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.
Slick ComEd analysts should easily be able to justify to obtuse Chicago reps why the rates need to be so high.
ComEd and Nicor are a joke, they add taxes and riders to our bills every month. We have no say in it, they steal it every month! Then they offer
it back as their grant program. It doesn’t cost them only us.
they are the ultimate grifters along with Springfield, remember that at voting time!
Green energy costs more green, thank the Democrats and JB for shoving this expensive electricity down our throats.
who’da thunk–yet more total incompetence at astronomical prices!! It’s not the “emperor has no cloths”, it’s the “equity hustler has no cloths”