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Summary and audio linked here.
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.
Full interview and summary linked here.
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CTA/ATU and CPS/CTU are just jobs programs. Both has less clients (riders/students), bloated management structures and deeply fraudulent procurement systems and infrastructures. You could whack half the headcount and budget and no one would notice.
Unfortunately, they are extremely efficient at one thing; mobilizing the vote. They know how to keep and grow power.
Fair increase is WAY overdue, how about we DIDN’T raise the real-estate taxes since 2018 and see how they would have handled that?
We have this problem on a much smaller scale downstate as well. Empty busses run across the county day and night to no avail. They obviously are not wanted or people would simply ride them. My assumption is that the transit district was the beneficiary of Covid funds and will now need bailout money as well. My guess is that should a Democrat not be elected as the next president the average Illinois taxpayer is going to be in an even bigger mess than they are already in and over things like this that he or she doesn’t want.
Agree with the article. Most people believe the same. Many have said the same to their elected officials. But here we are, Springfield does not care about what citizens want…and so another $1.5B is being handed over to an organization that has a history of wasting money, grift and corruption. Somehow this will be different, transformative, there’s a plan…uh huh. Taking collected tax money designated for road repairs in other parts of the State of Illinois for those citizens and handing it to the failed, overbuilt, under utilized CTA is just stupid and makes no sense. It is corruption right… Read more »
Extraordinary. Someone else finally noticed the real problems plaguing the CTA and urban transit in general. ‘Judge Glock’, a sad and hilarious nome de plume by the way, has readers going back to 2014 for ridership peaks, but the CTA carried 545.6 million riders only two years before then. The CTA carried 309.2 million riders in 2024, a 43.3% drop. At the same time, the CTA’s budget skyrocketed, at least partly due to the Coof slush funds tossed around indiscriminately by the Biden cabal. This all funded mostly empty seats dragged around Chicago by CTA buses and trains. By any… Read more »