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It will likely take years of scrutiny and tough decisions if they want to leave the city’s finances in better shape than they find them — especially if the city hits a recession, and especially if both candidates want to keep their promise not to raise property taxes. “Absent having a boom of economic growth, the city’s tools are limited,” said Amanda Kass, an assistant professor at the DePaul University School of Public Service who researches Chicago’s pensions. “You can cut existing spending, raise taxes or both.”
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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Lighthead only did what the law finally required her to do. If she could have , she would ignored the pension problem like all the rest of our recent Mayors.
So, for the glass-half-full optimists out there, because of Lightfoot’s good work, the Chicago public-employee pension funds can now accurately be called a “Gaping Crisis” rather than a “Hopeless Mess.”
Well, that is progress.
And everything the two Democratic mayoral candidates have to say about what they’re going to do about it sounds so sensible, and so likely to avert vast tax increases.
I’m relieved…..
Bernie Madoff went to Federal Jail for running a Ponzi scheme that was not as bad or corrupt as this one.
The #1 issue in IL, a state that has so many big problems, is Tier 1 public pensions-medical. Took the place of the $500 in an envelope that Al Capone would probably use. Non-public union taxpayers were sold out as a result of a lack of honest dealing, and self serving politicians. Now millions of lives are ruined, so that strata can retire in luxury. And the IL politicians will not even talk about it.
More Chitty of Cops, Firemen and Teachers in Punta Gorda, Fl. than in Chicago. Living the good life, luxury homes, safe streets, great weather and nice beaches.
Why didn’t you apply for any of those jobs?
Bernie Madoff was more honest than this Ponzi scheme.
Do not believe me, check out the % that Madoff investors got back, way more than the funding of this PONZI scheme.
They are not really pensions. It is a PONZI scheme.
They are paying current people with current money. This is 100% sure a PONZI scheme.
Look up the definition of a Ponzi scheme, this fits to a T.
The Federal courts can change everything.
Okay, let’s say for the moment your take on it is right even though that’s not likely, perhaps. What is the long-term result if the ultimate responsibility lies with the funding being done directly from the state’s general revenue and assets? Any subordinate public pension agencies are created by the state as a convenience only. Per the 1970 IL Constitution such actions do not dismiss the state itself from the ongoing pension payment requirement should the pension system themselves be inactivated by law. Any faulty laws in the creation of fulfilling that constitutional requirement becomes something of a huge a… Read more »
Federal law trumps state law.
Maybe, but it has to reach that level to even be a possibility. It might, but it might not, too. What happens there is anyone’s guess as well.