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Lightfoot agreed to pay striking teachers 16% over five years with staffing increases and other perks that pushed the overall price tag to $1.5 billion amid concern that would become the floor for police officers and firefighters.
Those fears turned out to be wrong.
Rank-and-file police officers won’t be content with simply matching the teachers. Their union is demanding an 18% pay raise over three years.
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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Light foot will soon show her true colors as anti cop. They can’t strike like teachers can, so Light foot will run them through a meat grinder in the media as selfish greedy racist cops. A blue flu is really all they got. Cops see an SEIU custodian who spends half the day sleeping in the furnace room getting a sweet contract, what should she expect? I hope the cops get that and more.
Gee, who could have predicted this? Imagine, police think they are just as important as teachers. What’s next, firefighters thinking they are also important?
The schadenfreude side of me is glad this is happening. Lightfoot opened Pandora’s CTU Box, now she has to deal with the repercussions.
Will neighborhood groups march arm-in-arm with their police officers? Will the police also ask for non-existent TIF money from Lincoln Yards like CTU did?
The state arbitration laws are flawed.