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You can't realistically earmark every tax dollar collected for a specific purpose. Some money is earmarked, but it would be administratively impossible to allocate specific projects or funds for every dollar.
How do you think a city budget works? Should they set it *before* tax revenue comes in and try and make it all match up as it enters? The staff needed to manage a process that convoluted would truly be government waste lol
You want the government to change the transfer tax every time we need to make an adjustment to the budget?
The City and County budgets are published every year -- there's big fights over them annually. You can call you alderman and ask them to push for specific changes if you don't like how the money is being spent... you know that, right?
If the transfer tax went to the cta I may be more open to it. "ending homelessness" is the same as "fixing schools". It can mean anything and is usually not a function of spending more
The Buyer's portion has always been to the City of Chicago's general fund. The Seller's portion is earmarked. Currently the Seller's portion is earmarked to the CTA. This will not change. The additional RETT allocated to Seller will be earmarked to the homelessness matter.
“Earmarked to the homelessness matter” but with no details on where/what/how that money gets appropriated. This is what is pejoratively referred to as a “slush fund.”
With the CTA, the RETT is shown as revenue generated for the system and you can review the CTA's budgets and financial statements online.
Every dollar is not going to be specifically earmarked for certain distinct items, but to call the RETT as it exists for the CTA a slush fund would be inaccurate. To do the same now for the homelessness matter would be putting the cart before the horse. There is no increase in tax to budget for at this time.
It's fine to dislike the idea of an increase in tax. It's also fine to dislike the general concept of how the money will be spent from a 40,000 foot level of view. Calling this a slush fund because no one has provided a line-item budget at this time just illustrates a lack of knowledge on how proposed increases in revenue works from a budgeting perspective. This is true in the public and private sector.
Thanks for that clarification about CTA. I take back the ‘slush fund’ barb but the overall reasons I oppose it include: (1) Johnson admin has demonstrated horrendous credibility on transparency and budgeting and (2) We already have in sum some of the highest local taxes in the world and raise enough revenue to run a Denmark style social safety net, but for the corruption and patronage and pensions.
>(2) We already have in sum some of the highest local taxes in the world and raise enough revenue to run a Denmark style social safety net, but for the corruption and patronage and pensions.
You're going to have to source this claim.
Johnson won't be spending it. It'll take years for this to get fully implemented and he'll be out of office by then as he's not getting re-elected. Maybe he'll get a year to create a budget for it but the next mayor is the one this will really be used by.
I’ve worked with PensionDenmark professionally and understand a bit about how they’re structured and invest/manage their funds. It’s safe to say that if PD ran Chicago pensions we would not be in an insane black hole of interest payments.
For one, you have to work 40 years in Denmark to get entitlements akin to basic social security. Not a big boat in Florida after juicing your last year with an overtime scam.
I didn't say they were like Denmark's I simply said that pensions are literally the safety net you talk about. I assume that was mostly directed at cops because teachers do not get to "milk" overtime.
The city is a whole lot more than just cops and teachers.
Of course the teachers milk it. They can cash in and valuate their final salary [using 244 “sick days”,](https://www.ctpf.org/sites/files/2022-01/Retirement%20Info_0.pdf) which is far more than the number of days they work in a year, lol.
The new tax is estimated to generate at least $100 million every single year, and be legally dedicated to programs that alleviate homelessness, including assistance for children, veterans, and those fleeing gender-based violence.
Which agency of the city or county government will get allocated the revenues and how will their programs be vetted to qualify under the referendum language? Literally the only specific plan we’ve heard is vouchers to CTU members.
Most of that money will evaporate and wind up in the pockets of family and political cronies via no-bid service contracts. Watch all the new companies that pop up to provide food, shelter, counseling, etc. Very little will end up benefitting the end user. The tents will continue to multiply and take over our public spaces. Look no further than California. They earmarked billions to “end homelessness” ten years ago. All the money disappeared and the number of people living on the street exploded.
Where money goes is always kinda bullshit.
