-- 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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Maybe pappas is just another one of the “carnival barkers” jb talks about
School districts are probably the main reason for the debt incurred. According to Illinois schools.com and Public school review.com ( Numbers vary in each website) there are approx 168 public school districts in Cook County alone with 1262 schools and 751K students. Duplicative administrative bloat is enormous.168 Supers-100’s of ass’t supers-purchasing-legal/etc. If we were to follow Florida’s system of unit dist’s of 40,000 students each we would have only 19 districts. The savings to taxpayers would be massive both short term (property tax’s) and long term (pensions and benefits) with consolidation all around the state.
Begin in 2011 under Archived News for some additional history: http://www.cookcountytreasurer.com/newsandvideos.aspx
Two most recent summary and complete AFR’s for local units of government in Cook County here:
http://www.cookcountytreasurer.com/taxingdistrictsearchbyname.aspx
There’s no good reason for them to delete older data.
Storage is cheap.
AFR’s (annual audits) for many units of government statewide here:
https://illinoiscomptroller.gov/financial-data/local-government-division/local-government-data
For smaller units of government click on the Data Summary tab for some summary info.
Additional information is available by via submitting a FOIA request for documents (or documents pertaining to) to the local unit of government.
Happy Palindrome Day everyone! 02-02-2020 also it’s the 33rd day with 333 days left (leap year). Last one was 909 years ago on 11-11-1111. The next one is 12-12-2121 and we will probably still have the same speaker in office. Had to get that in.
With zero coverage in main stream press,,shocking!!!