With the city’s public schools facing massive budget deficits and cuts, house speaker Michael Madigan has apparently decided that it’s in Chicago’s best interest if Mayor Emanuel is more like me.
On the table was Mayor Emanuel’s proposal to have the state pick up about $200 million of the annual payment CPS has to make to the teachers’ pension system.
The General Assembly gave CPS that holiday. But now things are worse. “Many believe that the three-year pension holiday we approved earlier this decade should have been a breather for CPS to figure out a more stable way to make payments,” Currie testified. “Instead pension liabilities ballooned after the three-year break.”
After talking about how Chicago messed up the pension holiday, Currie moved on to the tax increment financing program—one of my favorite subjects, right up there with Richard Pryor movies from the 70s.
So how can the mayor claim this crisis is an emergency that demands a state bailout if he’s diverting all that money from the schools to TIFs?
For his part, Alderman Burns says he welcomes her testimony even though she criticized the city. “Barbara is giving a perspective from the House of our situation,” says Burns. “And we have to take it seriously.”