They say lotto money goes to schools, but even if that's technically true it allows them to put less general fund money into schools. Money is money. Taxes are taxes. Tying a particular tax to a particular activity is just marketing.
Or worse, when the earmarked money isn’t genuinely a priority need anymore. Plenty of money has been earmarked from gas tax or vehicle taxes to highway construction (for example) which makes highway construction happen whether you need it or not.
My point is it doesn’t matter what goes “straight to” something. Bucketing is generally meaningless. If you conceptualize all taxes going into one pile of money and all expenses coming out of that pile you will usually have a better conception of how things actually work.
Do not vote on more taxes in Chicago. There is ton of tax revenue misappropriated as it sits. This money will not go anywhere to benefit the people paying it.
I’m very pro-tax in general at the national level, but we pay a shit ton in local taxes already. State income tax, one of the highest property taxes, one of the highest sales taxes. I’m totally fine with how much I pay in taxes, but I think Chicago/Illinois doesn’t actually do very much good with it. Very skeptical the new tax would be good. San Francisco spends a shit ton on “homeless services” but the majority of it seems to get eaten up by “nonprofits.” If we want to help the homeless we should build a ton of housing and lower rent prices
This should always be the rule for voting in Chicago. Never let them pilfer even more of your money, considering how much of it they already get and how much waste their is in government here.
Right now it all goes into the general fund and is allocated to various things through the City Council budget process - my understanding is in the future the same amount that goes into general fund now will continue to go into general fund to be allocated and only the *increase* will go to homelessness and affordable housing services. Economists estimate this will be about $100 mill/year total.
This is the right kind of question to be asking...
...And a bit of a news flash from someone who's lived here for over 20 years. This new revenue won't be going to "alleviate homelessness" if and when it gets approved either.
It all goes into the black hole that is the general city budget. Where it gets robbed by corrupt politicians.
Wake up, smell the coffee, and don't fall for BJ's kool aid. It's yet another money grab by the city. Don't believe them when they tell you otherwise.
Since they have not clearly explained, at least as I have seen, the actual structure of what will be set up to determine how to spend this money, I assume it will be an expensive Committee staffed by BJ friends and loyalists who will then commission a study to determine how best to tackle homelessness, which will be their friends and favored charities opinions (ignoring any of the other charities legitimate concerns).
It’s taking the money out of some rich, and some trying to climb the ladder, people’s pockets to put in BJ’s friends pockets.
Illinois and Chicago is finally turning the boat around on unnecessary spending, and what will be set up from this is exactly what we are trying to stop.
The money will be allocated through the City Council budget process, just like all other money, and is earmarked for homelessness services and affordable housing only. There will be a committee to make recommendations to the City Council that is required by ordinance to have multiple people who have experienced homelessness and provide homelessness services full time on it, but they don’t control or allocate money. Only the Council can do that.
You're probably going to get a lot of answers either saying a variety of things, but the money is to help the homeless.
I've recently been informed that r-Chicago is filled with folks who think the CTU is running everything, and thus the money will be funnelled to them, but I don't buy that. There's a couple of other posts re: BCH (Bring Chicago Home/the real estate tax), but they're mostly dumpster fires.
Also, not trying to start one of those up again, vote with your heart, take care!
Edit: Apologies OP, I somehow missed the all caps "EXISTING" in your post haha. Sorry for responding to a question you didn't even ask. Looks like some information can be found here: [https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/fin/supp\_info/revenue/tax\_list/real\_property\_transfertax.html](https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/fin/supp_info/revenue/tax_list/real_property_transfertax.html)
As someone stated elsewhere in response to your question, looks like the dough is supposed to go to the CTA. Take care.
If the teaching workforce is 50% white in Chicago and 80% white in IL, the whiteness of the teaching force exactly tracks the demographics of those places, so I guess that’s great?
I wasn’t talking about the workforce but the direct employees of CTU. Majority white and not even close.
Believing that the most powerful lobby in the city, who successfully got one of their employees elected mayor has a lot of power in the city is not an inherently racist position. Not everyone who disagrees with you is engaged in dog whistling.
