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.
The “Illinois Quantum Park” (intersectillinois.org) website gives very limited information but says it is being managed by “an organization affiliated with the U of I system” and has over 330 employees. The kicker says it will provide jobs for the community and training in STEAM, the acronym for science, tech, engineering, arts and math. Before the taxpayers send another $2.5B to this project, an honest assessment of the math scores for students in Illinois they claim will fill some of these jobs should be made: 30% proficiency in reading and 30% proficiency in math for state students in 8th grade.… Read more »