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 1970 Constitution requires that the amendment itself, not a narrative explaining the effect of the amendment, be submitted to the electors. So what isn’t on the ballot is anything showing the removal of that part of the current Constitution that limits the number of taxes that can be imposed on income to only one. So, as I understand it, if the referendum passes, the State could impose a traditional income tax at a graduated rate, and then levy another tax…call it an “Emergency Covid Surcharge”…on that same income, and at whatever rate might be needed to raise the desired… Read more »