Wirepoints’ Mark Glennon on AM560’s Morning Answer
April 22, 2026
No Comments
Summary and audio linked here.
-- Connecting the dots between our economy, government and business --
Between last year's 52nd annual Pride Parade, the NASCAR Cup Series race downtown, the four-day Lollapalooza Music Festival, and a year's worth of other commitments for Chicago Police, officers clocked in 4,151,294 hours of overtime in 2023. This cost taxpayers nearly $300 million.
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Mark Glennon on AM560’s Morning Answer: Chicago pension buyout plan mostly shifts debt rather than eliminating it, property tax surge doubles inflation over three decades
April 3, 2026
9 Comments
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.
The average hours per work year is 2080 Hours. Divide this into 4,151,294 hours of overtime indicating that the Chicago Police Department is short about 1,995 officers if you want to eliminate overtime. I am pretty sure the union representing Chicago Police has been saying the department has been short about this number of police officers for several years.
I would love to know the actual total # of hours worked on the job for year or hrs worked on average for all my city depts (CPD, CPS, Street & San, etc, etc). Especially when claiming astronomical $OT$….One can google search away all day, but that’s never going to happen in a million years. Mysteriously press never asks. How politician claim to be for equity, efficiency, “community disinvestment”, transparency, progressives, conservatives, etc,etc is a complete joke on dopey taxpayer/homeowners. (ditto for my CC, state and fed gov services).
As city resident, there’s no shortage of cops, teachers, streets and san, etc,etc. Just crazy contracts. CPD (FOP) claim they are short 2,000 officers? But with current police force of 11,500 CPD still has 2nd or 3rd highest # of officers per capita of any major city I believe. CPD is still stand along amongst big cities having officers performing “office duty” & monitoring technology. 400 officers according to former Inspector General Ferguson? Has anything changed? It was my understanding one of CTU/Brandon campaign promises was supposed to hire civilian police force to perform those “office duty” & monitoring technology… Read more »
Great points