Cook County Clerk David Orr’s office today released the 2010 Cook County Tax Rates Report. The report lists property tax rates for all taxing districts in Cook County and provides sample composite rates for many municipalities. The composite rate is the total tax rate that appears on a tax bill. The composite tax rate on a typical City of Chicago tax bill will increase from 4.627% last year to 4.931%. This is the first time the rate has increased since tax year 1998 (payable in 1999) when it…
Today the Civic Federation published an update to its primer The Cook County Property Tax Extension Process: A Primer on Levies, Tax Caps, Tax Bills and the Effects of Tax Increment Financing Districts. The update adds additional years of data when available and provides an enhanced explanation of the effect of tax increment financing (TIF) on local governments and taxpayers in Cook County. This blog summarizes the TIF explanation included in the primer. For more detail and background, please…
On Monday the Civic Federation released its analysis of Chicago Public Schools $5.9 billion FY2012 budget proposal. The Federation supports the proposal as it provides a reasonable short-term plan to fund the District’s core educational mission during its difficult, deepening financial crisis. However, the Civic Federation has major concerns about the long term fiscal health of the District due to the prospect of enormous budget shortfalls in the coming years, particularly with the end of a…
The Civic Federation supports the Chicago Public Schools proposed $5.9 billion budget for FY2012, which is an increase of 1.5%, or $87.0 million, from the year-end estimates of FY2011. The proposed budget is a reasonable short-term plan to fund the District’s core educational mission through its difficult, deepening financial crisis. The Civic Federation is very concerned about the District’s long term fiscal health. CPS will face enormous budget shortfalls in future years, particularly with…
In its fiscal year 2012 budget proposal, the Chicago Public Schools administration provided for the first time a three-year projection of its future financial situation on page 9. The projection shows that the total CPS employer pension contribution is expected to jump from $219.3 million in FY2013 to $671.7 million in FY2014, adding over $450 million in expenditure pressure to the CPS operating budget that year. This spike is primarily the result of 2010 legislation that gave CPS a three-year…
The Chicago Teachers’ Pension Fund accumulated nearly $5.4 billion in unfunded obligations over the past ten years. This was an increase of over 10,000%, from $5.1 million in FY2001 to $5.4 billion in FY2010. In three years alone, from FY2008 to FY2010, unfunded liabilities grew by $2.3 billion. Unfunded actuarial accrued liability is the dollar value of accrued liabilities not covered by the actuarial value of assets in the pension fund (see the Civic Federation’s Status of Local Pension…
As explained previously in this blog a key indicator the Civic Federation uses to assess the financial health of local governments is the level of unreserved general fund balance maintained. Such reserves are essential in order for the governments to be able to withstand the inevitable “rainy days” that result from revenue fluctuations and unexpected expenditures. Without a fund balance in place, a government may have to abruptly cut services or raise taxes in response to unfavorable conditions…
The three largest municipal governments analyzed by the Civic Federation are the Chicago Public Schools (CPS), the City of Chicago and Cook County. All three began their FY2011 budget processes projecting large budget shortfalls: CPS projected a gap of $370 million, the City of Chicago projected a gap of $655 million and Cook County projected a gap of $487 million.[1] These budget shortfalls were primarily the result of existing structural imbalances that were exacerbated by declines in…
The Civic Federation analyzes the budgets of nine Chicago area local governments. One important indicator that the Federation utilizes to assess the financial health of these municipalities is their fund balance level. In particular, we examine the balance within the general fund that does not have any external legal restriction, called the unrestricted fund balance. Fund balance differs from net assets typically reported by business enterprises in that it includes only a subset of assets and…
Illinois Senate President John Cullerton has recently suggested that school districts should begin contributing a larger share of the employer contribution to the Teachers’ Retirement System of the State of Illinois. President Cullerton noted that this change would relieve some of the financial pressure on the State, which has borrowed to make its pension payments for the past two years. He has also stated that it would lead school districts to more carefully consider the effects of their…
