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BY FRAN SPIELMAN City Hall Reporter/fspielman@suntimes.com July 26, 2013 9:10PMMayor Rahm Emanuel closed the books on 2012 with $33.4 million in unallocated cash on hand — down from $167 million the year before — while adding to the mountain of debt piled on Chicago taxpayers, year-end audits show.Last week, Moody’s Investors ordered an unprecedented triple-drop in the city’s bond rating, citing Chicago’s “very large and growing†pension liabilities, “significant†debt service payments, “unrelenting public safety demands†and historic reluctance to raise local taxes that has continued under Emanuel.The 2012 city audits explain why. They show that an unallocated balance that was $167 million a year ago because of Emanuel’s aggressive cost-cutting efforts has dropped to $33.4 million.Budget Director Alex Holt blamed the $133.6 million drop on “honest†budgeting and ending the long-standing practice of carrying “ghost†vacancies.“We’re trying to be more transparent about what we’re really spending and taking in — not just carrying a bunch of people who took up money in the budget and left money on the table at the end of the year,†Holt said.“Let’s be straightforward about what we’ve got to spend and not pretend we’re gonna hire for a position we haven’t hired for, who know how many years when those resources are need to provide other services. ... This is about matching revenues with expenses. You don’t want to over-tax people.â€
EXography: 19 U.S. cities have proportionately bigger workforces than bankrupted DetroitBY LUKE ROSIAK | JULY 22, 2013 AT 2:45 PM 1 CITY EMPLOYEE FOR EVERY HOW MANY RESIDENTS?Cities have wildly varying civil servant workforces relative to their population size, from 1 city worker for every 28 residents in San Francisco to only 1 for every 137 residents in San Diego. Red circles represent cities with the most expansive bureaucracies, while green represent the leanest. A full list follows.Detroit declared bankruptcy due in no small part to $3 billion in unfunded public employee pensions owed a sprawling city workforce that kept growing even as the city’s population shriveled, but a Washington Examiner analysis found that 19 major American cities have even bigger ratios of such workers to residents.The Examiner used the Census Bureau's 2011 Annual Survey of Public Employment and Payroll to rank every U.S. city with a population of 200,000 or more.Some of those cities managed to get along fine with comparatively few municipal employees, such as San Diego, which has 9,501 employees for 1.3 million residents, or one for every 137 residents.But others like San Francisco had a bureaucracy seven times as large, with one of every 28 of the city's 800,000 residents on the city payroll.Remarkably, the Census Bureau excluded from these figures all teachers and education professionals, which make up the largest group of local government employees.The figures also do not include separate government divisions that comprise significant portions of many urban public workforces, like the 1,200-employee Baltimore City Housing Authority, the 1,000-employee Philadelphia Housing Authority and the 2,300 employee Chicago Park District.Transit systems, such as the 9,500-worker Chicago Transit Authority and New York's 7,000-person Port Authority, are also not counted.{snip}The city with the leanest government is Bakersfield, Ca., which has 1,410 employees for 348,000 residents, or one for every 246. The city's population has quadrupled in the last 40 years, and its public employee workforce may have lagged behind. The city is one of California’s most conservative and the largest that employs the lowest sales tax allowed by state law.Hmmm…Pick and choose…..
