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.
As Metra’s Director of Planning and Programming, David Kralik has been an architect of the irresponsibility and dereliction of duty of the entire management group running the organization. Kralik embarrasses and virtually indicts himself when he calls the final depletion of Covid funds, some dating back to 2020 and 2021, a fiscal cliff. Kralik and his crew planned all the overspending and the operation of empty trains that Metra engaged in from 2020 onwards, slowly eating away at the minor trust fund that Uncle Fed took from taxpayers and handed to Metra. Kralik now sticks the taxpayers with a massive… Read more »
I took the survey but there was no place to write that they should cut trains and budget, since they have fewer riders now.
The whole problem can be solved easily, if
Chicago cannot afford the CTA then make the CTA smaller or shut it down. This solves the problem do not push your malfeasance Onto the suburbs. You screwed it up you pay for it. The “ usual gang of idiots “ love to steal other people’s money.
Sounds like METRA is going to get the CTA millstone thrown around their neck. What a mess.
Taking a successful entity and linking it with a money hemorrhaging one, thus insuring future operations at the taxpayers expense, seems to be the IL business model.