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.
No question about it, this bill is outrageous. To be sweetening pension benefits now is the height of folly. However, if you read the article, you will see that it benefits exactly one person, for now. A second person may benefit in a few years.