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.
Given where all the equity indexes are for the year right now– barely in the black– we better start anticipating a multi-billion dollar shortfall. Then all the funds go back to the legislature with a larger contribution request. The 2016 Spring session will be a catastrophe.