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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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Great idea. Let’s extend the Red Line even further so even more criminals can get downtown to do their robbing, mugging, shoplifting and assaults– and get on the train and vamus in five minutes before the cops get anywhere near the scene of the crime. Any cop downtown will tell you the Red Line is a highway into and out of town for the bad guys. How about saving the money and spending it instead on security, law enforcement and prosecutions of public transportation criminals.
They come to the north side too, to do their robbing, mugging, shoplifting and assaults. With the Red Line extension, even more will come.
Were major assumptions of justifying this hugely expensive project that pre-Covid levels of workers would once again commute to downtown and that businesses would re-invigorate downtown? If so, this project should’ve been cancelled, because those assumptions were faulty. Too bad I wasn’t on the decision committee. I could’ve saved the taxpayers billions of dollars.
The goal isn’t to save billions. The goal is to loot the treasury and give years long union paychecks to locals. This is the modern day version of Keynesian paying people to dig holes in the ground and paying others to fill them back in, for the sole purpose of creating economic activity. Well, China did that, building miles upon miles of empty infrastructure, and now they’re stuck with a moribund economy surviving off exports. In case you haven’t noticed, the cheapest, least inflation prone crap these days is low wage chinese manufactured goods sold on amazon. They’re exporting crap… Read more »
To replace the existing rail and bus transit on Chicago’s south side (and interfere in the next election using your money – aren’t incumbent politicians grand?), the taxpayers have another place for the political animals to insert their withholdings. Pay special attention to the first half of that sentence. This is not a multi billion dollar excursion out into the untapped wildlands like the old, long abandoned North Shore Line Skokie Valley Route did when it was built in 1925-1926. Nope, this mess goes right through long existing, transit served neighborhoods and along the vast landfills of the Calumet Harbor,… Read more »
Boy howdy, this one checks all the boxes! Free money from Uncle Sam for marginalized communities and all that other good stuff, and just in the nick of time! More than a 100% increase? How do you figure that one out? I mean who else, but good old Uncle Sam, can afford to shell out more than double the original commitment. I sure hope someone keeps track of where all this money goes. I mean, the CTA is teetering on fiscal collapse, and having to make some draconian cuts in existing services due to epic mismanagement. Thankfully, just as the… Read more »
Lock in the contracts now too. Save hundreds of millions of dollars! Look no further than the California Bullet Train to see how successful this project can be!