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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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Ha! So Mendoza is “working with the agencies”. This is exactly why the agencies have lost all credibility. “Working with the agencies” is just another way of “fixing the books”. Why on gods earth does she have to “work. With the agencies” to produce a financial statement that objectively states her own budget numbers? The only reason is because she will “tailor” that statement (lie) with ratings as the objective. And crooked Moodys will tell her exactly how to do her job, then reward them with their usual “just above junk” rating. It is high time wirepoints or Illinois policy… Read more »
New for 2018 cafrs, dont all those units of government have to start reporting gasb 75– heath insurance benifits/debt? Think thats a lot of all the delays are about
Yes indeed. I suspect the same.
GASB 75 is featured prominently in Cook County’s CAFR
“”As a result of a couple of years of non-governance or weakness in controls in certain areas, like no budget, that has made this year more complex,” Mautino said.”
Dude, we had a budget for the last fiscal year. Shouldn’t the “non-governance years” caused a problem in producing CAFR’s for the previous 2 years? And how did these “weakness in controls” suddenly emerge in the last 6 months of Rauner’s administration and not prior?
IL state politics has a political class (aka swamp) that is almost exclusively Democrat. But citizens, at least as of 2014, voted Republican gov, and that Rauner at odds and they actively sought to undermine him. Now that Rauner is gone, the political boogeyman is in DC.
Per mautino on why cafr are so late—“basically 268 separate systems, half of which do not talk to each other,” ,,,is illinois only state with no system for the 268 systems of gov to talk to each other??.what systems do other states use?? to go along w the 7,000 units gov, 43% of all pension plans in us, etc, byzantine crazy!!! Or its easyier to just blame rauner. And when rauner tried to introduce privitized moderinization efficiencies of for example–medicaid billig , afsme/mendoza/mautino/ the machine will fight tooth &nail to go back to the same old mess…most other states have… Read more »
Orange man bad.
It’s both hilarious and sad that this is the mindset of an entire political party. My hat’s off to whomever coined the phrase “Trump Derangement Syndrome”. The dude managed to break the American left in a way I never would have thought possible.