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.
The expenses for the now-canceled big summer festivals were going to funded (at least partially) by the revenues generated by those same now-canceled festivals. No event means no revenue. By reallocating this expense without a corresponding revenue line item, where will the money come from now?
That’s how budgeting works, right? What am I missing here?