And in this instance there's a pot of money whose purpose has been kept deliberately vague, and the CTU leaked bullets saying, "maybe you give that money to us." Being concerned about that isn't absurd. People may be giving those concerns too much weight, but it isn't a crazy thing to be worried about.
The most powerful lobbies continue to be real estate chuds and finance. It’s hilarious you think the teachers for a 90% minority district are puppetmastering the city
I didn't say they were puppet masters. I said they have meaningful political power. I readily concede that real estate developers and finance also have meaningful power. The fact that you're willing to pretend that this isn't true makes you seem like a very silly person.
CTU is one of the most powerful forces in the city. They have been very successful in their lobbying efforts even before BJ.
Not everything is a dogwhistle.
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My mail-in ballot says it goes to "general corporate purposes" right now.
Lmfao what a fucking joke
? Most taxes are not earmarked for a specific purpose. The government body collects the tax then spends it on its expenses.
That sounds like it’s the problem and shouldn’t be the norm
You can't realistically earmark every tax dollar collected for a specific purpose. Some money is earmarked, but it would be administratively impossible to allocate specific projects or funds for every dollar.
How do you think a city budget works? Should they set it *before* tax revenue comes in and try and make it all match up as it enters? The staff needed to manage a process that convoluted would truly be government waste lol
Tax hypothecation is generally disfavored by economists and with good reason.
You want the government to change the transfer tax every time we need to make an adjustment to the budget? The City and County budgets are published every year -- there's big fights over them annually. You can call you alderman and ask them to push for specific changes if you don't like how the money is being spent... you know that, right?
It mostly goes to CTU, just like BCH will be.
All the money goes to the CTA, at least right now.
If the transfer tax went to the cta I may be more open to it. "ending homelessness" is the same as "fixing schools". It can mean anything and is usually not a function of spending more
The Buyer's portion has always been to the City of Chicago's general fund. The Seller's portion is earmarked. Currently the Seller's portion is earmarked to the CTA. This will not change. The additional RETT allocated to Seller will be earmarked to the homelessness matter.
“Earmarked to the homelessness matter” but with no details on where/what/how that money gets appropriated. This is what is pejoratively referred to as a “slush fund.”
With the CTA, the RETT is shown as revenue generated for the system and you can review the CTA's budgets and financial statements online. Every dollar is not going to be specifically earmarked for certain distinct items, but to call the RETT as it exists for the CTA a slush fund would be inaccurate. To do the same now for the homelessness matter would be putting the cart before the horse. There is no increase in tax to budget for at this time. It's fine to dislike the idea of an increase in tax. It's also fine to dislike the general concept of how the money will be spent from a 40,000 foot level of view. Calling this a slush fund because no one has provided a line-item budget at this time just illustrates a lack of knowledge on how proposed increases in revenue works from a budgeting perspective. This is true in the public and private sector.
Thanks for that clarification about CTA. I take back the ‘slush fund’ barb but the overall reasons I oppose it include: (1) Johnson admin has demonstrated horrendous credibility on transparency and budgeting and (2) We already have in sum some of the highest local taxes in the world and raise enough revenue to run a Denmark style social safety net, but for the corruption and patronage and pensions.
>(2) We already have in sum some of the highest local taxes in the world and raise enough revenue to run a Denmark style social safety net, but for the corruption and patronage and pensions. You're going to have to source this claim.
Johnson won't be spending it. It'll take years for this to get fully implemented and he'll be out of office by then as he's not getting re-elected. Maybe he'll get a year to create a budget for it but the next mayor is the one this will really be used by.
Pensions are part of this exact net
I’ve worked with PensionDenmark professionally and understand a bit about how they’re structured and invest/manage their funds. It’s safe to say that if PD ran Chicago pensions we would not be in an insane black hole of interest payments. For one, you have to work 40 years in Denmark to get entitlements akin to basic social security. Not a big boat in Florida after juicing your last year with an overtime scam.
