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.
And guess who’s on the hook for the % 40 of maintenance and other costs not covered by Obama’s endowment fund? You, taxpayers! The slick, smilin’, dancing darling of soccer moms just keeps on delivering.
Two years after opening, no crowds, no
traffic no nothing but the chirping of crickets
and the refrain from the people holding the
begging bowls in front of the monolith,
” we need more please more money to
Finish this monument “.
Just another Illinois Democrat wasting money. It would be funny if when he cuts the opening day ribbon the whole place crashes down behind him
Funny “ha-ha” or simply outrageously expensive irony?
$700 million is a lot of cash to spend on a lakefront outhouse. The shelves will be stocked with SloJoe biden’s comic books to save money on the biden comic/coloring book library which will be a traveling Volkswagen minivan.
If they can sell spray paint, they will make a FORTUNE!