![]() Like I said, waving around a 990 and talking about Garcia leaving a nonprofit with a deficit makes for an excellent, if dishonest, 140 character-sized talking point.Īnd it’s smart, because when we’re talking about a couple hundred thousand dollars of deficit for an organization that was growing, we’re not talking about issues like the explosion in the use of bonds to pay for basic city functions - an explosion that is handing staggering amounts of money over to Emanuel’s old colleagues on Wall Street and leaving future generations on the hook for enormous bills. The deficit that Garcia ran at Enlace apparently hasn’t been too difficult for the organization to get out of.īut I’m not saying anything Emanuel and his team don’t already know. This is what the much-vaunted “job creators” - for-profit businesses - do all the time: run up a manageable deficit on the way achieving full fiscal health. Garcia said that during his time as Enlace’s head, the organization expanded hugely, going from a single paid employee to over 100 part- and full-timers by all accounts, the organization is now in the black and has a budget of several million dollars. One nonprofit assistance web site even has a page devoted to the subject of deficits for nonprofits entitled, “When is a deficit OK?” In some moments, you’d probably be an irresponsible organizational head not to run a deficit, if you found yourself in a situation where your organization could rapidly expand its impact or your business could increase its market share. If your organization is expanding, meeting and exceeding your goals, implementing a number of important programs, all of that - it may actually be a good idea to run a deficit. But as he well knows, sometimes it’s smart to run a deficit as an organization - whether a nonprofit or a business - if that organization is growing and the deficit is manageable. ![]() The thing is, as the mayor well knows, it’s ludicrous.įar be it from me to lecture Mayor Emanuel about the way finance works - unlike him, I’ve never worked as an investment banker I’m just a humble magazine editor. (It probably would have been the night’s most memorable moment if it hadn’t been overshadowed by Ponce’s incredibly callous question about Chuy’s son’s past gang involvement.) It made for a good opportunity to score a point against Garcia, the mayor waving the tax form around while insisting that Chuy’s profligate fiscal ways at the helm of a nonprofit will be replicated at the city level if he wins the runoff election. ![]() It was probably smart for Rahm Emanuel to hit his challenger with this charge. Garcia didn’t handle the question particularly well - while he emphasized that the organization grew considerably under his watch, he appeared to split hairs, saying “a deficit is not a debt” - which, while true, requires a little bit of explanation that Garcia couldn’t give in the middle of a debate. The thing is, as the mayor well knows, it’s ludicrous.įirst reported in the Chicago Sun-Times by Dan Miholapolous, Emanuel and his team clearly planned to make it a major talking point, as the mayor brought a copy of the organization’s 990 tax form to hold up for dramatic effect. It made for a good opportunity to score a point against Garcia. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |