Totaling the unsustainable tax increases and windfall revenue during Pritzker Administration – Wirepoints
May 25, 2026
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With $162 billion more from taxpayers, couldn’t you deliver a few bond upgrades, too
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A largely unasked question is becoming glaring: Is Illinois doing all it should to use artificial intelligence to make government cost less and work better? So far, the evidence says no.
Reality will bite. If this trick saves $18M for the first year, i guess that is fine, if one is also willing to assess a price in terms of lack of flexibility as bond holders secure themselves evermore, making any turnaround in bankruptcy even harder. But $18M is a drop in the bucket as to the overall deficit, so even if the City can take a $200M liability decrease by including projected decreases in the future, it does nothing to close the very real cash deficit Chicago is facing. If anything, this announcement is agitprop, because one of the few… Read more »
One point I perhaps should have been clearer on: In these kinds of refundings, the city can get actually get a check in the current year for the present value of the future savings (as opposed to just saving the $18M in lower payments every year). I assume that is what the city is doing. Still, that’s a one-off payment that will have to be filled the following year, and the logic for doing it to fill a budget hole is obviously not there. If they do take a check up front and keep the maturities and regular payments the… Read more »