Chicago Public Television Garbage Collection 12/17/2009 Online edition This segment on the “Chicago Tonight” news program examines Chicago’s ward-based waste collection system. Civic Federation President Laurence Msall was interviewed for the report. He says the City pays too much for the management and labor needed to run 50 individual garbage collection districts.
The redesign of the Civic Federation website in July has provided the public, government officials, and the media better access to the Federation’s analyses of government services in Illinois. The regularly-updated Civic Federation blog especially has provided a constant source of information on the issues that the Federation covers, including local budgets and pensions, taxes, privatization and asset leases, and commentary on events in the news. Blog posts about local government budgets…
This brief provides an updated compilation of selected consumer taxes, including rates and descriptions, in effect in the City of Chicago on December 1, 2009. It includes such taxes as the sales tax, gas tax, amusement tax, lease tax, hotel tax, liquor tax, restaurant tax, soft drink tax, wheel tax, and parking tax.
The Civic Federation's legislative priorities for 2010 include public pension reform, requiring state government to develop and implement performance measurement and a capital improvement plan, the dissolving of the Illinois International Port District, creating a new governing board for the Cook County Forest Preserve District, reinstating means-tested transit discounts for seniors, requiring large counties to produce timely annual audits, enacting tax increment financing reporting reform,…
In two previous blog posts [here and here] the Civic Federation discussed the City of Chicago’s use of asset lease proceeds from its 99 year leases of the Chicago Skyway and the City’s parking meters. In sum, the City has set aside $900.0 million in long-term reserve accounts using proceeds from both the Skyway and parking meter leases. The City set aside an additional $1,226.4 million of asset lease proceeds from the Skyway and parking meter leases to fund operating expenses between FY2005…
In FY2010 the City of Chicago proposes to close a majority of its FY2010 $520 million budget deficit with proceeds it received from the long-term leases of its parking meters and the Chicago Skyway. This begs the question: how has the City been using the rest of the proceeds from its long-term asset leases? The long-term lease of the Chicago Skyway yielded the city a lump sum payment of $1.83 billion. The long-term lease of the City’s parking meters yielded $1.15 billion. Combined the long-…
The Civic Federation opposes the FY2010 City of Chicago budget of $6.14 billion because it is unsustainable and relies too heavily on one-time reserve funds to close a $520.0 million budget deficit. The proposed drastic draw down of long-term reserves allows for increased spending in FY2010 but does not properly plan for the future. The City must consider FY2011 and FY2012 when crafting its FY2010 budget as the City’s revenues are not likely to rebound enough in the next 12 months to replace…
The Illinois Senate voted today to approve House Bill 4625, which means both houses of the Illinois General Assembly have now approved the same bill to reduce the veto override threshold for the Cook County Board of Commissioners to the three-fifths level common to most governments. The number of votes now needed to overturn a veto from the Cook County Board President is an unusually high four-fifths. The bill can now go to the Governor’s desk to be signed into law. The Civic Federation…
The property tax rates released yesterday by the Cook County Clerk show that the composite tax rates in the City of Chicago and many municipalities declined slightly from the previous year. However, many property owners will still see higher property tax bills arriving in the mail soon. The Cook County property tax system is so complex that it is impossible to predict exactly how the new tax rates will affect an individual property owner’s bill. However, there are a few features of tax year…
Data from the most recent audited financial statements of Illinois’ state and local government pension funds shows that the total unfunded liabilities for pensions supported by the taxes of Chicago residents reached $10,037 per capita for fiscal year 2008. Property taxes paid by Chicago residents (both owners and renters) support the four pension funds for City of Chicago employees as well as the pension funds for employees of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District, Cook County, Cook…
