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.
As a long-time resident of Carbondale, I am not a bit surprised by the findings. In my humble opinion, we suffer here from a lack of City leadership. Many businesses have failed or are suffering here and the City to my knowledge has done nothing to help or at least encourage their continuation. The report fails to mention the chronic decreasing enrollment at the local public university here (with no sign of it abating) and the real possibility the City will lose its Home Rule status (and the sales tax bump the City gets because of that status) once the… Read more »