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.
There should be no tax increase. And certainly there should be no tax increase without clawing back legislative pension benefit hikes and salary hikes, both of which hike starting pensions, as pensions are overly generous as the result of hiked benefits and salaries, and the pensions are the primary driver requiring the tax hike. What method of obtaining taxpayer money is next after the penny on the dollar sales tax increase? Cook County has two pension funds, Article 9 and Article 10 in the Illinois Pension Code. County Employees’ and Officers’ Annuity and Benefit Fund Forest Preserve District Employees’ Annuity… Read more »