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.
Sure, now start a new payroll tax. As if IL unemployment rate isn’t high enough already and that there are more government workers than private sector ones. Will this tax apply to government paychecks, too? Bet it won’t.