A decade into the work, Chicago is finally taking out toxic lead pipes when it replaces water mains – Chicago Tribune/MSN

Chicago spent the past decade tearing up streets to replace aging, sometimes leaky water mains, borrowing more than $500 million and doubling the cost of water to pay for the work. On every one of the 792 miles dug up, crews hired by the Department of Water Management connected new cast-iron water mains to old lead pipes known as service lines. Now, with fewer than 90 miles of water mains still to be replaced, state law is forcing city workers and contractors for the first time to pull out toxic pipes at the same time.

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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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