Just like the passenger airlines before them, cargo air carriers are not supporting the Peotone idea. 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
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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.
The politicians who dreamed up this idea of a 3rd airport an 1.5 hour drive away from Chicago were thrilled that they, their family, friends and donors would make a fortune because they had inside information and bought up hundreds of acres of cheap farm land 30yrs ago and would sell it back at 10x what they paid for it. They are still waiting to cash in and will push until they get theirs not matter how dumb the idea is.
In the meantime having leased the land out to farmers – or more likely some non-family farming corporation – and pulled in far more income than the debt-service on their original investment. They’re going to take money to the bank in wheelbarrows no matter what happens. Such a dumb idea – always has been – that still has enough juice among the union–n-guvmn’t-n-investor cabals in Cook County and Springfield that it just won’t ever go away. They all see big $ signs. Like watching the Mafia decide who gets what in a mob movie. They don’t care that they’ll stick… Read more »
This airport is only in the best interest of one group of people Politicians