From the article, Curtis Black notes Preckwinkle, with Chuy as her deputy: "had to keep a campaign promise to reduce the sales tax. She laid off hundreds of county workers and closed hundreds of additional vacant positions. She also proposed a pension reform bill (it stalled in Springfield) that unions said was worse than Emanuel’s.

The County Board didn’t vote on Preckwinkle’s pension plan, but on the other hand, Garcia didn’t speak out against it. That was one factor in his failure to win support from AFSCME in the recent mayoral election.

Both Emanuel and Garcia are being vague about what they will do about the revenue crunch that will come with next year’s pension fund deadlines. There are a few clear differences, however. Garcia says a financial transaction tax should be on the table, and he supports a progressive state income tax. These aren’t politically viable in the short term, but they say something about the candidate’s political priorities — and they provide a contrast with the regressive fees and fines that Emanuel has piled on residents.

Garcia also calls for declaring a TIF surplus using it for a “good-faith down payment” on a pension solution. This is a serious proposal. TIFs take in nearly half a billion dollars a year. A report last year showed that TIF diversions far exceed the city’s annual pension costs."

For me, it's a question of priorities: Rahm has shown that any pain to balance a budget must be borne by the people at the bottom - middle class homeowners, working families that rely on city services to stay afloat and some of the most vulnerable in Chicago (such as school children or the mentally ill). Chuy has shown a willingness to crack down on the lavish pay and lax performance of public employees, and to push for real reforms to pensions and other costs that are holding our local governments down. And he's looked at tax reform and the beneficiaries of government largess to cover those costs, first.

Rahm's aldermen made it clear over the weekend that a property tax hike is on coming. The only question is what will happen to the dollars collected: will they go to pay down our debts, or will they be put in to the TIF and used to pay for more real estate development in the Loop?