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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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f pension reform means increasing it and the growing debt I believe it, otherwise excuse my French – connerie (BULLSHIT)
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Dog and pony show. What they should have done, at a minimum, is shift the cost of the TRS employer contributions to the school districts. They started thinking about that around 2011. This way, the local school boards would be repsonsible for funding the liability that they created instead of giving the thieves and incompetents in Springfield the responsibility. It would be akin to how IMRF is funded. Now, don’t get me wrong, the IMRF Fund for School districts is not tax capped but it should be and the TRS should be capped as well. The pension shift is only… Read more »
Your solution would make property taxes go through the roof.
Not necessarily. If it is a tax capped county and the pension fund is capped and no other mechanics of the tax levy process is changed the districts would still be limited to the lesser of the tax cap of 5% or CPI. It would force the districts to cut back spending in other areas.
When have a bunch of lawyers been able to solve a math problem?
Hey.
To Greising, “pension reform” apparently means increasing benefits (for Tier 2, where some adjustment is legally necessary) and throwing more money into the system. This piece is utterly vacuous.
Yeah, for a second there, I got excited that pension reform meant, you know, pension reform to benefit the taxpayers.