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.
You can go prepaid, where all you pay is tax on the monthly minutes/data card you buy. If you are still under contract and pay via credit card or automatic withdrawal, you can change your billing address to a low tax state like Nevada. I did that years ago and my monthly cell phone tax literally dropped from 8 dollars down to 7 cents.