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.
I’ve lived in Chicago apartments during summer without AC. It is awful. But running air conditioners in old Chicago housing stock is extremely expensive, because the units are uninsulated, drafty and electricity is extremely expensive. Many tenants would love to have free $109.99 air conditioners installed but then freak out when their summer electric bill triples. Also, I don’t know about you, but in every Chicago apartment I’ve ever lived in, there were free window AC units littering the basement, ripe for the taking, abandoned by previous residents who didn’t feel the need to take them when they moved. I… Read more »