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.
House Bill 4005 will not matter that much if left to voters. Sounds good on paper. Most of the voters will be people employed by the school districts and their families. That is a large percentage of voters where their turnout will be almost 100% because they may have something to lose. It would probably be on the March primary (not the general election) when voter turnout is lowest.