-- Connecting the dots between our economy, government and business --
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.
SIGN UP HERE FOR OUR FREE WIREPOINTS DAILY NEWSLETTER
The far south side and south suburbs are failing because the residents are low income and barely earn enough money to pay the costs associated with the legacy real estate taxes. Spending more money on public transportation in a suburban like setting is a waste of taxpayer money.
Spot on. It would be cheaper to buy everyone down there Uber rides. If you could get an Uber driver to go there.
Public Transportation in Chicago/Cook is dying along with the central business district. Covid work from home, crime and the fact that all light rail options head downtown spell financial problems for Metra and CTA. To take light rail to OHare or Midway from the Southeast, or Southwest requires a trip downtown and a transfer to another rail line, relatively cheap but incredibly time consuming. Better safer private sector options exist. Public money tossed at extension of light rail is a waste. The time has come to re-think the whole purpose of public transit.
Chicago’s light rail service exists for one purpose: To take commuters to and from downtown Chicago during business hours. Remove the commuters from the equation and our public transit struggles or fails. The CTA survives a little bit because there are reasons to take the El several stops in any direction even though the terminus is downtown. Other cities around the world with better public transit have train lines that zip across town and go through neighborhoods. Chicago is just too concentrated downtown. Many European cities don’t have a downtown like we do but have different reasons to take the… Read more »
Sever the spokes of a wheel, and the hub of the wheel gets destroyed. The other huge weakness of the downtown, formerly a strength, is its size. There’s just not enough money in Chicago to turn the downtown around. The proposed LaSalle Street rehabilitation, which will fail, is a great example. Once portions of the greater downtown area get blighted, the blight will spread to whatever nice areas are left, mostly due to crime. The nice areas will not expand into the blighted areas, they’ll just get smaller and smaller as the good people continue to leave for the suburbs… Read more »
We rate Kirk’s crazy wild statements as entirely false!
He’s a RINO grifter.
NO
IT
WON’T
Kirk Dillard is yet another mediocrity added to the payroll and pension plans of one of our bloated public boards, this time the RTA. Dillard neglects to mention that the area that this extension of the CTA Red Line already has transit crisscrossing the region. They’re known as buses, and no additional investment is needed to operate the service. It is more difficult to award contracts to pals and family if there is no investment needed, so we get insanity such as this project. The real specter that haunts transit spenders are the ghosts of ridership past. The RTA, in… Read more »