Mayor Daley Presents Final Budget Of His Career
UPDATED October 13, 2010 6:05 p.m.
CHICAGO (WBBM/CBS) - It was a very special day for Mayor Richard M. Daley on Wednesday as he presented the final budget of his record-setting tenure at City Hall, avoiding tax increases but providing only a temporary fix to the city's budget woes.
Daley's plan calls for several one-time revenues to avoid tax and fee increases in 2011, but does not include long-term financial solutions, making it more difficult for his successor to balance future budgets.
The mayor's proposal calls for using $120 million from a rapidly dwindling account created when the city privatized parking meters, siphoning $180 million in "surplus" funds generated by tax-increment-financing (TIF) districts and saving $142 million by refinancing old borrowing in a way that will extend debt payments to another generation of taxpayers.
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Daley is not calling for any higher taxes or fees. The mayor said it wouldn't be fair to heap on residents during the stubborn recession.
CBS 2 Chief Correspondent Jay Levine reports that, with his is retirement on the horizon and his city out of money – $650 million in the red – Daley unveiled his final budget plan to the City Council and received a three-minute standing ovation from the aldermen. The applause was not about the money he needs, but about the things he's done during his nearly 22 years in office.
Daley talked about the city he inherited and the city which, seven months from now, he will leave to his successor.
"When I became your mayor, Chicago had been called a 'Beirut on the Lake,'" Daley said. "Since then we've lowered our voices and raised our sights. ... But the future holds greater, greater progress for all of us."
But almost as soon as the applause died down, the fireworks began outside City Hall.
Former White House chief of staff and mayoral hopeful Rahm Emanuel said, "We must go beyond the temporary fixes to confront our structural deficit in a permanent way."
Gery Chico, a longtime top aide to Mayor Daley, who is also running to succeed his boss, offered a sharp counterattack to Emanuel.
"I don't think we can afford to have people from Washington coming to Chicago, telling us how to run budgets. Washington is famous for gridlock and red ink. We're a trillion dollars plus in deficit in Washington," Chico said. "Here, I've balanced 16 budgets in this city, the schools and the parks. I know how to get a balanced budget and support the things people care about."
To others, balancing the city budget was easier said than done. The mayor proposed eliminating a $650 million dollar budget deficit by taking money from Tax Increment Financing funds and parking meter reserves, expediting expected income and restructuring loans.
Ald. Bob Fioretti (2nd), who is planning to announce his own campaign for mayor soon, said, "This budget is a Band-Aid approach towards the future and it doesn't solve the problems that are affecting us."
City Clerk Miguel Del Valle, the first person to declare a mayoral campaign after Daley said he planned to step down, said, "This is a patchwork deal that, I think, is probably the best that could be done at this time."
The cornerstone of the plan is greater police presence.
Daley said Tuesday that by fall 2011, the city will have added as many 830 officers to the street – through both reassignments of existing officers and the hiring of new Police Academy graduates.
In the past year, 212 officers have been transferred from desk to street duty. In addition, 111 will be moved from Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy community policing duties to the street within the next week.
The department also has hired 314 new officers in the past year and a half and next year, the city will conduct two more police classes, which should add 150 to 200 more new officers. The city is also seeking a new firm to administer a new entry-level police exam, the mayor's office said.
But Mark Donahue, the president of the Fraternal Order of Police, said the numbers don't keep pace with attrition.
"Just in the last nine months we've lost 417 (officers), they've hired 314 in the last 18 months. The figures don't lie," Donahue said. "The message he appears to be sending is 'the Calvary's on the way', when in fact there are no bodies on the horses," he said.
Mayor Daley agreed that the number of officers he plans to add may be too few, but he said it's the best City Hall can do and still keep its hands out of taxpayers' pockets.
"I need a thousand. Make it 10,000. I mean -- everything is not enough. The Park District, the schools -- even your family. . . . You don't have enough. But do taxpayers have enough money to pay more taxes?" Daley said.
Daley urged critics to look at what's happening around the country. "Other cities are laying off fire, police, closing police stations, fire stations — small cities, big cities, medium-sized cities all over the country. We're trying to maintain our percentages," he said.
The proposed budget doesn't call for any new taxes or fees and only 277 job cuts from the city's workforce of 33,000. Increased taxes and fees and more job cuts would have been tough to get past aldermen also facing re-election.
"Alderman are the ones who vote," Ald. Walter Burnett (27th) said, adding that the City Council wouldn't have accepted more drastic cuts or increases in taxes or fees. "And he knows that and so he was very considerate with that."
Among other candidates CBS Chicago tried to contact for reaction to the Mayor's Budget, State Sen. James Meeks declined to comment and Congressman Luis Gutierrez was nowhere to be found.
Gutierrez has scheduled a 3 p.m. announcement for Thursday, when he's expected to announce he's running for mayor.
But another candidate who met with the congressman on Wednesday said he doesn't think Gutierrez has made up his mind yet.
CBS 2 Political Producer Ed Marshall, the Sun-Times Media Wire and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
