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Crain's Joe Cahill: "In one of their most audacious power grabs yet, clout-heavy Illinois labor unions are angling for a constitutional trump card."
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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Please pass amendment 1. I want to see the chaos that follows. It’s fun being an outsider that can watch Illinois disintegrate from the safe distance of my Tennessee home.
If Illinois gets too deep in debt I have a feeling that bailouts will be coming its way. It’s for the good of the country HJ.
Bailouts from who the federal government will be controlled by the Republicans come January 2023 no help coming from Washington
No need for bailouts any time soon. Even as bad as Illinois debt is, we are a few decades away from truly needing bailouts. We still have several rounds of tax increases before it will be necessary. When the time comes, voters in other states will be on the hook as well. When it happens, multiple states will come hat in hand. These states will be too big to fail. Everyone will pay regardless of where one lives.
We have recently seen that pumping federal dollars into the economy leads to inflation. And I think you may be correct about other states. CA and NJ to name two If inflation helps all debtors, state and local governments are some of the largest debtors. What better than to have the feds assume all pension and bond debt. If the Dems think that forgiving college debt will win votes, what about forgiving all government-taxpayer debt nationwide? I.e., feds agree to pay off all bonds and government pensions. While we are at it, why not pay off all defined benefit plan… Read more »
All over again!
Democracy has flaws, as we’ll probably see in November. Passage of this amendment will simply increase union bargaining power and they’ll negotiate for more & more and shut everything down when they can’t win. Negotiation is all about power and access to the judiciary and to juries comprised of Illinois voters makes it likely that things will get worse. Illinois is like Venezula in many respects (other than Venezuela has oil). Putin has nuclear weapons, of course, which may give him more power than the public employee unions. He seems to want land and resources while the union only wants… Read more »