Ted Slowik of The Chicago Tribune says: “If you’re not worried about the municipal pension crisis in Illinois, you’re not paying attention. Funding shortfalls to cover pensions for retired police officers, firefighters and other public workers are forcing officials in many towns to lay off employees, put off street repairs or cut other essential services.”
Slowick’s in-depth column about local pension crisis in Chicago’s Southland communities features data from Wirepoints’ latest report: Communities in crisis: More than half of Illinois cities get “F” grades for local pensions
Go read: You should be worried. Your town is likely cutting staff and services to pay for pensions
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.
Yes, the funniest thing is that income disparities began and continued with teacher union boomer political activism of the 1970s. Everyone else was asleep at the wheel while these people wrote in huge political agains to be cashed out 30 years later, and paid for now. Poor teachers, lol
Stickney is doing some nasty things to employees.
If this is true, math is finally working. The services should have been cut 20 years ago to cover pensions.
If you want the suffering to stop then move to Indiana.
Simple as that.
#NoMoreExcuses
Pensions are an artifact of white supremacy. This is especially true in communities with white flight such as Harvey where residents – predominately people of color – are forced to pay for benefits of a retired workforce that was mostly white. This in turn negatively impacts Harvey’s ability to hire POC today.
Where are all the equity arguments around pension debt? Conspicuously silent.
I love it when you use their rules against them.
But we know they don’t like having rules for themselves. They only wish to force the rest of us to bend the knee to the Left’s insanity.
The main reason they are silent is simple: the financial interests of the public employee unions always supersede that of SJW interests on their intersectionality chart of grievances. And if the unions aren’t interested, the politicians aren’t interested.
This is exactly what I’ve been saying. We all know equity is a perfectly valid reason to disrupt and ignore the constitution. So that pension clause? Yeah, white supremacy. Don’t need to pay into pension plans.
No one will shed any tears when a former firefighter misses next month’s RV payment…
Nice!
Interesting that they are only becoming worried now and not 20 years ago when this pension scheme really started ramping up.
Wirepoints team – great work and I have enjoyed following what you publish. I am officially getting out of Illinois (going to Pennsylvania, not a great state but much better than Illinois). Keep up the good work. Are you aware of any sources in PA that do similar work to you?
I’d say the Commonwealth Foundation
https://www.commonwealthfoundation.org/
Because ignoring the issue 20 years ago meant we could pad the salaries of today. That’s really what pension debt is – taking money that should have gone into pensions and using it to fund compensation today.
If you cannot afford the pension, you cannot afford the salary on which it is based.
Even in a best-case scenario where pensions and health care benefits are scaled back, you still have the taxpayer burden of paying for bloated salaries; those of teachers, in particular. Their contractual salary increases along with the prorated step increases always result in greater salary progression than of those in the private sector. In many cases, it’s not even close. That’s why your property taxes never decrease.