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"Ka-ching, k-not."
Included in Lightfoot’s massive city budget expectation is $163 million federal dollars in ambulance service reimbursements based on the feds rewriting a section of the Medicaid formula. Political insiders are betting the ranch the Trump administration will nix the cash by turning a thumbs-down to approval of the formula rewrite by the U.S. Department of Human Services. Why? It’s pretty obvious this president, who is consistently bashing Chicago, doesn’t forget slights.
And Lightfoot’s decision not to greet Trump at the airport Monday, his first trip to Chicago since his 2016 election, probably stung. As a top Dem politico noted: “Even during the dark days of Watergate, Mayor Richard J. Daley greeted Republican President Richard Nixon at the airport when he visited Chicago.
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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