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With a 66 percent increase in opioid-related ER visits in Illinois last year, the number of children who will require protective services could grow by as much as 20 percent. While their parents receive medical treatment, undergo rehab or receive parental skills training, these children will need the state of Illinois to care for them.
Yet they will be coming into a system severely strained by the pressure of high employee turnover tied to rock-bottom wages and disinvestment by our state. Private social service agencies across Illinois report that employees are leaving at a rate of 42 percent, with many experienced professionals bolting for better-paying jobs, including those at the Department of Children & Family Services.
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.
Expect no retraction or apology. This what they do.
The state’s existing buyout program for its own pensions is the precedent for Chicago, which should be a warning: Look out for similar exaggerated claims and shoddy analysis.
Full interview and summary linked here.
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Reminds me of the old guns vs butter debates. Historically (at least theoretically), liberals support programs like those described. However, when public employee pension liabilities crowd-out these programs, there is no rush to fund them if funding might require card-carrying liberal seniors to endure pension cutbacks. Virtue-signaling isn’t cheap but it’s publicly subsidized so what-the-hell. I’m not suggesting this is different than right-wing retired colonels on the golf course, dictating memo’s to their congress-persons about keeping a robust defense budget so that their pensions and PX privileges can continue from age 55 forward. My [rhetorical] question is why the penurious… Read more »