“We are down more than 2,000 officers from where we were. We’re woefully short on ambulances in our city right now where the majority of the calls come from. And our medics are working too many hours. The overtime costs and the burn-out is becoming a real problem,” Ald. Matt O’Shea said. 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
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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.
According to some at the CPD, nothing more than lip service. A few “ friends and relatives “ of Playa’s will find a spot so they it can be trumpeted that hiring occurred, and then zilch. His game is very obvious.