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"The CTU/Johnson strategy from the beginning has been to do next to nothing about a foreseeably dire budget situation — in fact, make it significantly worse — and wait until the crisis got so acute that the state or some other benefactor would swoop in to the rescue. That’s fiscal and managerial malfeasance."
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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Salaries & benefits first. Then pensions.
Bankruptcy can fix these and send even clearer signal if one is needed. However we need to start by sending a new cohort to Springfield.
Harried taxpayers need to be educated on the most efficient means of saving themselves and their state. An ancillary benefit will be depletion of union treasuries paying lawyers.
Actually, it’s misfeasance, not malfeasance. Malfeasance is an illegal act. Misfeasance is merely — incompetence! But I no longer expect erudition from the editors of the Tribune.
Do what Stacey Gates CTU does, just do not pay your bills.
Old Joe’s dad had a board of education and it needs to be used on Stacy’s backside!
This is the strategy of the CTU and now the CPS (thanks to CTU member and mayor Johnson’s appointments to the board)- spend as much as you want on whatever you can possibly wish for ($50,000,000.03 to start). Eventually the whole thing will collapse, as planned. But by then you have pushed salaries, benefits, and your union roster sky high, and with union feet firmly planted, there is no going back or giving in. Somebody (you and me) will have to cover it all because There Is Nothing We Can Do.
No problem here! Go cover some other news story.
Any moron knows that CPS needs to close underutilized schools. But CTU won’t let them. CPS needs to be fiscally responsible, despite what CTU wants. The well is running dry.
CTU is only concerned about increasing its membership and soaking the residents of Chicago for more MONEY. It doesn’t care about the children!!! The higher the raises the higher the Union dues are .
I know I sound like a broken record. Per google AI, thanks to ARPA-COVID funding CPS has appox 7,200 more employees 2019 to present. Say those 7,200 additional employees cost CPS $100gs in total salary + benefits a year, then 7,200 x $100,000 = $720 mil. There’s your budget shortfall!!..I realize this is a vast oversimplification but the budget crisis at CPS (CTA, etc) is a total scam. All the city has to do is return to pre-COVID spending levels. Ditto for “transportation funding cliff”, and all the other city/state ARPA-COVID funding shortfall/ blame it on DJT manufactured funding crises… Read more »
This required federal intervention, the democrats and the public union machine will never fix it.
This whole mess is seriously funny. These educators are more worried about themselves over the kids. And they got their puppet Banjo the Clown dancing to their demands