JIm Dey | Details, schmetails — just pass the pension legislation – News-Gazette

There was much celebration in Springfield two weeks ago after legislators passed a pension consolidation bill that its backers say will help put downstate fire and police municipal pensions on a firmer financial footing. Gov. J.B. Pritzker called the legislation a “huge bipartisan step” toward “alleviating the enormous property tax burden in downstate and suburban communities.” Pritzker is at least two-thirds right — the vote was bipartisan and it was a step. But huge? The facts don’t support that claim.

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Mark Glennon on AM560’s Morning Answer: Chicago pension buyout plan mostly shifts debt rather than eliminating it, property tax surge doubles inflation over three decades

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.

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