This spring Edna Pardo finished another of her guides to the city’s budget. For more than 20 years she’s been quietly putting out “A Guide Through Chicago’s Tax Maze” for the League of Women Voters–making her a legend among the watchdogs who pore over budgets in an attempt to hold the city accountable for the way it spends our money.
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Pardo believes it’s important that the public understand what happens with tax money at the local level, especially now, with President Bush cutting federal taxes. She thinks people are being bamboozled into believing they’re getting something for nothing, though nearly every tax cut on the national level results in either a hike in state or local taxes or fees or a cut in essential services. “It’s very simple–either you fund government services or you don’t,” she says. “People want basic services, so they have to be paid for. If you’re not paying for them one way, you’re paying for them another.”
Pardo has been a champion of transparency in government since the 1960s, when she was raising three kids on the west side. “I got started by looking at school funding because I was involved in the PTA at my kids’ school,” she says. “They went to the Lewis school and then on to Austin High School. I got involved in the PTA, and I joined the League of Women Voters. I got to work with some of the top school funding people in the state. These were very smart people–league volunteers–and I learned from them.” Among other things, they taught her how to sift through piles of state and local budget books and tax records.
“I know all too well what happened to Dawn in that campaign,” Pardo says. Netsch was bashed by her opponent, Jim Edgar, as a tax-and-spend liberal. The public, apparently eager to believe Edgar’s promise to hold the line on both taxes and budget cuts, voted overwhelmingly against her. “Edgar blasted Dawn, and then did what she said had to be done–he wound up raising taxes,” says Pardo, laughing. “I would have hoped everyone would have learned a lesson from that.”
A TIF, says Pardo, basically takes funds that could be spent on the schools and spends them on the cost of development. “We’re taking money from the kids–and giving it to the developers and bankers,” she says. “Is this fair? Does this make sense? The city would argue that the projects wouldn’t be built without a TIF, but that’s not necessarily so. A lot of these TIFs are in good neighborhoods.”