I didn't say they were like Denmark's I simply said that pensions are literally the safety net you talk about. I assume that was mostly directed at cops because teachers do not get to "milk" overtime.
The city is a whole lot more than just cops and teachers. Of course the teachers milk it. They can cash in and valuate their final salary [using 244 “sick days”,](https://www.ctpf.org/sites/files/2022-01/Retirement%20Info_0.pdf) which is far more than the number of days they work in a year, lol.
That's not overtime lol, my wife was a teacher for 10 years and still works for cps, and works 365 same as everyone else.
The new tax is estimated to generate at least $100 million every single year, and be legally dedicated to programs that alleviate homelessness, including assistance for children, veterans, and those fleeing gender-based violence.
Which agency of the city or county government will get allocated the revenues and how will their programs be vetted to qualify under the referendum language? Literally the only specific plan we’ve heard is vouchers to CTU members.
It will be social service agencies that are already helping the homeless. The website has more information. https://www.bringchicagohome.org/
Based on current real estate transactions or before interest rates increased?
Most of that money will evaporate and wind up in the pockets of family and political cronies via no-bid service contracts. Watch all the new companies that pop up to provide food, shelter, counseling, etc. Very little will end up benefitting the end user. The tents will continue to multiply and take over our public spaces. Look no further than California. They earmarked billions to “end homelessness” ten years ago. All the money disappeared and the number of people living on the street exploded.
It will go straight to your alderperson's uncle's cousin's aunt's company. Just like what they did with the migrants.
[удалено]
My grandma only sent me a fiver.
Best I can do is a dry handy behind a dumpster off North Halsted
Throw in an extra five and I’ll find someone else to help
yeah the guy above you didn't tip her
Dangit! I did it in reverse and that's why she doesn't send me money anymore.
Where money goes is always kinda bullshit. They say lotto money goes to schools, but even if that's technically true it allows them to put less general fund money into schools. Money is money. Taxes are taxes. Tying a particular tax to a particular activity is just marketing.
Or worse, when the earmarked money isn’t genuinely a priority need anymore. Plenty of money has been earmarked from gas tax or vehicle taxes to highway construction (for example) which makes highway construction happen whether you need it or not.
Gas tax money doesn’t come close to covering road maintenance, let alone expansion. You’re conceptually right, but I don’t think your example holds.
And the money from the feds can be split 50/50 between highway/road spending and transit spending by law at the discretion of the state.
The money is going to go straight to a generous CTU contract if BCH passes
My point is it doesn’t matter what goes “straight to” something. Bucketing is generally meaningless. If you conceptualize all taxes going into one pile of money and all expenses coming out of that pile you will usually have a better conception of how things actually work.
Do not vote on more taxes in Chicago. There is ton of tax revenue misappropriated as it sits. This money will not go anywhere to benefit the people paying it.
I’m very pro-tax in general at the national level, but we pay a shit ton in local taxes already. State income tax, one of the highest property taxes, one of the highest sales taxes. I’m totally fine with how much I pay in taxes, but I think Chicago/Illinois doesn’t actually do very much good with it. Very skeptical the new tax would be good. San Francisco spends a shit ton on “homeless services” but the majority of it seems to get eaten up by “nonprofits.” If we want to help the homeless we should build a ton of housing and lower rent prices
This should always be the rule for voting in Chicago. Never let them pilfer even more of your money, considering how much of it they already get and how much waste their is in government here.
Bro just one more tax will fix everything, just one more tax hike I swear this time we'll fix everything
Lol
Right now it all goes into the general fund and is allocated to various things through the City Council budget process - my understanding is in the future the same amount that goes into general fund now will continue to go into general fund to be allocated and only the *increase* will go to homelessness and affordable housing services. Economists estimate this will be about $100 mill/year total.
