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.
What took so long?
If the Supreme Court of Illinois declared that this law is unconstitutional today, that means it was also unconstitutional on the first day that cook County started collecting the illegal and unconstitutional taxes. Would a class action suit be able to recover the taxes and refund them to those who bought firearms or ammo in cook County? How about doing it with a court order from the Supremes? Curious minds want to know. The embarrassment of Toni “soda pop tax” Taxwinkel would be worth the cost of the lawyers to make it happen.