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
9 Comments
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.
So the choice is to heat your home with electricity? How about propane? Oak Park needs to put up a couple hundred wind turbines and hope the wind blows constantly. Will residents love that?
The Oak Park board is typically comprised of well intentioned people dead certain of their opinions being Correct and The Only Way. Some time ago a trustee had the idea to market drinking water in paper containers. It was pointed out that while the outside of the container was a paper product, the liner was a plastic type material which rendered the container unrecycleable. Also, what is the carbon footprint point of trucking drinking water 800 miles by diesel truck in unrecycleable containers. Sounded good, on paper. In reality, not so much. It will be interesting to see whether this… Read more »
Electricity is alot more costly than natural gas so why would anyone want this to happen. Coupled with an aging overused power grid it’s a recipe for disaster. Someone in Oak Park is related to Mike Madigan
Harmon lives there…