-- Connecting the dots between our economy, government and business --
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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This is the beginning of the end of the Big 10 pipeline to Chicago. These people run the city. They’re the partners at law, consulting and accounting firms. They’re the doctors in your hospitals, the owners of prosperous small businesses, the professors at your colleges and the school teachers in the highest paying school districts. Most of them came to Chicago from somewhere else before they ended up here. If the pipeline dries up, much of our region’s prosperity will be gone, and most of Chicagoland will look crappy and run down like Elgin, Rockford, or Joylet.
Or Detroit. I don’t think any of those inbound brainiacs are moving to Evanston either!
Correct, smart people have had enough of the Dysfunction That Is Evanston and are moving on…