-- Connecting the dots between our economy, government and business --
Summary and audio linked here.
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.
Full interview and summary linked here.
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Nothing like a new spending program while we can’t pay for our existing programs in true Illinois style.
The proposed rules for the program are listed at the beginning of this issue of the Illinois Register:
https://www.ilsos.gov/departments/index/register/volume48/register_volume48_48.pdf
There is a really strange aspect to this program that is not mentioned in the story. Individuals who qualify for the program CANNOT apply for it, and in fact have no say in the process. The debts to be forgiven are selected entirely by a non-profit “medical debt coordinator”, who handles all the negotiation involved in purchasing and liquidating the debts, then informs the patients after the fact that their medical debt has been erased. Why would it be set up that way, rather than having an open application process on a first-come, first-served basis?
Because the cronies can get paid as employees of the “non-profit” that basically will exist to bilk money out of tax payers to line their pockets.
Also a good way to circumvent paying off the smaller debts first and pay the largest ones, thus insuring a backlog of cases to justify keeping the grift going for eternity.