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Chicago firefighters and paramedics will get more than $20 million in back pay without adding to the city’s mountain of debt under a five-year contract overwhelmingly ratified Wednesday that forfeits union givebacks for the possibility of pension reform.
Earlier this year, Mayor Rahm Emanuel persuaded the City Council to double — from $500 million to $1 billion — a “commercial paper” program used to tide the city over between major bond issues.
Chief Financial Officer Lois Scott said then that the short-term borrowing program would “ensure the city has liquidity for unseen needs such as retroactive salary payments and judgments.”
But City Hall has insisted that the more than $20 million needed to cover the back pay was tucked away into all-purpose “finance general” accounts in the mayor’s 2014 budget and that the tab would not be covered by borrowed money.
