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.
“‘It was just go there and be scarecrows,’ the lieutenant said.
‘That’s literally what they want us to do, go there and be scarecrows.'”
Lightfoot’s Scarecrows.