Best Defense Against Virus Proves Crushing to States’ Finances – Bloomberg

Few states face a crisis as deep as Illinois, which has more than $7 billion in unpaid bills, about $137 billion in unfunded pension liabilities and only $1.2 million in reserves. Just over a week into the pandemic, initial jobless claims in Illinois jumped more than 10-fold compared with the same period last year.

Chicago, Illinois’s biggest city and the nation’s third largest, is also in a tough spot. It already faced deficits and its pension contributions were to jump this year to $1.7 billion from $1.3 billion after decades of shorting the four retirement funds drove unfunded liabilities to about $30 billion.