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.
Leave Illinois now!
Disaster for doctors, hospitals medical insurance companies and ultimately–patients. This is one of the bell weather pieces of legislation that signals just how low Illinois has sunk. The trial lawyers, unions, wokesters, equity fanatics and bureaucrats just do whatever they want
It’s like they’ve taken every previously understood concept of ‘justice’ that has stood the test of time for centuries, and flipped it all on its head in favor of greedy special interest group. And the legislators passing these bills are all a bunch of creeps and weirdos not at all representative of the typical Illinoisan.