On Saturday we received a letter from Chicago 39th Ward alderman Margaret Laurino on the budget crisis that’s facing the city of Chicago. I’ll quote a bit of the letter:
My decision on the tax increase was not an easy one. I recognize that the cost of city services has increased and the City’s Budget Office considered all options before asking for a property tax increase. However, I know that my of my 39th Ward constituents are facginb financial difficulties and simply cannot absorb a tax increase at this time.
It is with this in mind that I decided to vote against the property tax increase today.
We’ve lived in the 39th Ward for going on 25 years and this is the first time we’ve received a letter like this from the alderman. Alderman Laurino has been a pretty reliable ally of Mayor Daley’s and I can only speculate that this letter is a mark of the pressure being applied on all sides. With both the state and the county governments struggling I doubt that this will be pretty.
What is to be done? Much of the attention in the discussion of budgets has been devoted to waste, fraud, and abuse and I have no doubt that those are factors in the growth of the city budget. Unfortunately, as Jesus said of the poor, waste, fraud, and abuse we shall always have with us and I think we should be looking at the structure of city employment for solutions. My reading of the city’s compensation plans suggests that, while the benefits portion of the schedules was quite consistent with what private sectors were doing 25 years ago, times have changed and the city’s benefits schedule is rather generous.
The time for economization was when revenues were expanding in the late 1990’s but it’s hard to muster the will to do the right thing before the bill comes due even if doing so is more difficult later on.
But the city and, indeed, the Democratic Party generally are in a pickle in dealing with public employee compensation plans. Elected officials are beholden to the public employees unions, their most reliable institutional supporters, and are understandably reluctant to bite the hand that feeds them. It’s a nettle that needs to be grasped.
Why is it that the ordinary working American gets the shaft everytime theres a short fall in the economic sector..why is it that those who are the most well off, have great health care, great retirements, great food, great housing…on and on..while ordinary Americans have to fight for some sort of retirement, affordable healthcare, affordable housing..so on and so on..
why do those who have so much insist on taking away what little the average working American has?? Not everyone gets to be on the top..most of us are just ordinary people with no big ambitions other then to live an ordinary life in a crazy world, we’ve worked hard for that. And that hard work earned and gave to those on the top…
What’s the plan anyway…to drive us all back to the streets to beg for crumbs? It was the best of worlds and it was the worst of worlds…so much for that great American Dream..I guess it’s not for all of us…I can’t wait til 2008!!