-- 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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Fiscal cliffs are frequent news of states, cities, and other entities that mismanage revenue.
Time to reduce service to reflect actual usage and need.
My wife’s downtown Chicago office is trying to get staff back to in-person work, and the MTA and CTA are in an awful state. Unreliable schedules, dirty and decrepit equipment, homeless clogging lots of stations, busses and trains. Transportation between stations and offices for those who can’t make the walk to-n-from (or don’t feel safe doing so) is expensive and hard to arrange. Soon to be bankrupt, the article tells us, and solutions under discussion are all based on “equity of capital investment” and “climate goals” and require, “an increase in the existing RTA sales tax levied in Cook County… Read more »
The main purpose of Chicago transit is free rides for downtown crime thug mob wilders — time to give CTA a decent burial