Progress Illinois

Since rolling out the bad-news budget for next year, there have been a lot of questions pointed at Chicago Chief Financial Officer Gene Saffold. These include whether he's exaggerated the size of the hole in the budget (pegged at $520 million) and how money from the leases of several valuable city assets -- including the $1.15 billion parking meter deal, which was supposed to help balance the budget through 2012 -- could have possibly dried up so quickly.

So let's start with one point raised by Sun-Times columnist Michael Sneed: What ever happened to the down-payment -- $126 million in total -- that the city pocketed in the unsuccessful effort to privatize Midway Airport? That money is conspicuously absent from the city reports detailing how the asset lease money is being managed.

And that brings us to our next question: Exactly how much money generated from the "great Chicago sell-off" could be used to balance the 2010 deficit? Historically, those resources have fallen under the "proceeds and transfers" line item in the budget's revenue section.  The 2010 preliminary budget (PDF) released by the city shows $232 million in this section. But the only lease-related proceeds we've been able to confirm as part of that amount is $51 million from the "budget stabilization fund" created from the parking meter revenue. But there are also scheduled appropriations from three other funds associated with the meter and Skyway deals, according to city documents:

Parking meters
$20 million from the revenue replacement fund (PDF);
$50 million from the mid-term reserve fund (PDF)

Skyway
$73 million balance in the (annually-tapped) mid-term reserve fund (PDF)

Are these sources of revenue included in the city's preliminary budget estimate?

And finally there's "the $1.4 billion question," as Crain's Greg Hinz puts it. He's referring to the aggregate surplus in the tax increment financing (TIF) network as of the end of 2008.  While the city official quoted in his piece tries to make it seem as if this money is off-limits, we beg to differ.

Which leads us to our final question for Saffold: If other municipalities in Illinois can release surplus TIF funds back to local taxing bodies, why can't Chicago? 

We'll be trying to get some answers next week.