By John Dempsey, WLS-AM News
(CHICAGO) Mayor Rahm Emanuel is refusing to rule out another increase in city property taxes, if he is re-elected.
Emanuel made the comments while taping “Connected to Chicago With Bill Cameron”, to air Sunday at 7 p.m on WLS.
Cameron: “Is there any chance you won’t need new revenue?”
Emanuel: “I didn’t say that and at the right time will be the place where we’ll deal with that.”
Cameron: “Not going to tell me here and now?”
Emanuel: “That wouldn’t, that’s not, right now what people should know is that the pension today and in the future will meet it’s obligations and we have the contributions by both the workers and the city to meet our obligations and we will be planning accordingly because we passed a law that requires actuarial funding.”
Cameron: “Would it be fair to the voters to at least rule out the property tax?”
Emanuel: “I think Bill, the way to look at this is you know, and here’s how I look at this. We have done a lot on the property taxes, for our teachers we’ve done it, for our police officers and our firefighters. And the good news is, the city stepped up. I make no bones, and I want to repeat: I fixed a problem, and you know this, that I inherited as the mayor.”
As he has done since becoming Mayor in 2011, Emanuel blamed the city’s precarious financial condition on his predecessor Richard M. Daley, without mentioning Daley’s name.
“Had this been taken care of before it would have been taken care of at a much cheaper price” said Emanuel. “People chose their politics over the progress of the city, they kicked the can down the road, they didn’t address needs. I didn’t spend ten years not contributing to the teacher’s pension at all, and asking for a holiday. We fixed it. And more importantly, we got the state to finally pay a portion that they should have been doing for decades.”
Emanuel is facing a crowded field as he runs for re-election next year. Several candidates are opposing him, including Garry McCarthy, whom Emanuel fired as Police Superintendent after the release of the LaQuan McDonald shooting video, Paul Vallas, the Chicago Schools chief under Daley, and Willie Wilson, the businessman who lost in a race for Mayor in 2015.
@ 2018 WLS-AM News