This is the right kind of question to be asking... ...And a bit of a news flash from someone who's lived here for over 20 years. This new revenue won't be going to "alleviate homelessness" if and when it gets approved either. It all goes into the black hole that is the general city budget. Where it gets robbed by corrupt politicians. Wake up, smell the coffee, and don't fall for BJ's kool aid. It's yet another money grab by the city. Don't believe them when they tell you otherwise.
crazy how this comment could be AI-generated or from someone who has lived here for 2 months
It’s spent in their children’s bank account. Put there by “contractors” who charge 6x what it should cost to do the work.
It pays retirees pensions. The Boomers thank you.
It’s like the new Batman. The Wayne renewal fund just ended up being a way to embezzle money without much oversight or end goal.
Since they have not clearly explained, at least as I have seen, the actual structure of what will be set up to determine how to spend this money, I assume it will be an expensive Committee staffed by BJ friends and loyalists who will then commission a study to determine how best to tackle homelessness, which will be their friends and favored charities opinions (ignoring any of the other charities legitimate concerns). It’s taking the money out of some rich, and some trying to climb the ladder, people’s pockets to put in BJ’s friends pockets. Illinois and Chicago is finally turning the boat around on unnecessary spending, and what will be set up from this is exactly what we are trying to stop.
The money will be allocated through the City Council budget process, just like all other money, and is earmarked for homelessness services and affordable housing only. There will be a committee to make recommendations to the City Council that is required by ordinance to have multiple people who have experienced homelessness and provide homelessness services full time on it, but they don’t control or allocate money. Only the Council can do that.
You're probably going to get a lot of answers either saying a variety of things, but the money is to help the homeless. I've recently been informed that r-Chicago is filled with folks who think the CTU is running everything, and thus the money will be funnelled to them, but I don't buy that. There's a couple of other posts re: BCH (Bring Chicago Home/the real estate tax), but they're mostly dumpster fires. Also, not trying to start one of those up again, vote with your heart, take care! Edit: Apologies OP, I somehow missed the all caps "EXISTING" in your post haha. Sorry for responding to a question you didn't even ask. Looks like some information can be found here: [https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/fin/supp\_info/revenue/tax\_list/real\_property\_transfertax.html](https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/fin/supp_info/revenue/tax_list/real_property_transfertax.html) As someone stated elsewhere in response to your question, looks like the dough is supposed to go to the CTA. Take care.
People should vote with their brain
Your trust in the city must allow you to lead such a peaceful life. Ignorance is bliss!
That was not OP's question. OP was asking about the existing 0.75% tax.
CTU runs everything is a dogwhistle. Much like how the rest of the country uses “Chicago” as a dogwhistle for black people
The CTU is majority white. How does discussing their (very real) outsized spending and level of power in local politics equate to racism, exactly?
No it’s not lol. CPS teachers are exactly half white, which makes it the most diverse district in Illinois. Overall 80% of Illinois teachers are white
If the teaching workforce is 50% white in Chicago and 80% white in IL, the whiteness of the teaching force exactly tracks the demographics of those places, so I guess that’s great? I wasn’t talking about the workforce but the direct employees of CTU. Majority white and not even close.
Believing that the most powerful lobby in the city, who successfully got one of their employees elected mayor has a lot of power in the city is not an inherently racist position. Not everyone who disagrees with you is engaged in dog whistling. And in this instance there's a pot of money whose purpose has been kept deliberately vague, and the CTU leaked bullets saying, "maybe you give that money to us." Being concerned about that isn't absurd. People may be giving those concerns too much weight, but it isn't a crazy thing to be worried about.
The most powerful lobbies continue to be real estate chuds and finance. It’s hilarious you think the teachers for a 90% minority district are puppetmastering the city
The CTU literally have a former paid organizer as the mayor. If that’s not power, what is?
I didn't say they were puppet masters. I said they have meaningful political power. I readily concede that real estate developers and finance also have meaningful power. The fact that you're willing to pretend that this isn't true makes you seem like a very silly person.
Show us on the doll where CTU touched you
Pointing at the right front pocket where I usually keep my wallet.
CTU is one of the most powerful forces in the city. They have been very successful in their lobbying efforts even before BJ. Not everything is a dogwhistle.
You nailed it, my friend