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Summary and audio linked here.
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.
Expect no retraction or apology. This what they do.
The state’s existing buyout program for its own pensions is the precedent for Chicago, which should be a warning: Look out for similar exaggerated claims and shoddy analysis.
Full interview and summary linked here.
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To paraphrase a commenter in another thread, “building a roof is merely putting more lip stick on the pig that is Soldier Field.” LLs problem is one of butts. That is, butts that can’t get a seat in one of the 65,100 seats now existing in a stadium that once held over 100,000 seats. The McCashkeys are drooling over the lost revenue they could achieve with a facility that has a significantly larger seating capacity. A new roof just won’t cut it. SoFi stadium is configured for 70,240 seats, but it is designed to be reconfigured to upwards of 100,000… Read more »
The bears should exit the city and never look back.
She’s got more leverage than she thinks. Bears in Arlington Heights won’t happen. The high construction cost in Illinois with union labor is one major issue. But the infrastructure there is not in place to handle 70 thousand or more attendees at one time. The race track never hit that level of one day attendance. Who will pay for that? And another deal killer is property tax, which as everyone already knows and the Bears haven’t figured out yet, is an insurmountable burden at current levels.
That’s one way of looking at it, but it does look like a done deal. There’s a growing trend of teams moving to the suburbs for stadiums. Bears would be bucking this trend by staying is Chicago.
Property Taxes can be avoided under the pritzker plan. Build a stadium without toilets.