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.
Not a problem. Your minions (Taxpayers) have more money than any good communist is allowed. They will happily make up the shortfall. If they had any self respect, back bone or intelligence they would have done something about it years ago. They did nothing and stayed put. So they now need to pay.
Time for Springfield to start planning on some more bookkeeping moves to make all this disappear..
The public employee unions are fat, dumb, and happy so who cares about budget deficits? No Democrat stooge of the public employee unions has ever been held accountable for budget malfeasance.
Spend a billion or more tax dollars on illegal aliens and then have a budget shortfall…..AMAZING!
I pledge $1 to help Taxistan with its massive budget shortfall.
So glad I voted with my feet over 20 years ago!!
Bloat costs money – lots of it.
Just keep borrowing money as long as you can. Get out of town before the debt comes due. This is the Illinois way.
2 terms 267 million shortfall. Can Illinois afford another Putzger term ?
Maybe that’s why his own family won’t let him anywhere near the family business. If he had a corner lemonade stand he would go bankrupt in a day.