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.
Don’t leave home without it.
This is what we need
Looking like the Younger Brothers, Jesse and Frank James all over again. Merchant Vigilantes protecting their bank and businesses in Northfield MN ended their run. We are headed that way again.
Poor Illinois law makers are getting snubbed on their tax revenue.
This is becoming a daily event and soon will not even make the news. The CPS failed the students and now this is the only work available for them. The good news is that teachers are now retired and living out of state.
Based upon what I read in other sources such as CWB Chicago I think a lot isn’t being reported already.
This has been a near daily event for months, possibly years now.
As Mayor Doofus would say, those silly kids!