Restating pt 2

Restating part 1 is here 

Well as promised here is the financial impact of divorcing Chicago from Illinois.  Let's begin by figuring Income tax amounts and go from there:

These are the counties that would make up the State of Chicago

 

Data Source

 

Now Illinois has a flat income tax rate of 4.95% so figuring the states share of these counties is easy. For simplicity we are going to use median household income and the number of households for each county—see math above. So the state of Chicago would at this rate take in $9,776,723,008 annually.

Now taking the state of Chicago out of Illinois leaves $11,231,861,622. We can clearly see that “Downstate” does bring in more revenue than Chicago by income numbers.

But Maura what about sales tax and motor fuel tax and sin taxes?

While that is a good question the summery is: I am not an accountant or an economist and these numbers are a nightmare! Plus trying to tease them out is not—to me—easy.

Change of heart! Let’s walk on the WILD SIDE!! Alrighty, overly complicated generalizations here we go!

Sales and use taxes are lumped together in the Fiscal Year 2020 report at $15,902,689,735.66 for the state. Now if we divide that by total number of households in Illinois it becomes $3281.52  Now we can extrapolate this data into two numbers for Illinois and the state of Chicago.

The State of Chicago would have 3,205,203 households or $10,517,937,748.56 in sales and use revenue.

Illinois would be left with 1,640,931households or $5,384,747,895.12

Now we can quickly see that as far as Sales and use taxes Chicago is double the rest of the state.

Now due to mass transit in Chicago and vast distances in Illinois we will not try to extrapolate fuel taxes and after trying to read the Fiscal year 2020 budget and the fiscal year 2020 capital budget I'm not too sure I can tease those numbers out of the data.

So in total Chicago should have an annual revenue about $20,294,660,756 

And Illinois should have an annual revenue about $6,508,609,517.12

A difference in Chicago's favor of $13,786,051,238

Now while this sounds HUGE let's consider some things that if you can tease them out of the capital budget or the line items your doing better than me.

Chicago would be responsible for the expense of maintaining Interstate highways in their area so: 55, 57, 65, 88, 90, 94, 290, 294, and 355

The entirety of the Chicago public school system would fall squarely on Chicago as well.

Chicago would be responsible for all of their pension mandates.

Prisoner housing would also fall to them and considering they are the largest city in Illinois you can well figure most inmates originate from Chicago.

So who comes out ahead?

In my opinion money wise Illinois does, mostly because of all the things Chicago would suddenly have to fund on its own.

Representation in Congress is a wash, but Illinois would pick up two senators and Chicago would still have two.

The remaining Illinois counties around Chicago would have to greatly tighten their zoning laws though to keep "Outer Chicago" from becoming a thing and losing cropland.

Part 3 and so on?

This post taught me something very important, money flow through a state is convoluted and well disguised.  State budgets are not like we use at home where everything has a line and is clearly delineated.  At a state level everything is generalized, departmentalized, and nigh on impossible to understand as it is written in a mix of bureaucratese and political favors.  There is no reason for this except to keep us commoners from understanding just where OUR money is going.  Yes I said OUR because all government is supposed to do is collect tax revenue and allocate it for the good of all it's citizens--the way these budgets look we are getting the shaft and not the mine.

This is just Illinois, New York, and Los Angeles, are both WAY larger and I'm sure have way more convoluted budgets so teasing them apart is going to take a lot of time IF I can manage to tease them apart at all.

-Maura