-- 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.
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The numbers being thrown around are not static and miss the bigger point. Anyone, private or public whose contributing $128,840 of their own money, excluding any employer match, over 30-plus years will be well served in the end.
A decade ago it was easy to hide the outsized pension benefits by pointing to the “average” pension. There were a lot of people who had been retired twenty years, and were collecting smaller pensions based on lower salaries and less generous pension rules.
But a lot of the elderly who provided this camouflage “average pension” have passed on. The truth of what’s been going on is being exposed.
Those same people don’t have to pay for lifetime healthcare coverage: Illinois requires no premium contribution for anyone with 20 years of service. The state keeps improving their healthcare coverage with legislatively mandated benefit additions and their pensions with cost of living adjustments.
You haven’t seen anything yet, the best (worse) is yet to come. The worst part is many pensioners move out of state and take the economic impact of that money with them. Florida benefits big time with all the out of state pension money pouring in from all over the country.