It’s no wonder that more and more Chicago aldermen are balking at Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s property tax hike proposal. They know property tax hikes won’t play well on the campaign trail later this year. Emanuel is calling for $750 million in property tax hikes over five years to prop up just two of the four...

Expect Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s call for property tax hikes to be a boon for Chicago’s collar counties and Lake County, Ind. Cook County residents have been fleeing to neighboring counties for decades, and Emanuel’s proposed hikes – to prop up city pensions – will only increase the outflow. According to IRS data, Cook County lost...

Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s pension reform scheme passed through the General Assembly this week and has been moved to Gov. Pat Quinn’s desk. This plan authorizes Chicago to raise $2.25 billion in additional property taxes over the next decade. Despite this massive tax hike, the city will raise only half its legally required pension payments. Hiking...

Gov. Pat Quinn is in a bind. He’s being asked to sign a Chicago pension bill that he knows has no real reforms and no way to pay for itself. By signing the bill, Quinn will give Mayor Rahm Emanuel his blessing to raise Chicago property taxes by $750 million over five years. But that’s...

When Mayor Rahm Emanuel went to SXSW to pitch Chicago as a destination city, he touted the city’s buzz. There’s no denying Chicago’s arts and tech scene is on the rise. But Emanuel failed to tell Austin crowds there’s a buzzkill on the way – the city’s fiscal collapse. Chicago continued its decline when two of...

In what’s likely to be a chain of credit downgrades for some of Chicago’s sister governments, Moody’s Investors Services cut the city of Chicago’s credit rating to Baa1 from A3. That downgrade follows the rare triple-notch downgrade the city received last year from Moody’s as a result of the city’s growing and out-of-control pension debt. Excluding Detroit,...