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.
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“Devaney, whose union only represents full-time departments and was not directly involved in Calumet Park’s case, said he didn’t believe a private firm could offer comparable service to a public department and expressed skepticism that the promised cost savings would be realized.”
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For many peoples, it is no longer about cost savings, it has morphed into actual visceral hatred of direct public sector employees.
No, it’s about the ability to pay.