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Borrowing for current and past operating expenses, blanks for use of funds and more make Chicago’s bond sale planned for next week smell mighty bad. Glennon’s interview is in the first ten minutes starting here.
Summary and audio linked here.
If this bill passes, say goodbye to local control over all Illinois parks and expect to see open drug and alcohol use, needles, no sanitation and fire hazards, but no ordinary park users.
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.
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Audio and summary
Bond lawyers and their ilk are parasites who get paid “in front” and have little actual exposure if bonds are not redeemed. They “bribe” municipal officials including city attorneys who do nothing but share in the bond lawyers fees. They wine & dine municipal officials at NYC closings. Those officials are probably protected by “reliance on advice of counsel” and that advice has so many exculpation clauses that there is little chance of personal or law firm liability. Their law firms love them because of their revenue production and they are disproportionately rewarded because of high (but phony) billable hours… Read more »
make no mistake, financial responsibility starts from the top down. how many trillions has trump added to the national debt since being elected? how much will the white house renovations cost and don’t forget the hundreds of millions wasted sending national guard troops to states who had no need of them, and now he starts a war which costs upwards of a billion dollars a day! just think of the good which could have been done with these funds for states like IL in place of the many obscene, unnecessary personal vendettas which somehow take precedent over everything else.
Seriously? Even issues about a Chicago bond offering are answered by “But Trump….”? I fully understand the problems with Trump, but there is more to the world than him.
you are missing the point Mark-it’s all the same mindset and that is the problem. for example, how can people on one hand call out chicago and the state of IL about their fiscal irresponsibility while at the same time support trump despite his own far larger, henious fiscal waste? if politics could be described in two words they would be “double standard”-i.e do what i say and not what i do.
That works both ways. How can people hate Trump for doing it but close their eyes about Chicago and IL? For the record, Wirepoints writes little about Trump or other federal matters, but when we have we have been very critical of his and other GOP federal spending.
i agree 100%-it goes for both sides and it’s good to know you also call out trump’s wreckless overspending, especially since another major platform he ran on was reducing the deficit and government waste. sadly, the same cannot be said for most of the other commenters here who seem all too willing to give the GOP admin a free pass for anything they do while pilling on Chicago & IL for doing the exact same thing.
Classic projection from karen
Thr WH renovations are privately fuunded, Karen
This, unfortunately is nothing new. The budget crunch goes to wasteful spending and the pension fiasco. Johnson is responsible for the former, and the latter was a legacy from the previous administrations. He cares so much about the citizens of the city that he is piling more debt. Even welfare recipients pay sales, gasoline, and fees. It hurts them far more than the elites
This story is hopelessly too complicated for the average voter. But shame on the media, which should have, and does have, a handful of reporters with financial backgrounds who could cover this intelligently if they wanted to. The politicians get away with this only because the media lets them, and the financial calamity for the state and city gets closer every year.
Mark is spot on about this bond issue. He should have been much tougher on the City and called it out right robbery of the next generation or even possibly a complete default of debt.
Chicago needs to seek state permission for bankruptcy to get this over with.