Page 33 - February 2016

Source: November 2015 Financial Condition of Chicago, Cook County and Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund Systems issued by the Commission on Gov- ernment Forecasting and Accountability (COGFA).
has to pay to get the fund to 90 percent. It has “intercept’ language that would give the pension fund the ability to get a court order that would force the state comptroller to take monies due the City and give them to the fund. SB 777 would also approve the Chicago Casino to be built and generate revenue directly to the CPD Pension Fund.
But because of his mission to squash collective bargaining, Gov. Rauner announced he would veto SB 777. A veto would kill it, so the State Senate opted for a “motion to reconsider,” and thus it awaits amidst what Sen. Cunningham described as the mess in Springfield.
And this is when those who deemed it important enough to attend the Town Hall Meeting went to town. Much of the nearly two-hour session was filled with “suggestions” about creating revenue sources for the pension fund.
“You can only squeeze so much out of property taxes,” Markus noted, “so we’re working with the FOP to come up with other sources.”
One attendee asked about “TIF,” Tax Increment Funding the City stores. TIF was used to provide $500 million to the Chicago Board of Education, and the member asked what everybody else in the room must have been thinking: “Can we get that?”
“There’s not enough TIF revenue to get you funded to the point where you should be,” Markus reported based on his research. “It would take at least 20 years.”
Of course, the casino revenue was suggested several times. But another suggestion came about a mechanism like video gaming that has been used in the suburbs to inject revenue into municipal coffers. Alderman O’Shea said he supported the video gaming idea but reasoned that not enough wards have the first responder population like the 19th, and that contributed to the lack of support for the video gaming idea.
Another suggestion came to direct revenue from medical marijuana dispensing to the pension fund. But Markus fur- ther reported that marijuana, like video gaming, wouldn’t really generate significant revenue for the pension pot.
Finally, Mike Malinowski, who has been a Chicago Police Officer for 18 years and probably falls somewhere between “not sure” and “you’re screwed,” floated an idea that sounded pretty good.
“What if we took a small percentage of any existing and future tax income, like 1-2-3-percent,” he began. “Whatever would be reasonable, and we distribute that right into the pension fund. We wouldn’t endanger any services, and after we get to that magic number of funding, we can put the excess back into the original source. Not to try to make the pension fund fat; just to get it to a reasonable level.”
The response to Malinowski’s plan was as rousing an applause as came on this night. The elected officials and experts in the room nodded with approval. Perhaps this Town Hall Meeting provided at least a bit of hope. d
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