Chicago’s political leadership is floating a pension buyout program as evidence it is seriously addressing the city’s thirty-six-billion-dollar unfunded pension liability, but Mark Glennon, founder of the Illinois policy research organization Wirepoints, said that the proposal moves debt from one column to another rather than reducing it, and that the broader fiscal picture facing the city continues to deteriorate across every measurable dimension. Audio here.
I have no doubts that the State of Illinois will completely bungle its response to the coronavirus. They will all point fingers at each other; meanwhile, surrounding states will have rapid response teams to stem the spread effectively.