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.
In the 1980’s when city hall put a large mooring tax on the boats in the Chicago Harbors, many of the boaters moved to marinas outside of Chicago. Lost of revenue to the Chicago Park District and jobs in the marine industry. They reduced the tax and some of the boats came back. If winter storage and marine repair services will be taxed, all the Chicago boat yards will be gone. It is hard to tax items that are mobile. Chicago’s southeast side has very few gas stations because the gas is less expensive in Indiana. The difference is the… Read more »