You’ve seen the headlines: S&P downgrades Chicago’s credit rating. The mayor proposes a property tax rate hike. CPS and the mayor’s office clash over responsibility for the municipal workers’ pension payment. City Council approves the use of expiring TIF revenue to fund $1.25 billion in bonds for housing and economic development. City Council majority opposes head tax and property tax increase.

A budget war is raging in Chicago, and our press is all over it. But rarely do we confront the deeper questions that underlie the conflict, here and in every other American city: Are we actually broke, and why? Who controls the cash that flows into and out of our cities? Is social democracy, let alone socialism, even possible at the municipal level–or are we destined to forever beg for scraps of state and federal revenue?

In Bridgeport, residents and politicians are protesting a proposed land swap deal that would see the White Sox move to the South Loop and Amtrak move its maintenance yard down to Canal Street between 33rd and 35th. For the October edition of the municipal finance reading group, we'll put our heads together like a quartet of troubled umpires to consider whether the world of stadium financing is fair or foul. Bulls Markets by Sean Dinces looks at how the development of the United Center affected the Near West Side, sidewalk vendors, and the city's property tax picture. Please read through Chapter 3 for this meeting.