Chicago wants fewer residents? Rahm-town mulling income tax, congestion fee, Lake Shore Dr. tolls

Lake Shore Drive is in front
of the skyscrapers

When our daughter was born in 1996, we knew it was time to flee Chicago for the suburbs, which we did three years later. We did not want to subject our daughter to the school system that then-Secretary of Education William Bennett called the nation's worst the decade prior. President Obama sent his daughters to private schools, although that didn't stop him from hiring Arne Duncan, who was the CEO of the Chicago school system, to be his Education Secretary.

Chicago's inspector general has several ideas to raise revenue. A one percent city income tax would do the most to facilitate the depopulation of the nation's third-largest city. Chicago's population hasn't been so low since 1920. A couple of other odious ideas are a congestion fee to drive downtown, which will infuriate retailers and theater operators. Toll booths for Lake Shore Drive are also being mulled.

Chicagoans already suffer by enduring one of the nation's highest sales tax rates.

Detroit has a municipal income tax. How is Detroit doing?

For Chicago's new mayor Rahm Emanuel, I suggest pension reform and a dramatic renegotiation of union contracts as starting points in getting the city's financial house in order.

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