Repeat After Me: B-R-O-K-E

The budget deficit for this fiscal year ranges from between $426M to $754M, depending on who's counting.

And yet:

"Former Ald. John Pope (10th) didn’t miss a beat or a buck before landing on his feet after losing his runoff April 7 to challenger Susan Sadlowski Garza by just 20 votes. 

Pope is back where he started — in the City Hall bureaucracy — as a $116,856-a-year deputy commissioner of the Department of Water Management, which has been at the center of the Hired Truck and city hiring scandals."

As your typical union-bashing commenter on the Tribune might say, that sounds like entitlement and arrogance!

Then this:

"Transgender city employees and their dependents will soon get $100,000 in costs tied to their gender reassignment surgeries covered by taxpayer-subsidized city health insurance, under a groundbreaking mayoral order disclosed Wednesday."

WCT supposes this is Rahm Emanuel's attempt at appearing socially relevant and aware.

And finally:

"Ferguson noted that cash-strapped Chicago is paying American Healthways Services LLC $3 million-a-year–and $10.5 million through Dec. 31–to administer the program [Chicago's wellness program] . 

But City Hall does nothing to “track or measure” whether the program  has either improved employee health or reduced the city’s skyrocketing health care costs, according to the advisory."

Rahm has droned on about a "culture of accountability" for awhile now, for everyone except conract awardees or his rubber-stamp school board.

The city's bond-rating downgraded to junk status, a CPS CEO with no Plan B if Springfield doesn't come through, and cash and patronage jobs still free-flowing out of the 5th floor of City Hall. But this is really a teacher problem. Got it.