This article describes the politics surrounding a vote by the Cook County Board of Commissioners to reduce the county sales tax by a half-cent. It cites the Civic Federation’s analysis of the County’s proposed FY2009 budget.
This article discusses the Civic Federation’s analysis of the City of Chicago’s FY2010 proposed budget. The Federation opposed the budget because off its reliance on reserve funds to make up a fiscal shortfall.
This article mentions a recent City budget hearing at which the Civic Federation presented its analysis of the City of Chicago FY2010 proposed budget.
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 proposed $6.14 billion FY2010 City of Chicago budget because it is unsustainable and relies predominantly on one-time reserve funds to close its $520 million deficit. The Federation’s full 69-page analysis of the budget is available on our website, www.civicfed.org. The FY2010 budget was crafted without adequate attention to future budgets. The City proposes to close 93.8% of its deficit with $370 million from its asset lease reserves and $118 million in savings…
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 Civic Federation has enormous concerns about the fiscal risks associated with Governor Quinn’s “deal” to avoid CTA fare increases. Under the proposal, the Regional Transportation Authority will issue General Obligation bonds worth $83 million in both 2010 and 2011 and transfer the funds to the CTA for capital projects. The CTA will then shift a similar amount of its existing capital funds to its operating budget. The State of Illinois is supposed to then pay the first two years of debt…
Under the old state statute that limited the property tax rates of the Chicago Public Schools, Tax Increment Financing directly restricted property tax revenues available to CPS because it froze part of the equalized assessed value (EAV)—the tax base—available for taxation.1 This rate limit statute still exists, but it no longer impacts the school district’s tax levy due to the introduction of the Property Tax Extension Limitation Law (PTELL, often called “tax caps”) in 1995, which limits…
Chicago Public Schools has received almost $400 million in Tax Increment Financing revenue from the creation of the first City of Chicago TIF in 1984 through July 2009 and is scheduled to receive over $491.3 million more according to intergovernmental agreements with the City of Chicago. CPS has used TIF funding to renovate or build elementary and high schools and is planning to use $14 million for ADA accessibility improvements to 15 schools. Approximately 45% of the $399.0 million received so…
