By Ted Dabrowski
It seems nearly everybody’s forgotten about Chicago’s crippling pension debts.
Trillions in federal covid bailouts helped paper over them for three years, but now those bailout funds are running dry, and like an ugly disease, the pension pains are coming back.
Firefighters have in their pension fund less than 20 cents for every dollar they’re owed in retirement. Ditto for police and other city workers. Their retirement security is wiped out.
No other big city in the country has left their workers in such a predicament, save Detroit.
City money for other problems, like homelessness, poverty – or migrants, even? Forget it. Today, big debts like pensions are sucking up most of the money.
It used to be back in the 80s that the city’s “fixed” obligations – pensions and debt repayments – ate up just 15% of the city’s budget. Now, those same costs consume more than 40%.
That’s crowded out money for mental health services, pothole filling, kids’ classrooms, combating homelessness and everything else the city does.
The pension debt is now so large that at $52 billion, it’s the equivalent of about $45,000 per Chicago household.
Think property taxes have gone up too much in the last 15 years? Wait till ordinary Chicagoans – who don’t get pensions and who don’t have protected government jobs – are forced to pay down that pension debt with even more tax hikes.
Oh, and don’t forget that Chicago households will also be targeted to repay their share of the state’s pensions debts, the largest in the country.
The growing burden will force them to decide whether they stay or they go.
At the bottom will be the Chicagoans just struggling to make it. A declining, less prosperous Chicago means they’ll be put out of work and suffer from a growing lack of opportunity. They already bear the brunt of the increasing crime, worsening schools and now, the migrant crisis.
Don’t think I’m exaggerating. Black unemployment in Chicago is already the worst in the country among big cities.
The public pension crisis is a cancer on this great, beautiful, powerful city.
And yet pols will do nothing about it.
And most reporters will ignore it. They’ve got more “bleeding” issues to cover. Like robbery sprees or shootings.
Pensions? One reporter I talked to recently told me, “When pensions start coming in on buses every hour, then we’ll cover them.”
Sadly, he’s right.
Read more from Wirepoints:
A mess of uncertainty and litigation is sure to follow.
With $162 billion more from taxpayers, couldn’t you deliver a few bond upgrades, too
Audio and summary
“When pensions start coming in on buses every hour, then we’ll cover them.” What an ignorant statement. The crushing pension debt already arrived (by busload, truckload, or whatever conveyance you want to envision) and continues to increase.
Mark-I posted this on another article to you in the Frerichs story that Khan Academy has an interesting video on Illinois pensions.
https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-government-and-civics/american-civics-parent/american-civics/v/illinois-pension-obligations
I’m just an average person. I know when my bank account is $0, I quit spending. Why doesn’t Chicago know that? I could rob, steal and beg for money to put in my $0 account. Why make others pay for my bad choices and deplorable spending? Revoke Sanctuary state status, stop paying for everyone’s everything and adding new state hires/pensions we can’t afford . Or, the best idea, put pension reform on the ballot. Overspending and pension debt IS an Illinois cancer. We need a cure or it will kill Illinois.
Marie, you and the rest of us here have what are called “old – fashioned values”… now those values are called “racist”, “uncaring”, etc…
I just turned 70, and I feel very young, but looking around at the current mess we’re in I feel *170* – I’ve lived through a lot, but our current crises are simply the worst, I don’t know if this country will last much longer… sad to see…!!!
The joke is on them. When we’re gone and the government still wants their money, they will be coming after them. It won’t matter if they don’t have any. It doesn’t matter that I won’t have any pretty soon. What fools.
Marie, you quit spending when your accounts hit 0! Every level of Government continues to borrow once they hit 0. Since only the Fed. Gov. can print money, all others must borrow from banks. Eventually the lenders say no. It has happened before-think Detroit most recently. It will happen soon enough here as the tax base dwindles.
It is even worse than $54k for each Chicago household. What percentage of those households do we think are capable of contributing even one penny to solve the problem? Think of the vast stretches of low income neighborhoods all over the West and South sides. Even the moderately prosperous areas of the City don’t have any material amount of wealth to be taxed. Is anyone on Medicaid, or anyone in a minimum wage job, or anyone retired, disabled or on Food Stamps going to contribute? Of course not. I don’t know what percentage of the population is left, but it… Read more »
Sparty, the same logic apply to social security. Many people don’t comphrend that what they paid in over the years has already been spent.
Seriously, are fatherless kids, illegals, gang bangers, CPS grads, municipal union members and wokesters really gonna keep you in high cotton 20 years from now?
Illinois and all the other Democrat states want to unload these pensions on the entire nation. That’s in large part why they are welcoming in all these illegals. The numbers now are between 9 and 12 million! Illegals are counted as residents in census numbers even if they don’t vote. They will be padding out their congressional districts to the tune of 4 to 6 Congressional districts next census, or sooner! Yet no one talks about it.
Illegals are going through a Chicago winter on the streets why in the hell would they stay here? We have nothing to offer them but high taxes. They’re going to figure that out soon enough.
Consider da Dems pols in Illinois and Sheeetcago and their masters da public sector unions like a Black Hole.
How do you stop da Black Hole from sucking in more and more of your wealth via higher and higher taxes.
Get as far away as you can from it.
Illinoisans, vote with your feet and flee da Illinois Black Hole!!
I’ll keep saying this because you all know in your hearts that it’s true. The Democrats running the city, county, and state will do nothing about the unfunded pensions until the checks start bouncing. Until then, it’s just kick the can down the road and hope not to be the politician without a chair when the music stops.
Gee, it sounds like open borders doesn’t it? Dems are going to make sure the Conservative doesn’t have a chair when the music stops. Then they’ll blame him/her for all the chaos they, the Dems, created with those open borders.
We’re actually fortunate the reporters cover the illegal immigrants, given it makes Biden look like the incapacitated, disastrous moron that he is, but the story is national and too large to ignore. Sure, they try to put the liberal progressive spin on it, but at this point the issue is pitting disenfranchised POC against each other, so the “reporters” are really challenged. Fun to watch Dems foam at the mouth over an issue they created.
All the more reason Chicago pols are DESPERATE for giant migrant fed bailout to once again temporarily paper over the impossible mountain of pension debt….because they have no ‘tax are way out’ solutions. Just deny, delay, stall & blame. And pray for extreme long shot–that somehow dems sweep presidency, house and senate for giant fed bailout.
This is not complicated.
1. Create conditions which destroy property values (like “toxic _____”, fillin the blank with “waste”, “public debt”, “criminal activity “).
2. Purchase property via corrupt insider relationships with banks, obtaining leverage ratios that would defy physics.
3. Change conditions so that “toxicity” is ameliorated.
4. Live long and prosper.
Life for them such as these is probably just as brief as for them such as find this morally repugnant.
Pick a side.
Exactly how does that item #3 work?
Don’t forget though that Chicago has a considerable population in the free stuff army who could care less about paying for the pensions. To them it is how much more free stuff does each politician promise and the heck with the pension issue.
It all rolls downhill, eventually all those freebies will have to come with a price.
Well, illegals are coming in on busses every hour and their expenses are covered by the state and Chicago. BJ, just ask Bidet to print a trillion more….
And Biden can’t EVER give it him or all the other Democrat governors will sue for their fair share. Remember, this is an election year.