How About Returning the Money?

In many operations, if you don't spend budgeted money, you lose it. It goes back to the general fund and is applied to other things. In the future, your budget is cut by the returned amount since you obviously didn't need it. Not here though:

• With incumbents everywhere in trouble and another election fast approaching, Chicago aldermen should be tripping over themselves to drain the $66 million-a-year pool that allows them to choose from a menu of street, sidewalk, alley and anti-crime improvements.

  Instead, thirteen aldermen left at least $500,000 of their $1.32 million-a-year allotment on the table and four of them closed the books on 2009 with more than $1 million unspent. Nine others failed to use anywhere from $250,000 to $500,000, records show.

At the bare minimum, we're talking $10 or $11 million unspent, probably quite a bit more based on carry over money from previous years. Couldn't this be used to alleviate layoffs or furloughs? It's nothing more than legalized bribe money that aldercreatures use to "buy" ward improvements and it's no better than the TIF money Shortshanks treats as his own personal ly controlled piggy bank.