Audio: Wirepoints’ Mark Glennon says Chicago pension buyout plan mostly shifts debt rather than eliminating it, property tax surge doubles inflation over three decades – Chicago’s Morning Answer
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.
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.
Illinois lost another 54,000 tax filers and dependents, net, according to the IRS. Since 2000, fleeing taxpayers have taken $94 billion of annual adjusted gross income with them.
Here’s a thought. How bout we apply the “delivery tax” when an anchor baby is born to an illegal alien in an Illinois public hospital?
Kind of like Illinois highest in the nation gas tax….
Illinois is full of regressive taxes thanks to the Democrats
Until public transit reorganizes and cut out waste, political and DEI hires, they shouldn’t get another dime. Maybe address the crime on public transit and stop spending money they don’t have.
I’m confused? I though the $1.50 delivery tax was DOA?
No taxes in Illinois are DOA. If they get shot down, it just means not now but later. Plenty more taxes left to be raised.