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Summary and audio linked here.
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.
Full interview and summary linked here.
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Dear Crains,
Central planning doesn’t work.
Regards,
The 20th Century
These people are utterly and completely lost in space. Apparently they are totally unaware of all the articles showing how the city can’t produce housing at a sensible price — $800K to a million or more per unit. The city is lost with officeholders like this.
Exactly. It’s not like public housing has been a success in Chicago.
One of the major reasons is the prevailing wage law. Any owner that uses state funded money i.e. grants, loans, incentives – in construction must pay unionized ‘prevailing wages’, which is an artificially high and completely arbitrary rate set by the government as the floor rate. If the worker is not unionized, then they must pay an even higher rate to the workers to compensation for benefits that would otherwise have been provided by a union. That’s why it costs billions to build a road, or renovate a local school, or build a new government building. A lot of municipal… Read more »
Exactly right. An affordable housing expert in another state told me he wouldn’t touch a new project in IL for that reason alone – labor cost.
Now take this prevailing wage logic and apply it to the LaSalle Street apartment conversion plan, along with its 30% affordable housing requirement, and it’s easy to see that it’s a disaster in the making. I really can’t see any way Chicago climbs out of the pit the Democrats created. Loop real estate is the canary in the coal mine. It’s a shame because it used to be one of the most beautiful cities in the country. At some point the older buildings that made Chicago so beautiful will turn into ruins as the money to maintain them runs out,… Read more »