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Personnel costs jumped by 40% during the decade, analysis shows. That’s an extra $1.4 billion in pension, salary and benefit expenses while staff numbers were relatively steady and student numbers dropped.
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Mark Glennon on AM560’s Morning Answer: Chicago pension buyout plan mostly shifts debt rather than eliminating it, property tax surge doubles inflation over three decades
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.
WBEZ and Chicago Sun-Times falsely blame Texas Gov. Abbott for 2020 to 2024 surge in Chicago Latino HIV, AIDS infections – Wirepoints Quickpoint
March 31, 2026
11 Comments
Expect no retraction or apology. This what they do.
With Discussion Beginning About Pension Buyout Program For Chicago, Beware of Baloney – Wirepoints
March 28, 2026
17 Comments
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.
Mark Glennon on AM560’s Morning Answer: Chicago’s Fiscal Crisis Has Passed the Point of No Return, Bond Market Already Signaling Collapse
March 25, 2026
24 Comments
Full interview and summary linked here.
SO I CANT READ THE ARTICLE WITHOUT SIGNING UP FOR A MILLION EMAILS
Control of the legislative, executive and judicial branches by public employee unions makes any sort of reform virtually impossible. Federal regulation of pensions specifically exempts governmental plans. Actuaries, rating agencies and other “guardians” are paid either from pension funds, bond proceeds or government accounts. These guardians compete with one another for lucrative business and won’t bite the hands that feed them. The battle, such as it is, is with vested interests that hold most of the cards. We either have to inform short-attention-span voters on a complex topic that is well beyond their comprehension or we must act within some… Read more »
“If there is a time to Take the Shot” And do what exactly? The state of Illinois (Legislature, Governor, and People) have traded pensions for labor. Pensioners have a valid contract. The state owes them every penny. Even the creators of this site don’t deny that pensioners are owed. Why would the federal courts step in when a sovereign state agrees that it owes this money? Until the state can no longer raise revenues the status quo will continue. Increasing tax rates will not be enough to move the courts. If and when the time comes where the state can… Read more »
Guillotines
So you want to kill people that fulfilled their end of the contract just because the state didn’t set aside the actuarial amount and you don’t want taxes to increase. Sounds on par for an extremist.
Many responses here disguised as something else are nothing mor than the sin of envy—pension envy in this particular case. They want what you have and are only a few steps short of “going postal” with advanced cases of it.
I have said this before James. I believe many when choosing their career looked down on teachers and other public sector workers. They couldn’t imagine choosing a career where they knew they would never make a lot of money. As timed passed, they didn’t live up to their own expectations and now they realize that the slow and steady public sector worker will have a better retirement. Not all commenters here fall into this category but you can tell which ones do by their hatred. Imagine how sad their life turned out that caused them to hate teachers, police, and… Read more »
More precisely, you want what we (taxpayers) have. Your captive politicians have promised more than we can afford. Now that you understand “unsustainable” you seek comfort in characterizing our resistance as “envy.” The horse you rode in on can’t figure it out and the glue factory beckons. Whatever’s left in the stable can best be allocated with a pitchfork. But I guess there’s no harm in trying to rally the stable hands to the stall. There must be a pony in there somewhere.
Economic principles dictate that for an economic advantage to occur for any person it has to come from other people. Your income derives through that concept as does everyone else’s. Ditch the pompous attitude otherwise.
“The fixed pie fallacy is synonymous with the zero-sum fallacy in economics: that anyone’s benefit comes at someone else’s expense. In other words, if one person earns a dollar, someone else is worse off by a dollar. We know the logic behind the fallacy is faulty because if it were true, no transactions would take place.”
Okay, Einstein. Still, I’ll bet your income comes from other people giving up theirs.
