supposed to plug huge holes in pension fund coffers by yielding gains of up to 20 percent a year.

    But a Tribune analysis of nearly 130 private equity and real estate investments made by four pension funds since 2000 found that nearly half have lost value so far. Of the $1.3 billion invested to date, the pension funds have seen just $60 million in added value on their balance sheets.

    Had the funds used an equal amount to buy and hold a 30-year U.S. Treasury bond offered in 2000, they would have received $893 million in interest payments to date — and their principal investments would be secure.

    (Full story here.)

    Sweetheart back-room deals for friends of the Mayor and friends of Aldermen.  But the city worker and the taxpayer are getting taken for a ride.

    My question is where is Lisa Madigan on this?  Where is Mr. Fitzgerald on this?  Where is the union leadership who is pushing out the ranks to keep voting for these numb-skulls who did this to their membership?  Is no one going to take any responsibility for this?

    These deals must end, period.  All pension investments must be made fully public by people with experience in money management.

    As a simple start, I believe we need help from Springfield to pass pension reform legislation so that every public pension fund must be fully transparent with every investment.   That would solve half of the problems immediately.

  • They Don’t Want You to Know

    I bet you have no idea how many shootings there have been in Chicago this year.

    Me either.

    And it’s not because I haven’t tried to find out. About two months ago, I started reporting on crime and public safety. In light of the on-again, off-again handgun ban and Supt. Jody Weis’ insistence that there are too many guns out there, I was certain the Chicago Police Department would track shootings.

    And by shootings, I meant just that. Any time a loaded gun was fired. I thought that was clear enough.

    …

    The Chicago Police Department records crimes in a very specific way. Aggravated batteries with firearms are incidents in which someone is shot. But according to Sgt. Antoinette Ursitti, a department news affairs officer, this only includes the number of incidents, not victims. If five people are shot in a club, it’s recorded as a single incident even though a minimum of five shots were fired.

    And when three people were shot Wednesday morning in front of a Taco Bell next to Wrigley Field, police said the case report classified it as a single incident of aggravated battery with a firearm.

    (Full story here.)

    Mr. Weis and the Mayor tell us over and over that “crime is down.”  But something inside of us tells us otherwise.  What’s amazing here is that it take some college students to find out how badly the Chicago Police Department keeps its books.

    It takes awhile for this to sink-in because it doesn’t make sense, but in CPD world unless there’s a report there was no crime.  I recently wrote about how at a recent CAPS meeting we were told that there were 17 calls to 911 that resulted in zero (0) reports being filed.  Conclusion of CPD brass?  No crimes occurred.

    Why keeps stats this way?  Because they don’t want you to know what’s really going on.

    This needs to change.  We need to start measuring crime in practical ways.  I will be writing more about my plan to reduce crime in the near future.

  • Rahm’s Residency Issue

    Chicago mayoral candidate Rahm Emanuel was twice purged from the city voter rolls in the last 13 months but was reinstated by election officials, who allowed him to vote absentee in the February primary even though he did not live at his North Side address.

    (Full story here.)

    This is not a comment, up or down,  on Rahm.  He has said so little to date that he is hard to really evaluate as a candidate.  However this is interesting news as to how the political machine works in Chicago.