IF IT MOVES, TAX IT: Prominent Chicago mayoral candidate suggests a commuter tax.

On Fox 32’s Flannery Fired Up on Sunday, Bill Daley promised a plan to fix the pension debacle soon. Well, part of his plan came out yesterday during a speech to the venerable City Club of Chicago. Daley is open to a commuter tax.

Time for some history. Businesses and residents were fleeing Detroit in the 1950s and the early 1960s. The solution, Jerome Cavanaugh, the Motor City’s liberal mayor reasoned, was a municipal income tax and a commuter tax. The version of the decline and fall of Detroit you are familiar with is that the deadly 1967 riots fostered the city’s collapse. While it surely hastened it, the seeds of Detroit’s failure, which culminated in the historic 2013 bankruptcy, was planted by Cavanaugh’s income and commuter taxes. Even today Eight Mile Road, the northern border of Detroit, is the demarcation line for poverty and prosperity.

To be fair, Daley is not suggesting a Chicago income tax and he favors amending the pension clause–great idea–in the state constitution that forbids cutting pension benefits.

But if Daley’s commuter tax becomes law, look for the 14-lane Dan Ryan Expressway to be one of the thoroughfares out of Chicago for a multitude of residents and businesses.

If this tax ever comes to pass, there will be an immediate cry for discounts or rebates for people who drive the “right” kind of vehicles into the city.