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.
This kind of thing nabbed NY politicians with charges of bribes/corruption:
Sheldon Silver (Democrat)
http://www.newsday.com/news/new-york/sheldon-silver-s-lawyers-seek-to-have-corruption-case-dismissed-1.10485271
Dean Skelos (Republican)
http://nypost.com/2015/06/01/feds-tapped-dean-skelos-phone-for-months/
and who knows how many more will get charged