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Pension protectors and the municipal bond juggernaut have been aggressively passing into law whatever they can to ensure they come first if the city doesn’t have enough money for everything. Who’s doing the same for taxpayers and those who rely on city services? Not Chicago Democrats.
While most of the media has focused on the fact that the Janus case stands to decimate union coffers – and by extension, Democratic Party coffers – some labor activists and legal scholars have begun sounding the alarm on what they say would be the unintended consequences of the suit, effectively opening up the floodgates for countless lawsuits like the recent ones filed by the International Union of Operating Engineers.
Local 150 is basically saying: If the Supreme Court ends fair share, unions shouldn’t have to represent workers who won’t pay their dues.
Pritzker’s investment businesses have underperformed even according to the low diversity standards of the financial services industry, a Tribune review found. He has employed few women in senior positions at the Pritzker Group, a Chicago-based venture capital, private equity and asset management firm he co-founded with his brother.
Excluding the Pritzker brothers, of the 55 employees currently listed on the firm’s online employee rosters, just eight are women. And of the 26 employees with a senior title of vice president or above, three are women.
Comment: Being about 2/3 funded, it’s in much better shape than most Illinois pensions. Our state pensions are about 40% funded, Chicago’s about 24% and the 500-plus police and firefighter pensions around Illinois average about 50%.
After 30 minutes of hissing and heckling — and cheers for his opponent — Rep. Daniel Lipinski (D-Ill.) had heard enough. After Marie Newman, the liberal activist running against him, attacked him for not favoring a “clean” deal that would let undocumented immigrants stay in the country, he let loose.
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Just check the box to say you’re a citizen who can vote: “When you go to register to vote, you do check a box that attests to your citizenship,” Dietrich said. “You are signing a legal document that says, ‘Yes, I am a citizen.’ But no one who registers to vote is required to bring in, for example, a birth certificate or other proof of citizenship. That’s something that you check the box, and you attest to it.”
Comment: This is an op-ed by Streator’s City Manager. See the related news piece immediately below regarding the city and Tim Sharpe, an actuary. Streator’s combined police and fire pension unfunded liability is about $24 million according to the last DOI report. Population is only 16,000.
Comment: Despite near daily stories that the Sun-Times’ news side has had for years on The Machine’s graft and incompetence, its editors back The Machine’s candidate. Then again, it should be no surprise that a union-owned paper would back a union-owned candidate.
Aon Center, the 83-story office tower overlooking Millennium Park, sold for $712 million in 2015. It’s worth half that, $356.4 million, according to the assessor. That same year, a retail building on North Michigan Avenue, including the home of a Nike flagship store, traded for $295 million. The assessor values the properties at $56.8 million. Willis Tower fetched $1.05 billion in 2015, a record for Chicago. But the assessor says it’s worth just $580 million.
The pattern holds for a sampling of 50 of Cook County’s most expensive buildings. A Crain’s analysis found that the assessor valued every
“Last February, Wirepoints.com reported a committee of the American Academy of Actuaries recommended charges against Sharpe…. In 2015, the New York Times ran a story about how actuaries across the country were providing bad projections to government pension boards. Sharpe was presented as an example…. The Times said in the 2015 story that Sharpe had the biggest market share of police and fire pension business in Illinois.” That New York Times article is linked here.
The proposed changes include widening portions of South Lake Shore Drive and Stony Island Avenue to accommodate a key feature of the center, the closing of a portion of Cornell Drive. A report prepared for city and state transportation officials said Cornell would need to be closed by the end of 2019 for the center to open as planned in 2021.
“I mean, if you have 5,000 students from mainland China paying out-of-state tuition,” Bowman said, “what’s the incentive for them to discount to an in-state youngster in order to land that resident?”
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