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
9 Comments
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.
Good luck with that. Illinois is a 55/45 state. The Democrats AKA Communists cant pack and crack any more than the current map without risking “safe” seats. And that 45/55 already includes the dead voters and the multiple voters. The ballot cheating is already baked into the numbers. Considering the steady and inexorable slide to the right of Black and Hispanic voters I say go ahead and give it a try. There aren’t enough fraudulently voting criminal illegal aliens to make up your losses.
Good luck with that. Illinois is a 55/45 state. The Democrats AKA Communists cant pack and crack any more than the current map without risking “safe” seats.
I’d like to see a map how it could possibly be more gerrymandered.
But being the states supreme court is also ‘gerrymandered” more correctly bought and paid for, it’ll pass any litigations
Gerrymandering should be made illegal. How much more can Pritzker gerrymander? Independents and Republicans in IL have zero representation.