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 hope they never sell. It is still one of the classic old Chicago institutions with one of the best lunches in town– even if the dining room has one long table and a few crumbs from the last eaters. It is a classic. And don’t forget that Jay Leno used to sleep in a van in the parking lot before he hit it big and was playing comedy clubs in Chicago.