MINISTRY OF PUTTING THINGS ON TOP OF OTHER THINGS?

9/28/11

Chicago Inspector General Joe Ferguson made some headlines yesterday by proposing a legion of ideas for saving the city some money. Most of the attention was garnered by a handful of proposals that will go nowhere, including a city income tax, a commuter tax, and tolls on Lake Shore Drive. In the almost immediate wake of the release of Mr. Ferguson’s report, Mayor Emanuel stated

“…as I have said from the beginning, raising property taxes, income taxes or the sales tax is off the table. Asking drivers on Lake Shore Drive to pay a toll is also a nonstarter.”

The Mayor’s artful, perhaps deliberately vague, use of the term “income tax” is interesting; there seems to be room in the use of that particular term for consideration of a commuter tax. But a commuter tax is going nowhere because such a tax would have to be approved by the Illinois General Assembly, where nobody outside the city of Chicago has any incentive to pass such an abomination. Even if the Mayor is, or gets, behind a tax, even his legendary arm-twisting skills won’t get legislators from what the late Mayor Daley referred to as “the country towns” (i.e., any town or city in the state of Illinois other than Chicago, including such bucolic burgs as Blue Island, Berwyn, and Calumet City) to tax their own residents to support the city of Chicago. Even with the Mayor’s gargantuan ego, he has to be smart enough to know that. Mr. Emanuel also is smart enough to know, or at least I hope he is smart enough to know, that such a tax would be economically deleterious at best and disastrous at worst for the city. All the city’s major employers need, especially at this point, is more incentive to move operations to, say, Oakbrook, Naperville, Dallas, or Shanghai. Note further that the IG’s report supported the argument for a commuter tax by pointing out, with a straight face, that Detroit, Cleveland, and Philadelphia impose such a tax. One would hope that toward Cleveland, Detroit, or Philadelphia is not the direction in which either Mr. Ferguson or Mr. Emanuel would like us to go. Note, however, that there is no evidence, only speculation based on careful dissection of his words, to indicate that Mr. Emanuel would back such a tax, so it’s probably a non-starter even before the legislature gets its hands on it.

What got yours truly’s attention in the articles on the Inspector General’s report was Mr. Ferguson’s proposal to save $190mm by eliminating supervisory personnel in the Police and Fire Departments. To support this idea, the report stated that there are 3.58 supervisors for every rank and file employee in the Fire Department and 8 supervisors for every employee in the Police Department. Yes, I, too, had to look at those numbers again. Those ratios can’t be right, can they? Someone should look at the definition of “supervisor” and “employee” used to conjure up that report because these numbers elicit images of 8 guys standing around with clipboards watching one guy work, and that simply cannot be the case. Alderman Pat O’Connor, the Mayor’s floor leader, stated

“If those figures are correct and if those folks just supervise and don’t have other duties, he (Mr. Ferguson) may be on to something.”

I agree that IF those figures are correct, Joe Ferguson may be on to something. But, as my dad used to say, figures don’t lie, but liars figure. Someone has to take a closer look at those supervisor/employee ratios.