Wirepoints Founder Mark Glennon joins Greg Bishop on WMAY to talk about the union power grab constitutional amendment and Illinois’ unemployment benefits.
Audio: Wirepoints’ Mark Glennon says Chicago pension buyout plan mostly shifts debt rather than eliminating it, property tax surge doubles inflation over three decades – Chicago’s Morning Answer
April 3, 2026
9 Comments
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.
Illinois lost another 54,000 tax filers and dependents, net, according to the IRS. Since 2000, fleeing taxpayers have taken $94 billion of annual adjusted gross income with them.
A friend who works in Wisconsin state government told me that he and some of his fellow workers were literally laughing out loud when they looked at the language in this and a couple of other bills going through Springfield right now. But when they stopped laughing they were just scratching their heads. How could Illinois government be so ignorant of basic economics and business sense. He recalled that when he was growing up everyone in Wisconsin looked at Chicago and Illinois as the financial and business center of the Midwest, but haven’ done that for years now. He really… Read more »
One word as to what has happened in Illinois CORRUPTION
Illinois is the spearhead of communist China.
Single party rule has lead to all sorts of shenanigans.
Can’t beat ’em, join ’em.
Prey have options: be eaten, thus starving predators in the fullness of time,
Or,
As certain plants and animals have evolved to do in self-defense survival mode: mimic predators.
Every single nurse doctor and small business owner needs to form a union, a union of 1, in order to access equal rights as those who empower the Illinois political regime to stay in power. Maybe packs of prey can be formed to optimize survival rates..
Good deal for the Union
Per proposed amendment–“Employees shall have the fundamental right to organize and to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing”. Mark–Not sure how you come to this conclusion, but you state if amendment is passed it would remove ANY restrictions for public sector unions to bargain with state legislature, cities or municipalities (and certainly not the taxpayers). Then WHO are they bargaining with or against if anyone? What principals of accounting or estimate of future taxation would apply to measure cost of unrestricted bargained contracts? Or does the term “bargain collectively” become meaningless? INSANITY!!!–how can any pol support this and… Read more »
GO for it. The sooner Chicago burns and the left leaning larger cities, the sooner the pendulum swings back due to insolvency or simply the absence of OPM.