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.
The continued incompetence of the political animals collecting paychecks and pension from the CTA while pretending to run the organization aside, this program’s untenable price tag alone renders it a nonstarter. The elephant in the room is that it would be far cheaper to create a dedicated paratransit operation for taxpayers who cannot access the other public transit options offered by the RTA/CTA/Metra/Pace monopolies. You can buy a lot of equipment for and pay for staffing of this operation for $4.9 Billion. This is what would be called a reasonable accommodation. Yes, such an operation would have the usual ‘friends… Read more »