Pritzker's widely heralded budget directive has no teeth and he has pulled this stunt often before, even as the budget soared. 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
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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.
I wish my husband would let me budget like this!
“… without compromising essential operations …”
Yeah, that should be really tough to come up with a four percent cut in the hugely bloated budget without compromising essential operations.
No surprise there. JumboJB gets the sound byte of him requiring departments to reduce costs…then nothing happens. It is all theater.
Can we get the public to recognize that Pritzker has not “balanced the budget”? Otherwise smart, non-right people think he is rational and has balanced the budget. A good friend says this. I don’t have the numbers at hand when he says that, but I don’t think the general public accepts that Illinois state finances are a disaster. I know they are, and it involves pension underfunding chicanery, plus rocketing spending. How can we get the public to accept a. sound bite-level indictment of Illinois budgeting? I guess thats Ted Dombrowski’s job. Mark does a great job pushing real answers; we need even tighter sound bites… Read more »
Unfit, incompetent, failed are just a couple of words that describe the so called governor. What a disaster and as usual spouting the usual hatred of the democrats who support illegal aliens and criminals.