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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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Is he kidding? He can’t be that stupid to think a government entity will fix itself. Government entities, at least the ones in Illinois, don’t fix anything.
Nope!
Chicago is doomed. It used to be that it was possible to go without a car and take public transportation to work. Now riding the CTA is too dangerous and unreliable. People have to use their cars to avoid being robbed or assaulted on the CTA. Will not forget the CWB article about a gang member shooting another rider on a bus in Portage Park. Being stuck in a traffic jam and enduring long commutes is no picnic either. Crime and traffic congestion are the two main reasons I don’t go back to visit this poorly managed city. As a… Read more »
This is ridiculous. The motivation for the legislature to steal funds and increase taxes to pay for a failed transit system in chicago is to give them time to re-structure?! You are kidding right? Flushing hundreds of Millions of dollars down the crapper on the “hope” a corrupt patronage laden organization will do the right thing? Absolutely stupid, makes no sense and is a bad deal for the tax payers of Illinois. Nothing about this makes any logical sense, which makes it likely that there is nothing but huge payoffs and corruption surrounding it.
“. Of 10,911 CTA employees, nearly half – over 5,000 – are in administration, management and support rather than directly operating trains and buses.” Amazing! (It’s on page 28 of their budget.)