Year after next election year: Chicagoans face another property tax hike to pay for pensions

In 2019 there will be another citywide election for Chicago's City Council. And of course for mayor. What awaits the following year? Why another huge tax increase to pay for municipal worker pensions.

From the Chicago Sun-Times:

Chicago taxpayers face yet another property tax increase for police and fire pensions in 2020 — and another hike the following year in the tax tacked onto water and sewer bills to save the Municipal Employees pension fund, aldermen learned on the first day of City Council budget hearings.

Following five-year "ramp-up" periods, the additional increases will be needed to honor the city's statutory promise to keep all four city government pension funds on the road to 90 percent funding by 2048.

By the city’s own estimate, police and fire pension costs will rise by $297.3 million, or 36 percent, in 2020. The Municipal and Laborers plan costs will grow by $330.4 million, or 50 percent, in 2022.

“We’ve done the biggest [property tax] increases,” Chicago Chief Financial Officer Carole Brown said Monday. “But there will be an increase in 2020 for police and fire. The increase for Muni and Laborers will happen a couple years later. . . .

The situation in Chicago must be worse than I thought. After all, in all Democratic-run jurisdictions, financial stability is alway--always--just one more tax hike away. But here two are named.

After Mayor Rahm Emanuel was re-elected in 2015, Chicagoans were clobbered with they city's largest property tax hike in history to pay for, you guessed right, pensions!

The Chicago Police Annuity and Benefit Fund is funded at the paltry rate of just 25 percent.

Some sort of bankruptcy or default is coming to Chicago. "Illinois math" only works for a while.