The Silent Epidemic {An Introduction}

Today begins a series of posts on the tax and budgetary problems that plaque Illinois.  I'm calling this series "The Silent Epidemic" because Illinois problems seem to me to mimic the issues of high blood pressure and heart disease that right now is strangling the people of Chicago, Cook County and Illinois. High blood pressure has been called the silent killer as it sneaks up unknowingly on people and the first sign many have of it is a cardiac event.  Like cardiac issues the problems faced by people in the above named places has been sneaking up on all of us for years.  We are at the stage in my opinion where the cumulative effect of all these budgetary issues cannot be ignored by individuals living in these parts and whatever cure comes from trying to make whole those with the disease will likely be painful and lead to life changing events.

Before I go any further with this introduction and with this series I want to make one thing clear.  I will not be writing a political column.  I write about money.  Pure and simple.   People can debate all they want on the issues of taxes, pensions and equity.  I'm not entering into that arena.  I am not interested going into the history of how we got to where we are or in picking sides in the debate on who's to blame.  My guess if I had one is that there's plenty of blame to go around on both the living and some of the dead.  Instead I intend to be like a doctor and weigh in on the symptoms of the problem, not want to dwell on how my patient came to this event.  If I'm the doctor in the case of using a cardiac event as the reason my patient is in for a visit  I'm going to tell the causes for your chest pain but not weigh in on lifestyle choices that perhaps got you to where you are today.  Rather I'm going to delve into the financial consequences as it effects people that get a paycheck and pay taxes.

Also I'm not going to weigh in on what ought to be done going forward, although at the end I'll tell you what I think is going to happen. Instead I want to look from the ground up view of how these issues are taking a toll on citizens of these various entity's pocketbooks, their savings and ultimately on their decisions on where to live.  To do so I will draw on my over 25 years of experience of living in the twin suburbs of River Forest and Oak Park.  I intend to use real life illustrations of my communities and other people and places to try and paint a picture of how all these financials issues impact folks pocketbooks.

Besides the issues of pensions the city of Chicago has to deal with the issues of poverty race and crime.  Of course other metropolitan areas have to grapple with the same issues and this series is not intended to cover these topics except how the pension crises trickle down onto our most neediest communities.  Most tourists coming to Chicago only see the well traveled spots in the city's core and if that's all you've ever known of our area then you'd be surprised by what many other parts of the city look like.  Chicago is a city of neighborhoods and not a few of these are very poor, blighted and controlled by gangs.  The latest data that I could find indicated that nearly 20% of Chicago's population lived below the poverty level.  Cook County includes Chicago but many other communities as well.  Some of these are very impoverished.  Poverty levels for Cook County {which would include Chicago} is estimated at nearly 16% of the population.  High levels of poverty require high levels of social services which means higher levels of taxes.  The FBI estimates there are over 115,000 gang members in Chicago, not including juveniles or members living in the suburbs.  Chicago year after year is found to be one of the most racially segregated cities in the country.  Many {but not all} of the issues in the northern part of the state are defined by race, but poverty and it's impact on communities is probably as big a root cause.

Having given you this introduction  we need to do an overview of the biggest issue from a fiscal standpoint confronting all levels of government in the state which is the mounting pension burdens assaulting community finances both near and far, state and local.    It is to define these burdens that we'll turn in the  2nd part of this series, "The Weight of Water", which will be posted in the coming weeks.  Then I hope to post the rest of these columns serially after that as my schedule permits.  Unfortunately for me a family matter has intruded itself into my life these past few months.  I had hoped to run this series serially each week until completed.  Life has intervened and finishing this may be more of a catch as catch can event.

Back Friday.