Wednesday dawns with a serious threat facing every Cook County taxpayer: The government now gouging you for a $400 million-a-year windfall from its unneeded sales tax hike also wants to increase your debt by more than a quarter-billion dollars.
Some portion of that new borrowing can be justified — but not until the 17 County Board members start at zero and approve a much less costly set of capital projects.
Several Democrats on the board don’t want to do that: Even though a quarter-billion dollars may be a lot to you, little taxpayer, they’d happily give final approval to all this borrowing.
So watch out. If the County Board votes for this bonding, your existing debt of close to $3 billion for this government will grow. Yes, even during a financial crisis caused by too much borrowing, the administration of County Board President Todd Stroger wants to put you in hock for an additional $262,993,365. Plus millions not enumerated in Wednesday’s agenda. Incredible.
The politics here are easy to calculate: Stroger’s people know they can’t raise taxes again going into the 2010 elections. But collecting huge amounts of money from the sales tax boost and from a nice fat bond issue would give Stroger plenty to spread around: Lots of contractors and vendors would get lots of county business — and many would show their appreciation at Stroger’s fundraising events. You would just pay for this borrowing later.
Let’s walk through this from the get-go:
Last November, when Stroger proposed a 2009 budget, he wanted to balance that budget in part by issuing $740 million in bonds: more money for his administration to spend — and more debt for you to pay off.
Thus far, Stroger hasn’t found enough votes for any of that borrowing. His administration recently failed to pass a terrible proposal for $294 million in bonding: You would have borrowed some of that money — and paid interest payments for up to 25 years — to buy automobiles that might be in service for five or so years. That’s right, you and your fellow taxpayers would have bought cars in 2009, but still been paying for them some 20 years after they’re taken out of service.
Stroger’s people also wanted you to spend 25 years paying off purchases of new office furniture and computer equipment — which, like the cars, would rapidly depreciate. Their explanation for long-term borrowing to cover short-term costs? “Lots of governments do business this way.” By this point the administration’s arguments — and numbers — seemed slippery. Several board members concluded that Stroger’s people just wanted to borrow every cent they could.
Now Stroger’s finance team is back with a request for $262 million in bonding for capital improvement. The rationale is that County Board members approved a list of capital projects back in January — so let’s just go ahead and borrow all that money.
We watched a chunk of that January discussion: Some board members were absent, several who did attend objected to costly projects, and some members pushed questionable projects to benefit their pet county departments. Plus, it was January. All of us know a lot more today about the dangers of easy money and hard debt than we did then.
County Board member Tim Schneider correctly argues that the board needs to start at zero: Examine each and every project anew. Don’t borrow money for a single project that isn’t necessary for safety reasons, or to abide by court and consent decrees, or to finish a project already nearing completion. He also has excellent, must-adopt plans to increase accountability in all future projects.
Several board Dems are whining that they have already approved this project list. That was then. Taxpayers should have no confidence in this bonding scheme if the board refuses to start fresh. A quarter-billion is a lot of money.
A bloc of Republican and Democratic board members thus far has obstructed Stroger’s attempts to raise Cook County’s indebtedness. We trust that Schneider, Peter Silvestri, Gregg Goslin, Elizabeth Doody Gorman, Tony Peraica, Larry Suffredin, Forrest Claypool and Michael Quigley will demand a zero-base approach. Machine Democrats itching to borrow and spend, we hope you too will put Cook taxpayers first.
