Mayor's 'children's fund' from speed fines doesn't exist in budget
Expected $70 million haul will go into general fund
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-rahm-emanuel-speed-camera-funds-1119-20131119,0,7114410.story
By Hal Dardick, Chicago Tribune reporter
11:01 a.m. CST, November 19, 2013
Mayor Rahm Emanuel is pitching the $70 million he expects to collect from speed camera tickets next year as a way to help children — spending the windfall on a mix of after-school programs, early childhood education, summer jobs, violence reduction, crossing guards, police outside schools and other efforts.
"I promised that the revenue from new speed camera enforcement in children's safety zones would go to keeping our children safe, and this budget does exactly that," Emanuel said as he presented his spending plan last month. "We will be creating a Children's Fund to ensure that this ... new money is dedicated to keeping our kids learning and safe."
There is no children's fund in the proposed city budget. Instead, the money from speed camera fines will go straight into the city's $3.3 billion general fund to spend as the mayor and City Council see fit. Talking about helping children is more politically palatable than discussing the revenue from speed cameras that drivers are starting to pay.
If all of that sounds a little familiar, it should. Longtime Illinois residents remember a similar approach used to sell the state lottery in 1973. Lawmakers said all the proceeds would go to education. What they didn't advertise was that a like amount of money that had been going to schools was shifted to other programs — a move critics slammed as a shell game.
"A real children's fund would be one in which the lines went into a special fund and can only be spent for these purposes, and that's not what they're doing," said Dick Simpson, a former alderman and political science professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
The mayor also is making a for-the-children pitch to sell a 75-cents-a-pack cigarette tax increase, saying it will pay for more free vision care and health care for Chicago Public Schools students. The smoke tax hike is expected to bring in about $10 million next year, but only about $1.1 million will be spent on the children. The rest goes into the general fund to help balance the budget.
The mayor defends the kids-first theme by noting that the federal government has cut grant funding for children's programs in recent years. This year the city lost $6.6 million in Head Start funding, used for early childhood education, because of automatic U.S. government spending cuts known as sequestration, city officials said. The city also has lost funding for after-school programming and summer jobs for youths, they added.
Despite those cuts and the loss of other funding, the city has maintained or increased spending on those programs during Emanuel's tenure, which began in mid-2011. The speed camera revenue will allow the city to fill those gaps and keep up with current spending levels should there be future cuts, the mayor told the Tribune editorial board.
The idea is to make sure "the kids are held harmless," Emanuel said. "Whether it's after-school, summer jobs, pre-K, library (learning programs), crossing guards, police officers in front of schools that we have, those are the resources coming out of the safety zones that will pay for those, all those so the kids are never ... at risk."
City budget officials say that the term "children's fund" refers to $73 million that will be spent next year on after-school programs, early childhood education, summer jobs, violence reduction efforts, homeless youth programs, library programs, crossing guards and cops outside schools.
The city paid for those programs this year mostly out of the general fund before the first speed camera ever went up. Some of the programs will be expanded next year. The cost of the expansion and making up for other funding losses add up to at most $21 million, by the Budget Department's own reckoning.
The mayor, however, did not a create a special fund to limit spending of speed camera money solely to children's programs. That would have boxed Emanuel and aldermen in during tight budget times, and the speed cameras are expected to bring in far more than the $70 million predicted next year.
"The whole idea (the mayor presents) is it's all for the children, it's all for the safety of the kids," said Ald. Nicholas Sposato, 36th, who last year voted against allowing the speed cameras. "We all know it's about revenue."
To sell the speed cameras and cigarette tax revenue, Emanuel also is touting other benefits for children. With traffic slowed near schools and parks, kids will be safer, and with cigarette taxes higher, fewer kids are likely to take up smoking, he says.
Budget Director Alexandra Holt also noted during budget hearings that about $3 million in speed camera revenue is going to be spent on so-called traffic calming devices, like speed bumps, and other traffic safety infrastructure, like street signs.
Selling a state lottery or new speed cameras by saying all the revenue is for the kids is a common political tactic that's hardly unique to Emanuel. "It's the sugar coating on the pill," said DePaul University Professor Emeritus H. Woods Bowman, a government finance expert, former state lawmaker and onetime Cook County chief financial officer.
As Emanuel heads into the home stretch of budget approval, the welfare of children has become a central theme of his administration. For example, he mentioned children, kids or youths 32 times in his budget address.
"Our first and most important investment is in the children of Chicago," he said early on, and later he noted that as a youngster he used to make hospital rounds once a month with his pediatrician father.
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