Rahm's Promise

Cut the overall sales tax rate and broaden the tax base by including luxury goods. He estimates that this tax swap will lead to an increase of $15 to $20 million in the city’s coffers.

Rhetorical Nonsense

This has the feel of far-fetched fairy dust. The question our reviewers asked was if the city cut sales tax and then couldn’t get the cooperation of the State on the state tax changes what would happen? The answer that came back was not reassuring.

It turns out that a lot of our fair city’s revenue comes from sales taxes which are indeed the highest of any municipality in the country. So we wondered if you could really replace the sales tax with a flurry of luxury taxes and the answer was inconclusive. Our reviewers were curious how Mr. Emanuel planned to proceed because to cut city taxes without securing the changes needed from the state would be a catastrophe helping no one. They came to the conclusion that there was also no way to accurately imagine what this would save or cost without making a number of assumptions that were particularly chaotic. They meant this in the mathematical sense of the term, things changing radically based on a small variation in some initial condition or newly arising variable.

Possible Problems

Aside from the obvious problem of having to wrangle the state into position to have this have any chance of working there is the uncertainty of knowing it will work at all. Experts spar with real intensity over the effectiveness of every tax and in regards to a tax swap it gets downright contentious fast. Our reviewers were far from kind to each other in the process and some of the arcana involved was way above my pay grade and I like trolling through the federal ledger just to keep my legalese sharp.

Rahm's Promise

Rahm will implement a reverse-auction system

Possible Problems

There is nothing problematic about this program. When the Mayor proposes something that is not out of some Lovecraftian nightmare he should be commended. Our reviewers thought it was an example of a solid reform of the procurement process. You should all read more about it here & here.

Rahm's Promise

Rahm will eliminate waste and increase competition by making the procurement system paperless and transparent

Rhetorical Nonsense

This proposal is vague but it has no rhetorical nonsense.

Possible Problems

Designing a database of any sort is never a guarantee that it will not create as many problems as it seeks to solve but on the whole having a unified database is a good start to getting a handle on Chicago’s procurement system… such as it is right now.

Rahm's Promise

Rahm Emanuel will create a Chicago First Policy to assist local businesses to get city contracts and will direct procurement officers to favor Chicago companies will all other factors are equal.

Rhetorical Nonsense

This has the feel of pure rhetorical nonsense if only because here we are already into the administration and the words Chicago First have yet to cross the Mayor’s lips or the lips of any of his people. On the other hand there is a horrifying corporate entity that has the feel of a shadow cabinet already holding the name ChicagoFirst… but when they say it sounds like they’re starting here and will be conquering other cities like some terrifying game of Risk.

Possible Problems

It could become a private/public partnership that helps the private contractors more than the public sector and trust. But we simply do not know because we don’t have enough details to know.

Notes

Rahm is a Wall Street guy and he plans to cut pensions and he’s not kidding around even though he has no details. This could be because he plans to do this at a bargaining table. Only time will tell.

Notes

Many of Rahm’s economic development plans have a very corporate feel and boil down to some brand of privatization or the other. So when looking at Rahm’s policies to save the city money one should be cognizant of what that might really mean for the city. We also found that routinely the estimates of savings were not backed up by anything present in the plan. In fact where claims could be evaluated we never found the stated savings to be in line with any kind of responsible extrapolation of the facts we had in hand. A lot of what we discovered was that Rahm’s use of corporate language sometimes obscured outcomes that can only end in downsizing and privatization. Rahm also has a few tax proposals that are populous in tone and difficult to pin down as to how effective they would be or how the lost tax revenue would be made up with the new paradigm he proposes. We think it would be good for people in Chicago to just have a better handle on what our taxes are and how they work in general so we pass along this to help you weave your way through what Rahm and other candidate suggests.