Page 4 - October 2015

ened, prisons soon filled to capacity and violent crime began to decline.
Obviously the tide has once again turned. The previous money spent on enforcing crime and increasing our front-line numbers has depleted in every municipal and state budget. Rather than maintaining focus on keeping streets safe, more and more financial support goes to social program after social pro- gram. As in the past, these programs have about as much success in changing criminal behavior as a T-Baller does hit- ting a 95 MPH fastball. From coast to coast, millions of our tax dollars are spent on programs that continually fail to stop murderers from murdering, drug users from using drugs, gang-bangers from gang-banging, rapists from raping and domestic abusers from abusing. To use another baseball analogy, these attempts to “over-program” and “over- spend” on getting a handle on crime have a batting average of .000.
As the media, politicians, academics and activists continue to drive down law enforcement activity by stepping on our profession, crime will certainly increase. As before, society’s fear of victimization will increase in time. The law-abiding will tire of the waste on programs and move toward enforcing the laws as they are written. They will also support police and push to hire more officers, and tire of those who do not. The next phase of this cycle will be repeated. Once more, the populous will realize that more police equals less crime. Once again, the legiti- mate members of society will come to demand increased numbers to our front lines, larger prisons and stricter sentenc- ing guidelines. This is something we in law enforcement have known all along.
We need more supporters, not more detractors! We need more police, not more programs!
Responding to the politicians
According to many of the experienced players in Springfield, taking the temper- ature in our state capital is more difficult to take now than it has ever been in recent memory. As you may know by pre- vious articles, the Lodge’s lobbyists have more than 60 years of combined expo- sure to the inner workings of Springfield and neither of them can remember things being as ‘up in the air’ as they have been since the last election. The entire FOP community; the Illinois State Lodge, Trooper’s Lodge #41, the Illinois Labor Council, Lodge 7 and every other Lodge with a membership large enough to offer assistance have all been involved in
working toward garnering as much polit- ical support as possible in an environ- ment that is anything but open and approachable.
That being said, as far our attempt to secure the final piece of the puzzle designed to solve our pension crisis by way of a Chicago Casino, we are presently waiting on some movement from both sides of the aisle to do the right thing. We really need the Democrats and Republicans to be able to somehow sit down and come to a mutual understand- ing on how much Senate Bill 777 and the attached Casino Bill will benefit the Chicago Police and Fire pension funds, while bailing out the city of Chicago and the state of Illinois, as well.
The amount of money earmarked to go directly into these two pension sys- tems will relieve a sizeable amount of the financial burden on the Chicago and lli- nois budgets” to “amount of additional funding that could be reallocated to any of the areas that have already suffered, while eventually freeing up a tremendous amount of additional fund- ing that could be reallocated to any of the programs that have already suffered budget reductions. We remain hopeful that when the elected officials return to Springfield, the plan is to continue our efforts with an organized process of com- munication designed to address bi-par- tisan support for SB 777 and a Chicago Casino. The following section of this arti- cle speaks to another recent change that gives us even further concern regarding the likelihood of a Chicago Casino com- ing to fruition.
Responding to the tax increase
In his 2016 budget address to the City Council, the mayor included a property tax, the likes of which has never before been proposed. According to the plan, the $500 million-plus tax hike will be exclusively dedicated to the Chicago Police and Chicago Fire pension funds. Although we are always interested when money will be exclusively dedicated to further support and bail out our retire- ment funds, we are concerned that many of us will be paying again for something we have already paid into.
What do we mean by the previous statement? Well let’s look at who lives in the city: Chicago Police Officers and Fire- fighters. Let’s look at where a lot of us live, in areas where our homes (especially after the reassessment and our personal home improvements) are valued above the $250,000 level. The $250,000 value of your home is the predetermined level the
city is using on whether your taxes will or won’t be increased. We have all paid into our pensions with each and every check since the day we started the academy. Now, we have to pay more in our property taxes to bail out a dangerously fragile pension that others have improp- erly managed. We did a response in the form of a press release along with the Tom Ryan, the President of Chicago Fire- fighters Union Local 2 (please see page 15).
Are we pleased with now having to pay more in property taxes? No. Are we pleased that we have to once more con- tribute to our funds? No. Are we pleased that the money will be used to shore up our funds? Yes. Are we pleased that the money will be exclusively used for CPD and CFD pensions? Yes. The entire increase is something that we are obvi- ously split on, but it is difficult to turn away from a dedicated source of funding to support all of our retirements. As with almost everything that affects our mem- bers, there are so many moving parts to this issue. Since the budget hearing took place, we have some members calling the office asking why we would ever sup- port any tax increases because their property taxes are high enough already. We have other members calling to let us know that even though we didn’t cause the present pension problems, we should completely support the dedicated fund- ing this increase will generate to help the viability of our fund. We have other members that aren’t pleased with paying more and believe if their taxes are going to go up, every home owner in the city should be paying at a higher rate; ergo no exemptions. We have yet another camp of members that are dead-set against any increase in taxes, no matter the reason.
So there you have it; another easy fix and another easy decision for us to make on behalf of the membership. Any deci- sion on this particular issue needs to take into account the greatest good for the greatest number. Either way we go, we still have wait on where the City Council winds up going in its committee meet- ings, discussions and eventual vote on the mayoral budget proposal. No matter what the final decision is, not everyone will be in agreement. Some members will be somewhat accepting of an increase. Some members will be upset if there is any increase. However, there is one thing we can be sure of: No matter the out- come, no members will be thrilled that they have to pay more for something they already paid for. That we can all agree on.
Be Safe and God Bless the Police.
CHICAGO LODGE 7 ■ OCTOBER 2015
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