Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates is $5,600 behind on her water, sewer and garbage services, despite being paid more than $289,000 per year.
The Illinois Policy Institute notes that
Davis Gates’ debt is part of over $6.4 billion in unpaid fees, fines and other debts left uncollected since 1990, according to a Chicago Sun-Times analysis…..
Davis Gates’ tenure as CTU president has been filled with controversy, from taking a homestead exemption on an Indiana home she doesn’t live in to killing school choice for low-income kids while putting her own son in private school. CTU has also come under fire from its own members for potentially misappropriating members’ dues for politics.
This latest revelation adds to the mounting evidence of her hypocrisy. She spurns responsibility and accountability both in her role as CTU president and in her daily life, while pushing for “wealthy” taxpayers to pay their “fair share.”
At the same time, she has the ear of Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former CTU employee whose campaign was bankrolled by CTU and its allies. Her influence over Chicago politics should concern Chicagoans….
Chicago does not shut off water services for failing to pay
In July 2022, the Chicago City Council passed an ordinance prohibiting water shut-off for non-payment. It followed a 2019 moratorium on residential shut-offs implemented by former Mayor Lori Lightfoot to “protect Chicago residents’ fundamental right to water access.”
It raises the question of whether Davis Gates – whose own income tops $289,000 a year – is using an ordinance intended to benefit lower-income residents for her own personal gain.
And it underscores CTU members’ concerns about Davis Gates and other union leaders’ failure to properly handle union funds or provide required reporting to members. In fact, when a member questioned why the union has failed to provide its audits to members for at least four years, Davis Gates attacked the member in the comment section, claiming that asking for an audit mandated by CTU rules is a racist “dog whistle.”
Chicago hopes for more state aid to offset its rising debt and unfunded pension obligations. As WWTW reported,
Chicago’s pension debt soared by approximately $1.74 billion in 2022, according to the city’s audited annual financial report, raising the pressure on Mayor Brandon Johnson to tackle Chicago’s acutely underfunded pensions.
In all, Chicago owes $35.4 billion to its four employee pension funds representing police officers, firefighters, municipal employees and laborers, according to the 2022 Certified Annual Financial Report. That is an increase of 5% from 2021, according to the report.
That represents a significant jump in the city’s pension debt between 2021 and 2022 as compared with the previous year, when it grew 2.4%, according to city data.
The city’s pension debt burden rose in 2022 even as the city contributed more than ever before to its four pension funds…
But Illinois itself has lots of unfunded pension obligations, making it less able to bail out Chicago. Illinois’ rising debt and high unfunded pension obligations will get worse due to a costly deal between the AFSCME union, which helps elect Democrats to office, and Democratic Governor J.P. Pritzker of Illinois. Center Square reported:
The state of Illinois reached a new contract agreement with members of the AFSCME union that will cost taxpayers an additional $620 million….The $620 million in additional costs amounts to a raise of nearly 18% ….
Bryce Hill of the Illinois Policy Institute told The Center Square a deal this large could have unfavorable consequences on the state’s taxpayers.
“The AFSCME contract is more generous than what taxpayers can afford,” Hill said. “It’s increasing faster than total personal incomes in the state. It is increasing faster than hourly wages in the state. It’s increasing faster than average weekly earnings. So on virtually every metric, the private sector wage increases are not keeping up with this contract, which means taxpayers are going to see a larger share of their paycheck going towards subsidizing these pay raises.”
Illinois’ public pensions are worst funded in U.S.,” notes the Illinois Policy Institute:
Illinois ended the 2023 fiscal year with an estimated $429 billion in pension liabilities but only $218 billion worth of assets, leaving the state with $211 billion in unfunded state and local pension liabilities. The pension systems’ collective funding ratio of 50.8% was the lowest in the nation. Experts warn pensions with funding ratios below 60% are deeply troubled….
Illinois’ unfunded liabilities as a percentage of its gross domestic product – a proxy for a state’ ability to pay – stand at 21%, by far the worst figure in the nation. It was nearly five percentage points higher than the second-worst figure of 16.2% in Kentucky. Forty-two states had unfunded liabilities as a percentage of GDP lower than 10%….
Not only are Illinois’ pension systems most likely to default, the state has the lowest capacity to pay the debt compared to other states….three of Illinois’ five state-run retirement systems were among the 10 worst-funded systems in the nation. Last year’s pension report showed two Illinois systems in the bottom 10 nationally, the State Employees Retirement System and Teachers Retirement System. This year, the Judges Retirement System joined them among the worst-funded systems in the nation.
Bloomberg News reported last December that the “unfunded pension liability across Illinois’s five retirement systems rose 7.5% to $139.7 billion in the fiscal year that ended in June, based on the market value of their assets, according to a report from the Illinois Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability on Thursday.”
