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.
I think the analysis is overly conservative – with Amendment 1 the public employee unions and Pritzker will be looking to dramatically increase featherbedding to grow the union ranks. Teachers will be at the front of the line. So there will be a compounding effect. I think your cost projection is off by at least 100%.
IL is most definately at it’s end game – Darren Bailey will be able to do little more than manage a sinking Titanic.