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.
Municipalities can wean themselves off of the taxpayer sugar tit if they want to do so. But nope, they are determined to spend every penny and ask for more while having duplicate offices and employees and creating new positions, funding social services programs and putting up fruity 197K artwork against the citizens wishes ( looking at you, Joliet ).