Most comes from $ that I saved in a no-match 401(k) during a 55 year career. I do get Social Security. My wife has a teachers pension of about S200 per mo. which was partially contributory. However the biggest taxpayer assist is her health coverage for both our lives resulting from 7 years as a teacher. This last item results from an exchange of teachers’ votes for benefits in a strong union state. Meanwhile the whole teachers’ pension plan is in danger of collapsing. However we got ours…so far. So I know how [I imagine that] you feel and I’m… Read more »
I think if one disregards any nation’s governmental money-printing-without-resources to do it the “zero sum” game largely applies, but that’s just my take on it. But, for it to apply at all it has to be for the idea of money as it applies overall rather than to any given set of people. Some people get richer, and some get poorer on an individual basis, but overall with no “phoney money” printing stil seems fairly apt unless/until more worldly assets are found or created that translate into money where it exceeds the expenses of creating, storing and generally having it… Read more »
Modern economics evade me. I am trying to understand bitcoin. If you have an extra 1-1/2 hours you can try to make sense out of Bitcoin: The Future of Money? | Bitcoiner Book Club | The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast – S4: E:40 – YouTube. It takes a while to get into it, but there are four participants (plus psychologist Jordan Peterson), from various econ and IT fields. One thing they say is that once Nixon abandoned the gold standard, all money has been “fiat” money. So we see Biden’s CovId spending plus anticipated infrastructure spending and we seem to be… Read more »
“Take the shot” means — sooner rather than later — to commence use of whatever legal remedies might have traction in federal or state courts (or whatever other countermoves can be made within the law), per the discussions during the last few days on Wirepoints. Lots of “valid contracts” can’t be performed due to a variety of conditions. How many vendors in Illinois are awaiting payment? How many landlords aren’t collecting their rent? How many expectations of highway maintenance are being ignored? How many public school students aren’t getting education from public schools? How many drivers are observing the speed… Read more »
That’s quite the word salad to admit that you don’t have any idea how this would get to the federal courts. You should have run for office. You don’t know what to do but you know it needs to be done quickly.
“Lots of “valid contracts” can’t be performed due to a variety of conditions.”
Neither the state legislature nor the Governor are stating they can’t meet the contract nor are they questioning the validity. So who exactly is going to get this into the federal courts to “take your shot”?
The first point is that the political structure in Illinois is “inhospitable” for legal recourse there. (I don’t live in Illinois.) If Illinois were Afghanistan, then public unions would be the Taliban. The second point is that the pension cost problem is increasing with time and the state is living on borrowed money and federal bailouts [COVID, infrastructure and whatever rubric will facilitate launching federal dollars into the blue [states]]. Several ideas have been suggested on Wirepoints and IPI and elsewhere for moving this “battle” to a friendlier forum and I observe that even the available forums are becoming less… Read more »
So just to be clear one more time, you have no idea how to get this in front of the federal courts. None of WP or IPI suggestions have any reasonable expectations of getting this in front of a federal judge anytime in the near future. A union negotiating pay and working conditions does not make them the Taliban. You have invoked Hitler, Mullahs and now the Taliban to try to make some misguided analogy. It’s not effective at making your point and only shows that you can’t engage in a meaningful exchange of ideas. It’s the equivalent to the… Read more »
A “meaningful exchange of ideas” about complex constitutional issues is likely to get us both booted from this forum, but here’s an idea to start with: “There is a principle of constitutional law holding that ‘one legislature may not bind the legislative authority of its successors.’ The Supreme Court recently discussed that principle at length in United States v. Winstar, and … it is clear that the Court sees the principle as a constitutional axiom.” see Legislative Entrenchment: A Reappraisal (yale.edu) (2002) The main point is that laws (such as pension statutes) can be amended. The issue is not as… Read more »
My feelings on this have changed in recent months, and my personal opinion is that the IL Supreme Court, an elected political body, will see which way the political winds are blowing, and when a case comes before the court where dozens or even hundreds of retired white men in Florida are taking a six figure pension while poor Black children play on dilapidated playground equipment in the municipality paying said retired pensioners, they will ultimately determine that the 1970 amendment itself is unconstitutional for some equity reason, like it’s systemically racists, and and violates the equal protection clause or… Read more »
I certainly hope your gut is clairvoyant. To get the indignation going there has to be publicity about the problem. The mainstream media are going to swallow their tails trying to figure out whether to deplore or applaud white-guy pension cuts. And the state will have to decide whether to permit local bankruptcy or take over local plans or find a way to blame the Republicans. One issue is how to get it back to the ISC. I think a civil rights case could be filed in either state or federal courts. As to equal protection, when you look at… Read more »
“As to equal protection, when you look at the Tier 1’s as a class, some are going to get their pensions and some may not.” The courts have shown from past rulings that they don’t see it that way. They have ruled the pension funding levels have absolutely nothing to do with whether or not pensioners will be paid. If the pension funds run dry the state is still on the hook so there is no need to offer protection from an underfunded pension. For the 2015 ruling the ILSC did touch on equal protection but it wasn’t between different… Read more »
