. . . on real estate transactions of a million or more in cold, hard cash, for the sake of homeless people. Really?
Really.
Sun-Times star city hall reporter Fran Spielman touches base with the two sides of this issue.
The pro side:.
CTU [Chicago Teachers Union] president Stacy Davis Gates says helping homeless students is “part of what we went on strike for” in 2019.
“It’s an abomination that, in this city with this much wealth, we have almost 20,000 students attending public schools who are classified as unhoused,” Davis Gates says. If Bring Chicago Home “provides the revenue necessary to get those young people into actual homes with the stability and consistency that provides, then we are all in.
“If you vote ‘yes’ on this referendum, you are voting for 20,000 unhoused students in the Chicago Public Schools to be in a safe, warm home,” Davis Gates says. “I like our odds.”
How so?
[Davis Gates] is “absolutely confident” about the outcome, considering who’s quarterbacking the campaign — Emma Tai, former executive director of the CTU-affiliated group United Working Families. Tai marshaled field operations for Johnson’s winning mayoral campaign.
“Emma Tai is one of the most brilliant strategists working in and around progressive politics,” Davis Gates says. “I trust her brilliance and her instincts. She’s done a tremendous job putting together some good infrastructure to get us to where we are now. She has a hot hand. She’s on a roll.”
And Tai?
. . . she plans to use lessons learned from Johnson’s 2023 mayoral runoff victory over former Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas — despite being outspent 2-to-1 — to deliver a progressive tax structure that would require the “rich to pay their fair share so children can come in from the cold.”
Money will be no obstacle:
“Elections in Chicago are a serious business that require both serious money and a serious field operation,” Tai says. “We closed the year with about $750,000 in the bank. … I anticipate this being a multimillion-dollar effort that will involve knocking on hundreds of thousands of doors and making almost a million phone calls and text messages.”
Already off and running:
. . . proponents of Bring Chicago Home have knocked on over 20,000 doors, Tai says.
“When we actually have conversations with people, an overwhelming majority of folks break for us,” Tai says. “In all of my years working on elections, I’ve never seen popularity conversion rates like this.”
The opposition:
. . . Chicago’s real estate and development interests, and other business groups.
They have filed a lawsuit asking a Cook County judge to knock the referendum off the ballot. They say Johnson’s decision to reduce the tax on property transactions under $1 million while raising it on sales over that amount is a “textbook example” of a time-honored legislative tactic known as “log rolling.” That is, combining a politically unpopular proposal with a popular one to sugarcoat and, therefore, convince voters to swallow the bitter pill.
Lawfare, right here in Windy City? Not quite, in that . . .
The Illinois Supreme Court has ruled that it is illegal to bundle popular legislation with potentially unpopular measures as a way of ensuring passage.
“We don’t really have any reason for this tax decrease,” says Farzin Parang, executive director of the Building Owners and Managers Association. “It’s actually contrary to all of our rhetoric about progressive tax structures. But we’re going to throw it in there so we can distract voters.”
The name is a fooler.
Political operative Greg Goldner . . . argues a transaction tax increase will further cripple an already devastated downtown commercial real estate market, and the impact will trickle down to homeowners and renters.
Ah yes, those best-laid plans . . .
Goldner:
“It was kind of sold a little bit as a ‘mansion tax.’ It’s not that. It’s on all property. It’s not limited to houses or condominiums. It’s on all real estate,” Goldner says.
“If you have food deserts on the South Side because it’s hard for any business to make the investment to serve communities, this will only make it harder.
If you want to build a grocery store on the West Side, this is going to be a hindrance. If you want to build housing in Englewood, this is going to be a hindrance.”
“[Opponents] strongly believe this tax will affect investment in neighborhoods. While we all might want the issue of homelessness to be addressed, this is not the right policy to do it.”
Elsewhere, not so good . . .
In other cities, such as Los Angeles, he says, “This tax has not generated even close to the revenue they thought and, in fact, reduced transaction tax revenues. … That’s the campaign we will engage in over the next two and a half months.”
Blithe Spirit 