Preparing to confront Chicago’s $1.15 billion shortfall after two straight years of deficit spending, Mayor Brandon Johnson claimed this week that Chicago has a “revenue problem,” not a “spending problem.”
But most Chicagoans strongly disagree with the mayor’s assessment, according to a new poll conducted for a business-bankrolled political action committee.
It shows overwhelming opposition to some of the tax increases that Johnson has championed.
Only 16% of those surveyed support locking in annual property tax increases at the rate of inflation — as suggested this week by Johnson’s Financial Future Task Force and favored by the two most powerful members of the mayor’s City Council leadership team.
Raising the $9.50-a-month garbage fee frozen since its 2015 inception, another idea the task force championed, drew 20% support.
Reinstating the $4-a-month employee head tax opposed by business and eliminated by former Mayor Rahm Emanuel is favored by only 26% of those surveyed. Even taxing financial transactions, an idea long-championed by the Chicago Teachers Union that put Johnson in office, drew opposition from 46% of those surveyed, and support from only 44%.
The perennial idea of broadening the sales tax umbrella to include professional services, which can only be done by the Illinois General Assembly, is opposed by 60% of those surveyed.
The poll of 864 registered Chicago voters was conducted Aug. 29 through Sept. 8 by the Democratic polling firm Change Research for One Future Illinois. That’s the political action committee created by business and civic leaders last year to promote candidates in Chicago’s first-ever school board elections and organize around other key issues confronting the city and state.
It has an error margin of plus or minus 3.7%. Forty-seven percent of those surveyed were men; 53% were women. Respondents were 40% white; 29% Black; 19% Latino and 9% Asian/Pacific Islander.
Only 11% of those surveyed support raising taxes before the city cuts spending.
Also unpopular are increasing taxes on: consumer sales (77% oppose); bottled water (66% oppose); checkout bags (67% oppose ); restaurant meals (84% oppose); rideshare surcharges (60% oppose); 911 emergency calls (87% oppose) and higher towing and storage fees (59% oppose).
But the survey does show openness to “selective revenue measures.” They include: online sports betting tax (77% support); lifting the Chicago ban on video gaming at restaurants, bars and airports and taxing digital advertising revenues (70% support); short-term rentals (56% support); fines for loud engines and mufflers (69% support) and expanding the tax on resales tickets (49% support).
Monetizing city assets is favored by 77% of those surveyed. There was also support for selling surplus vehicles and equipment (77% support) and placing digital ads in empty storefronts (73%).
The leadership of One Future Illinois has close ties to Emanuel.
The roster includes investment banker Steve Koch, who served as Emanuel’s deputy mayor; Derek Douglas, president of the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club; and Jesse Ruiz, former deputy governor for education in Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s administration. Ruiz also served as interim CEO of Chicago Public Schools, chair of the Illinois State Board of Education and board president of the Chicago Park District.
Mike Ruemmler, who managed Emanuel’s 2015 reelection campaign after serving as a top mayoral aide for 3½ years, serves as president of the nonprofit and the PAC.
Ruemmler also ran the business PAC created to prevent a City Council in transition from turning sharply to the left. The group used the $2 million it raised to “engage in 17 or 18 races” and claims to have been on the “winning side” of 14 or 15 races.
Ruemmler said the PAC he leads commissioned the poll to make certain that the “will of the voters is considered” before the boom is lowered on taxpayers: “We’re not trying to put our thumb on the scale.”
On the day the PAC was announced, Koch was asked whether the group was formed to block a potential onslaught of new city taxes.
“The business community isn’t reflexively against all taxes. … The business community has been in favor of taxes when it goes to fix something, when it goes to make things better for the long haul,” Koch said then.
“It’s all about what problem is it fixing, and does it fix it on an ongoing, permanent basis. It can’t just be the reflexive impulse to go borrow money and throw it and plug a hole for this year to get past this election.”
Douglas stressed that the Civic Committee he runs has both supported and opposed tax increases.
“What will be accomplished through whatever revenues are being brought in? That’s how this organization will evaluate anything,” he said.