By Townhall Chicago News Staff
Truth in Accounting, a Chicago-based nonprofit, tracks how much of Chicago’s property tax revenue goes toward pension payments rather than city services.
Sheila A. Weinberg, founder and chief executive of the organization, says pension costs now consume a large share of the city’s property tax collections, leaving little room for other spending. A clip aired during the broadcast and attributed to Weinberg addressed that figure directly, though the station’s own records could not confirm the speaker’s identity on that particular clip.
Weinberg became a certified public accountant in 1981 after earning an accounting degree from the University of Denver. She worked at public accounting and consulting firms in Seattle, Los Angeles and Chicago before founding Truth in Accounting in 2002 to push governments to produce financial reports that are, in the organization’s words, understandable, reliable, transparent and correct. She has testified before the Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board and the Governmental Accounting Standards Board and has advised members of Congress on federal budgeting.
The clip identified as Weinberg’s addressed the scale of Chicago’s pension burden directly. “Eighty percent of the property taxes go only to the pension payments, which is approaching $3 billion right now out of a general revenue fund,” the speaker said. “That’s about 20% of their general revenue funds.”
Truth in Accounting publishes annual reports, including Financial State of the States and Financial State of the Union, that compare government budget disclosures against their underlying financial condition. Weinberg’s commentary on public pension and budget issues has appeared in USA Today, the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times. The pension figures cited on the broadcast track closely with the kind of analysis Truth in Accounting has published on Illinois and Chicago’s finances, though the clip’s speaker attribution remains unconfirmed.
