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.
Faked hotel revenue/occupancy numbers. Anyone with eyes will tell you that the Loop is still a ghost town. Hotels were empty for NASCAR and for Taylor Swift. Hotels are trying to fend off foreclosure by cooking their books for the banks.