Ald. Reilly gets his way: Fiscal impact statements mandated for many ordinances

No more will Chicago aldermen blindly approve budget changes, major transactions or the sale of city assets simply by taking the mayor’s word for it, as they did before leasing Chicago parking meters.

At least 72 hours prior to a City Council vote, they’ll have their own “fiscal impact statement” that outlines in advance the “immediate impact,” the impact on the “reasonably foreseeable” future, and the “long-range” effect on city finances.

Downtown Ald. Brendan Reilly (42nd) got what he wanted Tuesday after a year-long battle that culminated in a now-withdrawn threat to use a parliamentary maneuver to force a vote — and potentially embarrass his colleagues and Mayor Rahm Emanuel — on the City Council floor.

That won’t be necessary, thanks to Tuesday’s vote by the Budget Committee.

After Reilly threatened to play hardball, he and top mayoral aides hammered out a compromise ordinance that both sides say they can live with.

Reilly initially wanted the City Council’s hand-picked financial analyst to do a “fiscal impact statement” for all ordinances that propose to “add, eliminate, increase or decrease” the city’s annual city budget by $10 million, excluding grant funds.

Same for the “sale or lease of any city asset, including revenue streams from that asset” if the city’s take was greater than $10 million.

When Emanuel balked and insisted on a $25 million threshold, the two sides settled on $15 million. At Reilly’s insistence, the mayor agreed to yet another provision mandating that the fiscal impact statement be presented to council members at least 72 hours before a vote on the proposal.

It took months of hard bargaining and the lobbying of newspaper editorial boards and civic groups to get to this point, but Reilly was all smiles on Tuesday.

He called the decision to “empower” the City Council’s financial analyst Ben Winick an “exciting day” for Chicago taxpayers and about time.

“Frankly, if I had it my way, we would have had this tool in place some 11 years ago,” Reilly said — an obvious reference to former Mayor Richard M. Daley’s widely-despised 75-year parking meter deal that keeps getting worse every year.

Other states and cities have “been benefiting from a tool like this for decades. … This will pay dividends down the road — not just for the folks that are here today, but for the folks who succeed us here.”

Reilly stressed that the fiscal impact statements will not necessarily shoot down mayoral initiatives. To the contrary. The statements might “prove up the value and importance of many of the programs and initiatives that we discuss and approve.”

But he said, “This tool will give our constituents, Chicago taxpayers, greater faith in our budget process and our deliberative legislative processes here.”

Four years ago, the City Council voted to create a $301,216-a-year independent budget office to provide aldermen with expert advice on mayoral spending, programs and privatization and guide the City Council through Chicago’s $30 billion pension crisis.

The reform was stuck in the mud for nearly two years because of a stalemate over whether former Ald. Helen Shiller (46th) had the independence and policy expertise to lead the office as the City Council’s first-ever financial analyst.

In May 2015, the Council ultimately settled on Winick, vice president of policy at Innovation Illinois. He was recommended by top mayoral aides.

After just 18 months on the job, Winick told aldermen he wanted to leave the $110,112-a-year financial analyst job, only to yank back his resignation letter and essentially say, “Never mind.”

Now, he’ll finally have the power to act without being ordered to do so by Ald. Carrie Austin (34th), the mayoral ally who chairs the City Council’s Budget Committee.

His new powers go beyond the privatization ordinance approved in November 2015 by aldermen determined not to re-live the parking meter nightmare – or at least not be blamed for it.

Those ground rules are tailor-made to give aldermen more lead time and an independent analysis before decisions are made. But they would apply only to privatization of city assets valued at a minimum of $400 million with terms that last at least 20 years.