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.
Quit with the no bid contracts signed behind closed doors and the city will need half of what it’s asking for.
This is the second WTTW/ Heather Cherone piece on Brighton Park migrant tent camp community meeting where she states meeting “was starkly divided along racial lines”. with Asians in opposition and I assume she’s implying Latinos are in favor? And then she states that city head of migrant mess Zayas agrees. Pacione Zayas acknowledged that the crowd at Tuesday’s community meeting about the base camp was starkly divided along racial lines, with many of the most vehement and emotional pleas to scrap the plan coming from Asian Chicagoans. Some Asian Chicagoans briefly chanted “send them back” as officials spoke about… Read more »
Did you see all the folks they locked out? It’s shocking what they did.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCkXwcVtgmc
Even the kids shows on WTTW push gay marriage, trans this and trans that, BIPOC ethnocentrism. It’s all trash.
Joe can send out requests for more illegal migrant money all day long. The House would be crazy to give him a dime until he closes the border.