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
9 Comments
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 Niche.com, Clemente in Chicago has a student/teacher ratio of 11/1 and an enrollment of 666 students. That’s a teaching faculty of 60 or 61. 5% are “proficient” at reading and 5% are “proficient” at Math. Yet, 87% of this band of scholars graduates. It is almost miraculous and it costs the tax paying public only $30,000 per student, per year! To paraphrase former Sec. of Education William Bennett, it is past time to blow up the blob of CPS and go to vouchers!
I wonder how many administrators could be turned into teachers?
For parents, students & taxpayers, it sure would be great to know and a big mystery why CPS doesn’t provide # or % of days kids are stuck with substitutes on average or in total, or what CPS spends on substitute teachers during the school year……as contract negotiations drag on with are CTU hero’s.
What yah got to hide CPS/CTU??????
Between teachers playing hookie on a regular basis and staff being charged with hundreds of cases of sexual misconduct, the CTU has plenty to hide.