2015 was a long time ago. That was before DIE (diversity, equity and inclusion). Right now, in this current environment, paying white legacy retirees $$$ pensions while poor minorities are footing the bills, especially when the pay go scheme comes into play in the next decade or so, is a civil rights issue. Progressives have been willing to toss the constitution in the garbage as much as necessary and if you think some pension clause is sacrosanct, just think: these people are willing to kill as many unborn children as possible up to the moment they come out of the… Read more »
I don’t think we have a fundamental disagreement about what IL courts will do. They have laid down a foundation for “pensions paid first” and there is little doubt that the Democratic legislative bodies of the state and its political subdivisions will tax to the limits. After all, those bodies as well as the mayors and local judges have government pensions also, albeit underfunded. However, we already see [not only in IL] that, with rising taxes, pension contributions are crowding out other public expenditures. That’s even though those contributions are falling short of what sound actuarial principles would dictate. How… Read more »
Man made climate change is a joke it’s not even real. The great lakes were glaciers that melted and became lakes 15,000 years ago. Chicago was so flatten from these glaciers that I, living far away from the downtown, can see the skyline if I stand in the middle of a metra train track with an unobstructed view. No one has any idea how or why the glaciers melted. Seriously, look it up – scientists have models that don’t explain much of anything. So when people tell me today that it’s most certainly man that is causing these problems, without… Read more »
Hmm. This quote of yours would be interesting to apply to the eviction moratorium, which basically forces landlords to pay for a free housing program:The United States Supreme Court has made clear that the United States Constitution “bar[s] Government from forcing some people alone to bear public burdens which, in all fairness and justice, should be borne by the public as a whole [citations].”
As you know, there often is the stated reason for a law and then there is the actual reason for a law i.e. voter integrity laws are said to strengthen election integrity but real reason is to prevent Democrats from stealing future elections. The real reason for the CDC’s eviction moratorium is because there is (allegedly) a racial disparity in evictions. Lower income renter, disproportionately BIPOC and minority, were most likely to lose their job during coronavirus, and would be most likely to be evicted during the pandemic. So the CDC stopped evictions for minorities. With logic like this, the… Read more »
Debtsor, You’ve put a lot of balls in the air. I won’t comment on “man made” climate change other than to say that it’s easier to blame people than sunspots. The Ministry of Blame has spoken and most of the culprits like Henry Ford have passed from the scene. As to 1972 constitutional amendments, these were circulating around the country in the hope of settling the issue whether public pensions were gratuities that could be stopped at will. Judges have interpreted these amendments to help public employees beyond their wildest 1972 dreams. Meanwhile, California courts were reaching similar conclusions in… Read more »
P.S. The state of Michigan has agreed to pay nearly $100 million in order to settle a suit that Detroit Public Schools are failing to teach students to read. This is part-way to Debtsor’s observations that politicians may be tuning in to the needs of urban students when compared to the expectations of retired teachers.
Settlement for Detroit literacy lawsuit eyes nearly $100M in funding (detroitnews.com)
If CPS begins the year, let’s say, 50,000 students short, a financial disaster of epic proportions will ensue. Enrollment is key to their funding. And the staff to student ratio will be so imbalanced that even in Chicago it will be politically unacceptable. And there is already a massivebuidling under-utilization problem, which will only be worse with an enrollment shortfall, and which will make education incredibly expensive to deliver (as closing schools politically is well nigh impossible). Little wonder the interim superintendent is putting a full court press on enrollment. The size of the shortfall is yet unknown, but it… Read more »
Here come millions of illegal immigrant families with children, while CTU has barred consideration of immigration status in school enrollment.
Illegal immigration is the only source of growth in the CPS school system as many black children are aborted and white and asian parents mostly send their children private schools or the handful of ‘good’ schools that are already filled to capacity. Which is interesting that the welfare of black students in CPS receives virtually all the focus while the focus on hispanic children receives far less news coverage or resources. Black parents should be furious that CPS resources that rightfully belong to them are being spent on hispanic students many of whom have no legal right to even be… Read more »
Woodstock CUSD taxing district is canary in the coalmine for Chicago homeowners. First: rampant non-productive spending by school district. Next: higher property tax RATE; RATE is a ratio which indicates the amount of spending relative to the means of the taxed community. Finally: Property values collapse, as home values with property tax rates in Woodstock (3.5%-4.6%) have proven over two decades of zero contributory growth. Afterwards: Woodstock is poisoned earth, as no sane individual wishes to build a building in property tax rate environment above 3% when all of America taxes property at around 1%. Then: Convergence of vulture REITs… Read more »
‘We’re from the Government and we’re here to help.’
The most destructive phrase in any language.
Susan, we’re I’m at VVSD365U is no different than Woodstock CUSD it’s absolutely unbelievable out here and taxpayers seem not to give a damn.