-- Connecting the dots between our economy, government and business --
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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Everything in Chicago or Illinois is directly related to the Deep Tunnel. The model for perpetual projects. Don’t ask for completion timelines, we’ll only lie to you!
I’m confused. “Cabrini-Green” projects are mostly demolished, and either its former housing sites either rebuilt as market-rate housing (some affordable units interspersed) or commercial developments. The Cabrini Green towers are gone, long gone. Only “Cabrini-Green” housing still remaining are the original semi-occupied rowhouses near Chicago Avenue, so what’s supposed to cost $600 million to refurbish? Perhaps Walsh or McHugh construction companies need more government-funded contracts? Lightfoot wants to spread more largesse alternately to minority contractors to buy re-election votes?
Hoover Dam was done in 5 years, Golden Gate Bridge done in 4 years. But when lawyers run projects in Chicago we get this, 23 years with no end in sight. Chicago,
“the city that works”, I don’t think so.
It can’t be made indestructible. The billion (or whatever that escalates to) be will simply make it harder to wreck and harder, eventually, to tear down. Let’s build a tent city and plan to sell small lots when a group of tent-dwellers accumulates enough money for a down payment on an 8-10 unit place. Maybe bigger. There need to be enough “owners” with enough skin in the game to protect their equity. Doubtful that one could find conventional lenders, but this would be just the thing for the teachers’ pension fund CRT bozos to put their money where their MOUTH… Read more »