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.
Not that it impedes progress in CHI for endless funding of a broken system, but Decatur also has a high unemployment rate and many people on public assistance. So where is the money supposed to come from? Folks on welfare don’t make for a strong tax base.