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.
Let’s not forget the insane Red Line Extension, sticking taxpayers in Mississippi and Utah with part of the tab for this outrageously expensive and redundant slush find for friends and pals of political animals.