10-Nov-17 – Any Chicagoan facing financial difficulty would scrutinize their expenses and now 42nd Ward Alderman Brendan Reilly wants the City Council to do the same.

Reilly has introduced an ordinance that would require the city to prepare a “fiscal impact statement” at least three days before any City Council vote that would spend the city’s money or reduce its revenue.

The study would also precede any vote that would increase or decrease money set aside for specific purposes, increase or decrease the city’s financial liability, or sell or lease any city asset worth more than $5 million.

“Fiscal ignorance has been bliss at City Hall for far too long,” said Reilly (left) on Friday. “That’s one of the reasons our city has been struggling with the aftermath of bad privatization deals, costly program expansions, aggressive issuance of long-term debt, and year-over-year structural deficits.”

The financial impact statements would be prepared by the Council Office of Financial Analysis, an independent office created in 2013 to review for the City Council proposed appropriations and program expansions.

Reilly says the ordinance will “go a long way” toward helping elected representatives and taxpayers know how much policy changes will cost.

“Lawmakers have a responsibility to their constituents to understand how much proposed program expansions, new initiatives or policies, or potential asset sales will cost taxpayers before those proposals are approved or rejected.”

Illinois Policy, an independent organization working to make Illinois prosperous through better public policy, says the proposal is long overdue.

“The common sense proposal would be a necessary step toward controlling the city’s haywire finances,” wrote the organization on Friday. “And that it’s taken until now to conceive only serves to illustrate the negligence with which policymakers have been shuffling hefty price tags through the Chicago City Council.”

An earlier version of the ordinance was rejected by the City Council’s Budget Committee. The new version introduced on Wednesday is co-sponsored by 32 aldermen.