Editorial board questionnaires
Miguel Del Valle
Candidate for Mayor
59 years oldResponses to our questionnaire
Q.
Previous political experience (elective and appointed positions):
A.
City Clerk of Chicago, 2006-Present Democratic Party State Central Committeeman, 1994-1998 Illinois State Senator, 1987-2006
Q.
Education
A.
Chicago Public Schools Tuley High School (now Clemente) Northeastern Illinois University, BA, MA in Education and Guidance Honorary Degree National Louis University
Q.
The City Council has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in reserve funds to balance the city budget in recent years. How would you balance the budget without relying on one-time revenues? Should the city raise taxes? Please specify three areas in which you would cut city spending and estimate how much money would be saved.
A.
I would make sure that we capture the federal and state dollars we are leaving on the table. Chicago ranks near the bottom of the list of states receiving their share of federal funding, ranking 44th in per capita return on tax dollars for FY09. Additionally, we are leaving TIF revenue on the table. For next year, we could tap $30 - $50 million in TIF funds—which represent a percentage of unobligated and unprogrammed dollars currently available in the TIFs. When we tap these surplus