You Don’t Get What you Pay For

Here are some eye-opening statistics from an analysis by Hannah Schmidt at Illinois Policy:

CPS is spending $29,028 per student this school year. That includes all the district’s expenditures, such as operational spending, debt servicing and capital expenditures. CPS’ spending per student is the second highest among Illinois’ 10 largest school districts, which average nearly $22,400.

Yet CPS and CTU think the district needs more money, and they are willing to sacrifice teacher time in classrooms to demand more, even as reading and math proficiency is extremely low in district schools.

Just this month, hundreds of CTU members left their classrooms – while still being paid – to lobby lawmakers in Springfield for an additional $1.1 billion in district funding. They didn’t get it and CPS faces a $400 million deficit as CTU is making pricey demands

Adding a bit of fuel to the fire are these observations by Judge Glock from a piece at City Journal:

According to the group Truth in Accounting, Chicago continues to live up to its moniker “Second City” in at least one respect: it has the second-worst debt load of any big city in America—about $43,000 per taxpayer, or almost $40 billion in total. The first is New York City, but Chicago residents also have to deal with Illinois’ debts, which total $42,000 per taxpayer, third worst in the nation. Thus, a family moving to Chicago suddenly becomes the inheritor of almost $85,000 in liabilities. By this metric, Chicago is no longer second but has by far the worst debt burden of any major city.

Chicago’s accumulating debt might be bearable if the city had low taxes and therefore room to raise them and pay down some of the liabilities. But taxes in the Windy City already rank among the nation’s harshest. According to a national study, Chicago’s combined city and state taxes would eat up over 12 percent of a U.S. median family income. The only large cities with higher proportionate taxes are Rust Belt towns with much smaller populations, such as Detroit and Newark. Chicago imposes the highest sales tax of any major city (10.25 percent) and punishing property taxes, too.

and

Unfortunately for Johnson, even if he wanted to constrain spending and corral expenses, he has few options. In the past three years, 40 percent to 44 percent of all local budget went to the “fixed costs” of bond interest charges and pensions. Chicago is in a league of its own here. The next closest big-city competitor was Dallas, with just over 30 percent going to fixed costs.

Chicago is extremely limited in how much it can actually derive more revenue by raising taxes. State law puts it in a strait-jacket and not only do we have the highest sales and property taxes of any major city but taxpayers rejected amending the state constitution to impose a graduated income tax. This is tragically comical:

Johnson admitted that property taxes were “painfully high” and in his campaign said that he wouldn’t raise them, instead vowing to “make the suburbs, airlines & ultra-rich pay their fair share.” He wanted to quadruple the transfer levy on expensive property, what he called a “mansion tax,” and impose a transaction tax on Chicago’s tottering finance industry. Much of Johnson’s tax plan either is impossible under existing law or serves more of a punitive than a fund-raising purpose. Illinois governor J. B. Pritzker, no anti-taxer, already said that he would block the financial transfer tax, and voters soundly rejected Johnson’s mansion tax.

Guess who one of those who would end up paying the “mansion tax” would be? I’ll give you three guesses and the first two don’t count.

I don’t object to paying for value. Or to help the less fortunate. But that’s not what’s happening.