Audio: Wirepoints’ Mark Glennon says Chicago pension buyout plan mostly shifts debt rather than eliminating it, property tax surge doubles inflation over three decades – Chicago’s Morning Answer
April 3, 2026
9 Comments
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.
Illinois lost another 54,000 tax filers and dependents, net, according to the IRS. Since 2000, fleeing taxpayers have taken $94 billion of annual adjusted gross income with them.
Alabama already has a Mercedes EV plant. LG and Honda are partnering to build an EV plant in Ohio. All the other states got legit companies to build or expand their EV footprints. Illinois has to beg for some Foxconn wannabee.
The CCP must have bribed the Illinois and Michigan local officials better than they bribed the local Alabama officials.Pritzker is just a ‘useful idiot’ in this heist.
Sure, if you need to bribe a state and its government, IL and Pritzker and MI and Whitmer are great candidates. Democrat dominated states. Meanwhile, the red hick states have a little more patriotic backbone.