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.
Foot traffic doesn’t measure occupancy — it only looks at how many people were in a building, not how many of them are actual employees. Kastle Systems uses key card access numbers to gauge occupancy. By that measure, Chicago offices are only 28 pct occupied most weekdays, with the best day of the week only 50 pct at best