The woman who ruined Chicago: City boss has doubled budget of broke, crime-ridden Windy City and is now set on raising taxes even as locals struggle to make ends meet
The woman who runs Chicago has been blasted for presiding over soaring spending and an imbalanced budget which has seen her try to tax hard-up residents to line her coffers.
Toni Preckwinkle, 78, has been the Cook County board president since 2010. She effectively acts as the county’s chief executive officer and makes $198,388 per year.
Chicago, the biggest city in the county with about 2.7million residents, is part of the region where more than 40 percent of Illinois residents live.
Preckwinkle is running for a fifth term in office as city council alderman Brendan Reilly, 54, blasts her fiscal record and mounts a challenge against her.
Reilly, a Democrat, has accused Preckwinkle of using pandemic relief to ‘balloon’ Cook County’s budget.
He claimed $42million of that ‘federal slush fund’ went to a guaranteed basic income program.
‘The far left that has been ushered into office under Toni Preckwinkle’s leadership has been conducting lots of social experiments that are very expensive,’ he told the Chicago Sun–Times.
He added that Preckwinkle was sending ‘rafts of money’ to nonprofits and social services without providing ‘metrics or data’ to show whether they were ‘moving the needle at all.’
Toni Preckwinkle, the Cook County board president, has faced criticism for her fiscal record and allegedly wasteful ‘social experiments’
Preckwinkle was accused of using $42million of a ‘federal slush fund’ for a guaranteed basic income program that dished out a monthly $500 to some low income residents
Reilly accused Preckwinkle of using pandemic relief to ‘balloon’ Cook County’s budget.
The county’s budget plan was $5.2billion in 2018, according to NBC Chicago. Less than a decade later, the budget for this year was set at about $10.1billion.
This represented a roughly 94 percent increase, markedly more than the national rate of inflation.
He said Preckwinkle’s basic income program was unaffordable for locals, whose taxes were increasingly higher.
Preckwinkle had previously touted the basic income as potentially ‘leading to more financial stability as well as improved physical, emotional and social outcomes’.
The initiative, which ran from 2022 until last January, sent $500 per month to 3,250 low income families to help with household expenses.
‘Were the county flush in money and bursting at the seams with cash, that’s certainly a program we could look at funding,’ Reilly said. ‘But the bottom line is Cook County is broke like most local governments are and it certainly doesn’t have the luxury to hand out tens of millions of dollars in literally free money.’
He also criticized what he said were other service and nonprofit operations supported by Preckwinkle, though he did not specify which ones.
Reilly said: ‘They’re hard for us to afford, and we’re not even sure if there’s any kind of return on investment.’
Chicago City Council alderman Brendan Reilly, a Democrat, claimed Preckwinkle used pandemic relief to ‘balloon’ the county’s budget and was ushering the ‘far left’ into office
Preckwinkle has also faced scrutiny for how her leadership is affecting local working families.
About one quarter of a million Cook County homeowners saw their property tax bills increase by 25 percent or more within a single year, per data released by the Cook County Assessor’s Office.
This meant an average increase of $1,700 per homeowner.
As a whole, 240,000 homeowners paid roughly $500million more in property taxes due to the hikes.
‘This data quantifies what so many families have already experienced: being suddenly saddled with much larger tax bills,’ Fritz Kaegi, the Cook County assessor, said.
He called the property tax spike an ‘untenable’ and ‘unsustainable’ situation, urging for relief to be provided to homeowners.
Preckwinkle’s last address was listed as a four-bedroom, three-bathroom duplex in Chicago valued at roughly $655,000.
Since 2007, the typical property tax bill on a Cook County residence has increased by about 78 percent.
Meanwhile, the median property values have only risen by a little more than seven percent.
Black neighborhoods have been the most affected by the tax boom, according to WBEZ.
‘I look at this like robbing from the poor to give to the rich,’ Lance Williams, a professor of urban studies at Northeastern Illinois University, told the outlet. ‘The poor have to bail out the rich.’
More than 40 percent of Illinois residents live in Cook County. Chicago is its biggest city and county seat
Preckwinkle has been the Cook County board president since 2010. If elected, this would be her fifth term overseeing the county’s budget
Preckwinkle, the Cook County board president since 2010, is tasked with presenting a balanced budget.
She also oversees certain county departments and appoints some administration employees.
If elected, this would be her fifth term in office, which Reilly is attempting to prevent.
He said taxes under Preckwinkle were ‘out of control and doing real harm to struggling families.’
‘It’s time for a change,’ Reilly added on X.
He cited Preckwinkle’s unpopular ‘soda tax’, which placed a one cent per ounce tax on the sale of sweetened beverages in the county, as an example.
The tax was repealed in 2017. Preckwinkle said it had enacted ‘first and foremost, because of the revenue.’
Other fees around Chicago – Cook County’s largest city and county seat – have also recently led to more expenses for residents.
Congestion zone fees, a retail liquor tax and increased tolls have further squeezed locals’ pockets.
