March 17--You knew it would come, everybody knew it would come: How can City Hall make a mandatory $550 million payment to police and fire pension funds? Sure enough, kaboom, first question. What followed was Monday evening's mayoral debate, reduced to its essence:
Mayor Rahm Emanuel's staccato recipe for fixing City Hall's pension crisis leapt from higher employee contributions to a broader-based sales tax, to a city-run casino, to TIF surpluses. He concluded with an overarching rationale: Financial stability will give people "the confidence to bring jobs and people back to Chicago." Not every Chicagoan is jake with all that, but it's a responsible answer that gores several sacred oxen.
And Cook County Commissioner Jesus "Chuy" Garcia? The first words from his mouth: "It depends." Because his team has to "open up the books to understand what the real finances of the city are." Garcia didn't answer the question but did get in an off-topic jab about Emanuel subsidizing rich people.
OK, we thought, he'll find his footing. Soon came a question many Chicagoans ask: Property tax increase. Discuss.
Emanuel flicked at his earlier answer and said, "Everything I'm doing is to avoid a property tax increase." But Garcia doubled down: "You cannot move forward until you show the taxpayers of Chicago where the money is going." Ouch. A second admission from Garcia that, nearly five months into his campaign for mayor, he doesn't talk even to the nearest billion about City Hall finances. The closest he got was a shot at Emanuel for failing to get Chicago's house in order, and "now talking in a sophisticated way about how he's going to do it." The obligatory next line -- Here's how I'm going to do it -- never arrived.
On it went: Garcia, asked how he would replace the $70 million in revenue from the red light cameras he promises to remove? "That is part of the challenge." With each wan answer from Garcia, Emanuel filibustered anew about his plans to right Chicago with a mix of reform and revenue.
Fifteen minutes into the hour, the debate was as good as over. The longer the men talked, the more obvious it was that this was a debate about one, and only one, candidate's ideas.
One cliche of this race is that Garcia's sole platform plank is, "I'm not Rahm."
That's not fair; Garcia plainly loves Chicago and wants to revive its moribund neighborhoods. But given a wide-open chance to explain the financial plan that will make his dreams possible, he stuck to platitudes. We watched every minute. But we didn't have to.
