Mayor Daley’s recently released 2007 budget starts with a whopper and goes downhill from there. “We are confident that next year we will once again meet our responsible revenue projections,” Daley said in his October 11 budget address to the City Council. “That’s why next year the city of Chicago will make new investment in our people and neighborhoods without raising property taxes or any other tax or fee. This will be the third year in a row without a city of Chicago property tax increase.”
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From 2003 to 2005, the years Daley supposedly held the line on taxes, the TIF take rose from $287 million to $387 million. In all likelihood it will rise above $400 million this year, and there’s no telling how high it will soar in 2007. But the budget isn’t so much an actuarial statement as a public relations spectacle–particularly in an election year. It starts with the mayor’s City Council address, in which he pats himself and the aldermen on the back for a job well done. Then he’s off to meet with the editorial boards of the downtown dailies, while his aides disseminate the budget document itself, a fat, glossy book filled with color pictures of happy citizens and praise for the wisdom and compassion of our dear leader (“part of Mayor Daley’s continuing commitment to ensure the health and welfare of newborn children”–you get the idea).
The aldermen and the dailies fell in line with the budget spectacle, hailing the mayor for his masterful leadership. “The 2007 budget that Mayor Daley unveiled last week is much like this year’s budget and doesn’t call for any tax hikes or fee increases,” the Sun-Times editorialized. “The city will spend about $500 million more, but will pay for that with natural revenue growth. For many Chicagoans, knowing that their city tax bill won’t go up may be all they care to know about the budget.”
Of course, when the tax cap expires next year and tax bills come out in August, people who were protected in the 2003 reassessment will get hammered. Reassessment represents a potential windfall in property taxes, and Daley’s got Millennium Park to pay off, an Olympics to pay for, Wal-Marts to subsidize, and big TIF expenditures in the Loop. If he’s reelected, look for him to cut the rate by a tad, reap a reassessment bonanza, and continue to brag about how he’s holding the line on taxes.
Here goes.
