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.
Pritzker needs to be arrested and prosecuted
For what? Disagreeing with your policies?
I hate to side with the odious JB the Hutt, but going after someone in order to find their crime is just so Biden DOJ and the slimy Alvin Bragg. Alas it needs to stop for both sides.
Another of Pritzker’s headline making events is fizzling. Funny how these things are unravelling as if they were only planned to last until the nomination dates. Was Pritzker so confident on getting the nod that these failures would soon be forgotten in the rear view mirror during his campaign run? Sadly though it is the citizens of Illinois that are now saddled with paying for his election follies.
Remember Pritzker’s big announcement last year about massive expansion in Belvidere? Where is it? Time for some answers, and time for our media to do its job and ask.
Has Pritzker already written checks to Stellantis/ whomever from the taxpayer slush fund, like he has with Gotion? I will not be surprised if he has, and taxpayers will have no idea what it was spent on.
Don’t know. Our ace press corps asks nothing about this so the fishy deal is full of unknowns.
Sometimes it seems like the media is part of the JB propaganda machine. The hundreds of millions he has spent on getting himself and others elected is keeping the legacy media in this state alive. I sure hope that isn’t impacting their journalistic integrity.
It doesn’t just “seem” that way. I’m now fed up with it. We link to the better stories, and I strongly believe in collecting opinion pieces from all sides, but this is getting hard to stomach. When we link to one of their stories we are also sending readers into the rest of their rigged ecosystem, and that’s not good.
Letting people read different thoughts than yours and sending them a link that provides different opinions than yours is dangerous? Only if your ideas are trash. How dare people come to a different conclusion than you. That’s not good. lol
Get off it. You entirely reversed what I clearly said. You know full well we believe in reading other opinions and sharing them, which I said expressly, and which I’ve done here with enormous effort over many years. It’s the conversion of the news media into state propaganda that this was about — the rigged ecosystem into which we send people when we link to a different opinion piece. If you think there’s anywhere in Illinois that has done a better job collecting varied opinions than us, try naming one.
The rigged system depends on getting ad dollars from JB’s campaign. They’ve sold their souls to their largest advertiser.
Stan Marsh is obviously the no life idiot formerly known as PPF. I would just block him and save yourself the task of doing it later.
Sometimes?
Since I have only my observation to rely upon, I didn’t want to say emphatically that the media are simply toadies for JB. I wouldn’t argue with anyone who says that however.