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
9 Comments
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.
Hundreds of thousands of have vote with their feet. Ken Griffen took with him Billions of taxpayer dollars. But that is okay, just raise everyone else’s taxes to make up for it.
PPF say there is lots more money to tax and tax and tax away from the hardworking families of Illinois. After all they would just spend it on raising their families.
Need the highest taxes to keep the PONZI scheme going.
Illinois is trying to figure out how to tax air.
Highest taxes and not the change of a nickel, that says it all.
But the Pensioners have beautiful luxury homes in Punta Gorda, fl.