Sounding like he’s testing the waters for a 2027 mayoral campaign, U.S. Rep. Mike Quigley said Wednesday it’s time for Chicago to make the “drastic changes” needed to solve its myriad financial crises without “socking it” to taxpayers.
In the short term, Quigley advocates dramatic cuts, employee layoffs and furlough days in an “austerity budget that focuses on the fundamentals” — and sets aside less needed services — as the only way out of a $1.12 billion budget shortfall.
“That’s painful, but the alternative is, ‘Which tax do you want?'” Quigley, an Illinois Democrat, told the Chicago Sun-Times. “We have to show the public we get their pain and that the solution isn’t every year to reflexively go back and [say], ‘How can we sock it to you again?’ because that affects working-class Chicagoans more than anybody else. And eventually, it pushes out the corporations and the businesses who say, ‘Why in the hell would I want to locate there?’“
In the long term, the city’s $35.9 billion pension crisis will leave it with no choice but to try again to seek union concessions to stave off bankruptcy at its four employee pension funds, Quigley said.
The pension commission that Mayor Brandon Johnson created shortly after taking office disbanded without releasing a single report after Gov. JB Pritzker signed a police pension sweetener that, over time, will make Chicago’s pension crisis $11 billion worse.
Johnson recently claimed that his pension panel faced an “untenable situation in Springfield” when it became clear that the police pension sweetener had the votes to pass in spite of the predicament it would create for Chicago.
Quigley accused the rookie mayor of ignoring Chicago’s “dirty little secret.”
“No one really wants to talk about just how bad the pension crisis is because everything hasn’t collapsed yet. It’s just like, ‘If I can just not alienate anybody and just get reelected one more term, then we can maybe put it off and put it off,’“ Quigley said.
Police and fire pension funds that had assets to cover 25% of their obligations before Pritzker signed the sweetener bill will now sink to 18% coverage.
“There is no amount of new revenue … that can meet the demand of the current obligations,” Quigley said. “You gotta sit down with your partners and say, ‘We gotta solve this now or we’ll meet again in bankruptcy court.'”
Former Mayor Rahm Emanuel spent the first of his two terms trying to negotiate pension reforms that were ultimately overturned. The Illinois Supreme Court upheld a pension protection clause that says those benefits “shall not be impaired or diminished.”
That left Emanuel no choice but to identify dedicated revenue sources for all four city employee pension funds.
He more than doubled Chicago’s property tax levy for police, fire and teacher pensions; pushed through two telephone tax hikes for the Laborers pension fund and phased in a 29.5% surcharge on water and sewer bills to bankroll the Municipal Employees pension fund, the largest of the four.
Quigley said the next mayor of Chicago will have no choice but to try again to reason with organized labor because the “talk of a constitutional convention is still a couple years off.”
“You’ve got to take another swing at it one way, legally or not,” Quigley said. “The most effective approach is to show the public the reality of the situation, and hopefully, they can help convince our labor partners that, ‘We’re behind you, but this can’t work the way it is. What’s Plan B for them?’“
Quigley flirted with the idea of running for mayor in 2023, only to join former U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan in taking a pass.
That paved the way for Johnson’s meteoric rise from single-digit obscurity to the fifth floor of City Hall with a giant assist from the millions of dollars in campaign contributions and hundreds of campaign foot soldiers provided by the Chicago Teachers Union, where he once worked as a paid organizer.
This time, Quigley said he’ll decide whether to enter the mayor’s race after he sees how the public responds to his tough-love message about what’s needed to solve the intransigent problems of a city that he views as “12 years past” the crossroads. He compared the city’s government to an antique car that can no longer be rebuilt and needs to be replaced.
“Right now, it’s not who should run. It’s what should get done. And that’s enough for now,” Quigley said. “I’m committed to help. Exactly what role, I haven’t made the final decision on. In the meantime, the ‘Let it Rip tour’ continues.”