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.
Individuals and groups advocate for their themselves and their members, at the expense of others, justifying their actions on the their definition of value delivered. not that value when actually measured. To blame individuals for taking advantages for taking advantage of public pension “loop holes” i.e. benefits designs put in place by politicians to “buy ” support from unions is misguided. IF newspapers for example provided generous pension plans that allowed and editor to retire and then return and start a second career with benefits of course they would jump at the chance. The blame clearly lies with the state’s… Read more »