{"id":534742,"date":"2010-04-19T14:08:40","date_gmt":"2010-04-19T18:08:40","guid":{"rendered":"tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8341c60fd53ef01347ffb14ea970c"},"modified":"2010-04-19T14:08:40","modified_gmt":"2010-04-19T18:08:40","slug":"daley-says-state-and-federal-government-have-to-cut-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/534742","title":{"rendered":"Daley says state and federal government have to cut more"},"content":{"rendered":"

Posted by Hal Dardick<\/em> at 1:07 p.m.<\/p>\n

Mayor Richard Daley today said he will ask city vendors to renegotiate their contracts, with a goal of cutting Chicago’s costs by 10 percent.<\/p>\n

Daley said the move is just the latest of the city’s cost-cutting moves, including unpaid furlough days for employees, to cope with a tough economy that has slowed down revenue. He also said he understood the frustration expressed last week by tea party activists who rallied at Daley Plaza, saying other governments haven’t made the sacrifices that Chicago has.
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<\/br>\u201cWe\u2019re doing everything here, and the state and federal government are not doing that,\u201d Daley said, adding he wasn\u2019t pointing fingers at specific politicians. \u201cIt does get you upset. You figure why are they immune from the economy \u2014 that people are suffering. And I\u2019m not talking about any individual. I\u2019m not talking specifically about (President Barack) Obama or (Gov. Pat) Quinn.\u201d
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He added: \u201cThere isn\u2019t one state or federal employee taking any time off. You wonder why. Why not? Don\u2019t they realize that this is a national recession. Don\u2019t they realize that people are suffering. And that\u2019s where the disgruntled attitude is, that they don\u2019t get it.
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<\/br>"They don\u2019t understand that this is a national recession. They are living in \u2014 they call it the Washington or Springfield bubble.\u201d
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<\/br>That, he said, is what tea party members are upset about. \u201cIt has nothing to do with Democrats or Republicans,\u201d he said. \u201cIf they had a Republican administration in Washington, it would be the same thing.\u201d
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<\/br>Daley said that last year he asked vendors to cut costs by 2 percent. About 30 percent took him up on the offer, saving nearly $4 million, he said.
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<\/br>\u201cYou\u2019re not going to threaten them,\u201d Daley said when asked how he would get the vendors to come to the renegotiating table. \u201cThis is a good thing. This is a good concept. We\u2019re trying to keep government going.\u201d
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<\/br>Daley said revenues so far are meeting projections in this year\u2019s budget plan, but he\u2019s nevertheless taking additional steps to save money.
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<\/br>That includes locking in natural gas cost savings of $8 million, issuing low cost Build America Bonds and Recovery Zone Bonds that reduced city debt-service costs by more than $2.8 million and the return of 32 rented vehicles that would have cost $1.7 million through the rest of the year.
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<\/br>Daley last week announced that an audit would be conducted of the city\u2019s health benefit records to purge ineligible employees and dependents.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Posted by Hal Dardick at 1:07 p.m. Mayor Richard Daley today said he will ask city vendors to renegotiate their contracts, with a goal of cutting Chicago’s costs by 10 percent. Daley said the move is just the latest of the city’s cost-cutting moves, including unpaid furlough days for employees, to cope with a tough […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3992,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-534742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3992"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=534742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534742\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=534742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=534742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=534742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}