“We’re heading into a buzzsaw."
That's Toni Preckwinkle. The buzzsaw she's talking about is the budget. Or the cutting of the budget. Or the anticipated public and media reaction to the existence of said buzzsaw. Who knows! What we do know: things, they be bad. And we're keeping that half-penny-on-the-dollar tax increase. At least until 2012 (her campaign pledge: by 2014).
"No, but I never said I was going to do it when I walked in the door," Preckwinkle said today, when asked whether she was reneging on her campaign pledge to rollback the tax increase. "I said that would be irresponsible because I didn't have a good sense of what the financial conditions were."
The budget estimates run from a conservative $250 million gap to a "more dire" $400 to $500 million.
Asked whether the earliest she could implement a rollback would be 2012, Preckwinkle said "Yes, I would say. Why walking in the door would I complicate an extremely complicated situation."
Check the video for a condensed response.
Let the blaming of Todd Stroger begin ... now.
This post has been updated to strike an offensive nickname.
