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.
When seconds count………you’re screwed!
Malfeasance to the max. No money for new police hires or incarceration of criminals, cause most available tax revenue must go to public pensions and public sector medical benefits.
Unless there is public sector pension reform, and real political corruption reform, IL continues its downward spiral.
There is an interesting graph in NASRA Issue Brief (state by state) which demonstrates the upward trajectory of Illinois spending just on pensions. When you add in employee bloat (unnecessary teachers, for example) and seniority provisions in union contracts that courts hold to be “contract rights” with the highest level of priority, and early retirement with unreduced benefits we see the “full catastrophe” [Zorba the Greek]. There is much to deplore but not much to be surprised about. “We have met the enemy and he is us,” in the sense of blaming the voters. Our “system” is triangulated in a… Read more »
Well this was the plan all along.
I sure miss the Second City Cop blog. There was never more wisdom and truth on a single website. The guys that ran it for so long did an outstanding job.