"We might have to close the City Hall," mourned sad Mayor Anton Joseph Cermak of Chicago last month, when $140,000,000 in back revenue was snatched away from the city by the invalidation of the 1928-29 Cook County tax rolls. Last week Chicago's three-year-old fiscal chaos reached a newer, graver crisis. The doors of the City Hall were never so close to clapping to.
Insensitive to their chief city's quandary, the General Assembly adjourned until April 19 without having passed the measures necessary toward funding Cook County's tax delinquencies. The county was in technical default of $1,868,400. Failure-to-pay of three interior governments (West Park Board, Forest Preserves, Sanitary District) amounted to $2,500,000. Banks would buy no more tax anticipation warrants. School teachers, policemen, firemen had not been paid for weeks.
Mayor Cermak did the only thing left him to do. He prepared to dismiss 2,479 city employes, thus saving $7,000,000. He ordered half of the Sewer Department and city pipe yards shut down. But that did not supply money to keep the city in operation. To get cash Mayor Cermak began soliciting Loop real-estate owners to pay their 1930 taxes (some $34,000,000), although the 1930 tax rolls are based on the invalid rolls of 1928-29.
"Not since the Chicago Fire," said Mayor Cermak, "has the city been confronted with such a disastrous situation. We are the victims of politicians who have placed their self-interests above the acute needs of the people. God help Chicago!"