Last spring, Mayor Rahm Emanuel proposed the “biggest property tax increase in Chicago history” — a whopping $250 million to shore up two city pension funds.
“Then he got in BIG trouble” — and backed down.
I’m hoping some of you recognize the above quotations from the just-finished mayoral campaign.
If not, you might be surprised to realize those words were never used to describe the mayor’s $250 million property tax hike proposal.
Instead, they were a centerpiece of Emanuel’s own campaign literature and commercials attacking Jesus “Chuy” Garcia for a 1986 vote by the then-alderman in support of an $80 million city property tax increase sought by Mayor Harold Washington.
“[Garcia] voted for the biggest property tax increase in Chicago history,” the Emanuel campaign declared in a series of mailers. “Then he got in BIG trouble.”
I’m still amazed at the sheer gall or chutzpah or whatever you want to call it that led the mayor to approve that disingenuous line of attack, considering his own attempt to set a new record just last year. I can only assume he figured he could get away with it because Garcia didn’t have the money to fight back.
It’s more amazing — even in the short attention span of today’s world — how quickly Emanuel’s property tax increase plans have faded from memory.
I’d wager most voters have also forgotten it was Gov. Pat Quinn, with an assist from skittish Chicago aldermen, who helped save Emanuel from what we now can see in hindsight would have been a potentially fatal blow to the re-election chances of the mayor and many of those aldermen.
“No can do,” Quinn told reporters after Emanuel proposed increasing property taxes $50 million each year for five years until it reached $250 million — an extra $750 million in taxes cumulatively during that period. Emanuel also tried to stick Quinn and the Legislature with the job of requiring the tax increase instead of leaving it up to the City Council.
Is any of this coming back to you?
The property tax hike was part of a hard-fought deal Emanuel struck to win benefit cuts and increased contributions from city employees and retirees who are members of two of the city’s financially troubled pension plans.
At the time, though, Quinn was feeling pressure from Bruce Rauner, who was misleadingly telling voters this was Quinn’s property tax hike instead of Emanuel’s. So Quinn helped the city come up with the idea of substituting a telephone tax increase that gave Emanuel the $50 million he needed to meet the first year’s commitment to the pension funds.
I thought the mayor had a good plan in the first place, and still do. If he wins re-election, I would anticipate defending his need to go back and raise property taxes for the rest of that money — except he no longer will say whether that’s his plan.
Unfortunately, Garcia has been no better about laying out his ideas for meeting the remainder of the city’s commitment, which will need to be met somehow.
The uncertainty of whether the pension-reform legislation will be upheld in court has provided both of them with a convenient excuse for failing to be more specific.
But it still smacks of “the politics of denying and deferring our problems” to which Emanuel says only Garcia is a throwback.
And that returns us to that 1986 property tax vote.
It came during the period of Council Wars, when Chicago’s first African-American mayor was locked in a constant fight with a City Council faction led by the two Eddies — Ald. Edward R. Vrdolyak and Ald. Edward Burke.
Washington sought an $80 million property tax increase to fill a budget hole created when the city’s lease tax was held unconstitutional.
Vrdolyak and Burke milked public sentiment against the tax increase in hopes of undermining Washington’s re-election chances the following spring, Chicagoans’ view of property taxes not being much different then than they are now.
Washington threatened mass city worker layoffs if he didn’t get the money. Even the Chicago Tribune editorial board sided with him.
Garcia, then a brand new member of the City Council, stuck with Washington, as did such independent stalwarts of the time as Martin Oberman and David Orr. The tax increase was approved without a vote to spare.
The current campaign narrative Emanuel is advancing is to cast doubt on whether Garcia can make the tough decisions required of a mayor, a subject on which I have some concerns of my own.
But as Emanuel has been kind enough to remind us, Garcia was called upon to make a very tough decision right out of the gate in 1986. And he didn’t back down.
That corned beef at Manny’s Deli is calling. It’s saying: Be sure to answer today’s “Sit Down with Mark Brown” contest question.
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