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.
Note that this epic beatdown of DCFS came from two Republicans (Rezin and Reick) AND two Democrats (Castro and Tarver), one Hispanic and the other Black. This issue of child care staffing shortages really does cut across social, racial/ethnic, geographical (Chicago, suburbs, downstate), and other lines in a way not all issues seem to do.