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With the spring legislative session entering its final two weeks, state budget negotiations are starting to come into focus, even as lower-than-expected revenue forecasts put a damper on efforts to add spending beyond what Gov. J.B. Pritzker laid out in his $49.6 billion proposal.
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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Illinois Budget = Fun with Numbers IMO!!
A long story that tells us that Dem’s are agreed that Pritzker’s ‘balanced’ budget won’t work if Illinois taxpayers continue to pay for the health care of migrants or asylum seekers or refugees or undocumented immigrants – or whoever they are, since all these descriptions get used interchangeably. We also learn Dem’s are all agreed that ending this ‘only one in the nation’ program is out of the question for Illinois taxpayers. Thing is, the Pantagraph fails to even mention the only other possible solution, given the fact that everyone’s agreed were going to keep doing it – which is… Read more »