You said: "In other words, they would still have to honor the old contract until it expired. " Which led me to believe that you believe that we are going to be able to fund the CURRENT obligations of these government unions. Correct me if im wrong. The unions have been offered plenty of concessions, just as they did in this case in Illinois, but the unions for the most part have been unwilling to take them. They would rather see us lay off all kinds of government employees, so that the ones at the top of the union can have their lush pay/benefits. That is not negotiating on the part of the unions, that is them completely unwilling to budge, and telling us as tax payers to go fuck ourselves. What happens next year when they want their 5% raise? are we going to lay off even more government employees, so that the ones on top can have their lush pay/benefit packages? Eventually we will get almost nothing for our tax dollars if they continue playing this way. They have had the choice and they have chosen repeatedly to support pay raises and layoffs as opposed to concessions, so how can we possibly honor their contracts? The only unions who cooperated were ones like Wisconsin where it was a foregone conclusion they were going to lose their ability to collectively bargain, and the reason they did that was so that they could look rational and hopefully get a democrat in charge and continue with business as usual. Anyways i apologise if you agree with all this but i must have misread something somewhere. I laughed pretty hard at this, knew it was coming at some point.
Obvious does have a point about contract law. The problem is that public employees should not be unionized in the first place, they are too powerful because when they strike it shuts down public services. I have to wonder how it came to be that they got the taxpayers by the balls so easily. The rhetoric is interesting. Somehow the real battle of unions versus taxpayer is always spun into union versus evil republicans as if republicans and those who vote them in are always trying to 'take down the middle class'. Interesting how it's sooo quiet when it is Rham vs. unions. Politics is just like religion, in fact for some it is religion.
This is great news coming out of Illinois. I hope the union sues and wins. That will teach other states that unions must be stomped at all costs!
Quinn's legal stand is that most of these contracts are invalid if the congress does not fund the monies needed.
Tax Assessor value? No idea. The tax bill has dropped every year since I've owned it. I believe it is assessed considering the value of the properties in the surrounding town. The town is a little mexican village, like something out of Milagro Beanfield War. When I refinanced last December the bank appraiser said it was worth just under 600k, about 10% more than I paid in 2006. The closest comp (comparative property) in the appraisal was 28 miles away on a hilltop in North Hollywood. The home sits on top of a butte in the middle of the town and was designed by a famous architect. There is a guesthouse, barn, paddock, corral, a new garage complex, a helipad, pool and an enormous amount of decking and about 2500 feet of paved driveway. There is a huge difference between the tax assessment and the bank appraisal but I don't think it is as low as you've cited. The slate roof cost more than that. I made this video from scratch in MATLAB using a WGS-84 ellipsoid and adding EGM-96 geoid height above ellipsoid to which I added DTED-1 terrain height above geoid and then overlayed with high resolution satellite imagery. The property and home is centered in the image: <iframe width="640" height="510" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Gs_1Qrq4W_Y" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Looks very defensable. When do the guard towers go up? Or are there hidden machinegun bunkers we can't see?
Not trying to show-off just trying to respond to Hombre's question. I've posted about it too, the idea that there can be an enormous discrepency between what a tax assessor says a home is worth and what the banks or market says it is worth. I pay taxes associated with the little town at the foot of my "mountain". Seems to me I am grossly undertaxed. The bank told me that my property isn't even part of the local market. Back on subject, if Illinois is sued and can't fire workers because they're on contract then they must raise taxes. How high can you raise property taxes before people start to flee the state? My property taxes in Elmhurst added basically $1,000.00 per month to my mortgage payment. It seemed excessive at the time.