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
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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.
Do the lower income gamblers in particular realize their gambling losses will be funding the state pensioners’ six-figure pensions? That knowledge may give the gamblers pause.
They should take the pension money to the casino and try to double it.
Need the money to keep the PONZI scheme going.
To clarify, the Illinois Public Sector State and Local Defined Benefit Ponzi Scheme Pensions Paid First.
And even that leaves out several key aspects of the financial disaster.