Starve the beast. At some point, not so far off in the future either, people will literally just get the hell out of dodge and the trend will be towards states without bought and paid for union politicians. This will leave a place like Cook County with state, county, government employees and welfare recipients, the two most captive audiences to the "machine".
Property taxes will jump significantly, everybody already knows that and if you get stuck in some McMansion, you're screwed, plain and simple. Not only will they stick you with a re-assessment every year, but watch them tack on a bunch of other taxes on utilities and other such items.