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.
Just because it is “infinitely better” than the Illinois ethics program does not mean that it is adequate, effective, or better than nothing at all. These governments are still heavily weighted towards corruption and lack of action against violators. Very little happens unless the feds get involved.