In tonight’s Chica­go may­oral debate at Chicago’s pub­lic tele­vi­sion sta­tion WTTW, Rahm Emanuel and host Phil Ponce (who is also, it turns out, the mayor’s neigh­bor) made much of the ​“deficits total­ing more than $470,000” for two years at the end of Jesus ​“Chuy” Gar­ci­a’s time at the com­mu­ni­ty orga­ni­za­tion Enlace Chica­go, where he worked as exec­u­tive director.

It was probably smart for Rahm Emanuel to hit his challenger with this charge. It made for a good opportunity to score a point against Garcia. The thing is, as the mayor well knows, it’s ludicrous.

First report­ed in the Chica­go Sun-Times by Dan Miho­lapolous, Emanuel and his team clear­ly planned to make it a major talk­ing point, as the may­or brought a copy of the organization’s 990 tax form to hold up for dra­mat­ic effect. Gar­cia didn’t han­dle the ques­tion par­tic­u­lar­ly well — while he empha­sized that the orga­ni­za­tion grew con­sid­er­ably under his watch, he appeared to split hairs, say­ing ​“a deficit is not a debt” — which, while true, requires a lit­tle bit of expla­na­tion that Gar­cia could­n’t give in the mid­dle of a debate.

It was prob­a­bly smart for Rahm Emanuel to hit his chal­lenger with this charge. It made for a good oppor­tu­ni­ty to score a point against Gar­cia, the may­or wav­ing the tax form around while insist­ing that Chuy’s prof­li­gate fis­cal ways at the helm of a non­prof­it will be repli­cat­ed at the city lev­el if he wins the runoff elec­tion. (It prob­a­bly would have been the night’s most mem­o­rable moment if it hadn’t been over­shad­owed by Ponce’s incred­i­bly cal­lous ques­tion about Chuy’s son’s past gang involvement.)

The thing is, as the may­or well knows, it’s ludicrous.

Far be it from me to lec­ture May­or Emanuel about the way finance works — unlike him, I’ve nev­er worked as an invest­ment banker; I’m just a hum­ble mag­a­zine edi­tor. But as he well knows, some­times it’s smart to run a deficit as an orga­ni­za­tion — whether a non­prof­it or a busi­ness — if that orga­ni­za­tion is grow­ing and the deficit is manageable.

If your orga­ni­za­tion is expand­ing, meet­ing and exceed­ing your goals, imple­ment­ing a num­ber of impor­tant pro­grams, all of that — it may actu­al­ly be a good idea to run a deficit. In some moments, you’d prob­a­bly be an irre­spon­si­ble orga­ni­za­tion­al head not to run a deficit, if you found your­self in a sit­u­a­tion where your orga­ni­za­tion could rapid­ly expand its impact or your busi­ness could increase its mar­ket share. One non­prof­it assis­tance web site even has a page devot­ed to the sub­ject of deficits for non­prof­its enti­tled, ​“When is a deficit OK?”

Gar­cia said that dur­ing his time as Enlace’s head, the orga­ni­za­tion expand­ed huge­ly, going from a sin­gle paid employ­ee to over 100 part- and full-timers; by all accounts, the orga­ni­za­tion is now in the black and has a bud­get of sev­er­al mil­lion dol­lars. This is what the much-vaunt­ed ​“job cre­ators” — for-prof­it busi­ness­es — do all the time: run up a man­age­able deficit on the way achiev­ing full fis­cal health. The deficit that Gar­cia ran at Enlace appar­ent­ly has­n’t been too dif­fi­cult for the orga­ni­za­tion to get out of.

But I’m not say­ing any­thing Emanuel and his team don’t already know. Like I said, wav­ing around a 990 and talk­ing about Gar­cia leav­ing a non­prof­it with a deficit makes for an excel­lent, if dis­hon­est, 140 char­ac­ter-sized talk­ing point.

And it’s smart, because when we’re talk­ing about a cou­ple hun­dred thou­sand dol­lars of deficit for an orga­ni­za­tion that was grow­ing, we’re not talk­ing about issues like the explo­sion in the use of bonds to pay for basic city func­tions — an explo­sion that is hand­ing stag­ger­ing amounts of mon­ey over to Emanuel’s old col­leagues on Wall Street and leav­ing future gen­er­a­tions on the hook for enor­mous bills.

In a series on the sub­ject, the Chica­go Tri­bune referred to the city’s use of these bonds as part of a ​“pat­tern of fis­cal reck­less­ness.” The bonds are not debt accrued as part of long-term, infra­struc­ture-build­ing invest­ments in the city, but rather debt tak­en on to accom­plish the city’s most basic func­tions — keep­ing the prover­bial lights on and stick­ing future gen­er­a­tions with the bill plus inter­est. And that debt load, accord­ing to the Tri­bune, isn’t man­age­able — it’s poten­tial­ly crushing.

Per­haps Ponce should have asked Emanuel about such ​“scoop and toss” finan­cial tac­tics. Per­haps Chuy should’ve brought copies of the Tri­bune​’s ​“Bro­ken Bonds” series to wave around at Rahm — or at least a page from an ​“Eco­nom­ics 101” textbook.

In any case, May­or Emanuel’s fix­a­tion on a two-year deficit at Enlace is absurd, and WTTW host Phil Ponce should have known bet­ter than to join the pile-on. The deficit Gar­cia left at Enlace should be a non-issue in the lead-up to the runoff elec­tion on April 7.