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.
But if you ask the head executive of the State he’ll tell you that the budget is balanced and they are fully funding pensions, schools are great and people are coming to Illinois for all the massive opportunities. You can’t fix anything when the executive believes it is all working and a majority of the voting public are lined up behind him believing everything he says.