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.
Many years ago I was in Naples, Italy, a high crime city, and at night, the shop keeper roll down metal protection to prevent thieves from breaking windows to steal. The street level view of Naples after 9pm is sheet metal as far as the eye can see. That’s what is coming to Chicago.