ALDERMAN AUSTIN PRESENTS YOURS TRULY WITH AN OUTSTANDING BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY!

7/30/14

Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s 911 phone tax (CHICAGO’S PROPOSED PHONE TAX INCREASE:  RAHM EMANUEL’S IDEA OF “CONSTITUENT SERVICE”, Rant Finance, 6/26/14), which all but the most shamelessly disingenuous admit is a way around a property tax hike in an election year, advanced out of the City Council Finance Committee yesterday in a unanimous vote.   Dick Daley is probably looking down in awe on Mayor Emanuel’s control of his bleating sheep council, but I digress.

So how did the sycophants in the Finance Committee sweep aside the fact that a family of relatively modest means will pay more with the proposed phone tax increase than it would have under the property tax increase the phone tax is designed to obviate?  Or how do they get around the fact that the wealthier a family is, or at least the more expensive home a family has, the more money it will save under the 911 phone tax vs. the now delayed property tax?   How do the aldermen, most of whom represent constituents of more modest means, go along so obediently with a tax scheme that clearly favors Rahm Emanuel’s much more well-heeled core constituency?

Here was the answer from Budget Committee Chair Alderman Carrie Austin of the 34^th Ward:

“Even though it may cost more because you have more lines with phones, I’d rather come up with an additional $5 or $10 than to come up with $150.  It may not be as much pain monthly as it would be at one time.” (sic)

Yours truly would have to agree; I, too, would rather come up with $5 or $10 per month than $150 annually, mostly because $10 per month is only $120 annually while $5 per month is only $60 annually.  

Okay, okay, so Alderman Austin is a bit arithmetically challenged; who can expect the Chair of the Budget Committee to be able to perform such complicated calculations as multiplying by twelve?   Further, we have no idea where the Alderman got the figures she cites.   But let’s forgive her lack of dexterity with the numbers, look at the Alderman’s logic, and apply it to realistic numbers. 

Say a family of four lives in a $250,000 house.  They have a land line and four cellular phone lines.  These are far from outrageous assumptions on either point.   Under the original property tax increase proposal, they would have seen a $50 increase in their annual property tax bill.  The 911 tax increase comes to $1.40 per month per line.  For the five lines, that’s $7.00 per month.  That’s $84 per year.   $84, for Alderman Austin’s benefit, is $34, or 68%, more than $50.

Using the Alderman’s logic, a family should be happy to pay the additional 68% because they’d be able to pay $7 “monthly” rather than $50 “at one time.”

Hmm…

Perhaps it isn’t Alderman Austin’s job to do arithmetic, but it is her job to know her constituents.  (At least theoretically; apparently, she, and just about every alderman, sees his or her  primary job to be pleasing Mayor Emanuel, but I digress.)  If she is correct and her constituents and, indeed, all Chicagoans, would rather pay $7 per month than $50 per year, I am going to start a business:

I will collect $7 per month from each of Alderman Austin’s constituents, and everyone in Chicago, who would see a $50 annual increase in his or her property tax liability.   In exchange for this $7 per month, I will pay the $50 annual increase in the tax liability.   I will then pocket the additional $34 per year I will collect from the payers, earning a return in excess of 68%.  I get a great return, and, if Alderman Austin is right, the people of her ward, and of Chicago, will be delighted because of the convenience of being able to pay “monthly” instead of “at one time.”  I wouldn’t have to limit this service to increased property tax bills; I could apply this “easy payment” plan to any liability of anybody who lives anywhere and, at a 68%+ return, I would be delighted to do so.

If you think people are as financially obtuse as Alderman Austin presumes they are, this plan should work.  I think I’ll try to get on Shark Tank with this one!

See my two books, The Chairman, A Novel of Big City Politics and The Chairman’s Challenge, A Continuing Novel of Big City Politics, for further illumination on how things work in Chicago and Illinois politics.