-- Connecting the dots between our economy, government and business --
“I didn’t create the law, but I’m certainly very grateful to participate in it,” Burke says of his legislative pension. “I paid the dues, not only the travel” to and from Springfield “but being disassociated from my society” in Chicago.
“This is not the easiest job,” he says. “I didn’t sit in an ivory tower . . . We were, like, the grunts.”
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.
SIGN UP HERE FOR OUR FREE WIREPOINTS DAILY NEWSLETTER
These and higher pensions are what many retired school superintendents get and can still collect a paycheck (double dipping) from another district if they chose to. This is now (thanks to former Gov Walker) illegal in Wisconsin but just under 8,000 retirees are still grandfathered in. Pensions should be suspended if they decide to work again and nowhere as lucrative as they are all on taxpayers backs.