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.
It use to be said that Chicago carried the state on revenue creation. Many would argue when the question of Chicago being exiled from the state said that downstate could not survive without Chicago. Seems to be the other way around now with Chicago begging the state for money that they don’t have.