It looks like Rahm Emanuel's Chicago Public Schools team is rigging a fiscal explosion. The $5.73 billion fiscal 2013 budget that CPS proposed Friday sets the school system up for an almost certain and certainly imminent crisis ... in fiscal 2014.
That's because CPS wants to fill a $665 million budget deficit this year mainly by emptying the system's reserve funds. That leaves zero reserves available for next year, when the anticipated deficit balloons to more than $1 billion. That's largely because, under state law, CPS' required pension payments will more than double.
Repeat: Zero reserves available. "The current financial situation is a crisis," says Civic Federation President Laurence Msall. "Next year it will be catastrophic."
And the year after? Same thing. ...More HERE
