"BAD choices have consequences"

From Meep at Stump: Oh Woe, Chicago: How Will the Pensions Flow?

Illinois groups plead for sense from a nonsensical administration and the cupboard is bare

If they are asking for rationality from the Brandon Johnson administration, they have gone to the wrong place.

For now, I will link to old posts, as I have written about these issues for years.

But here is the nutshell version.

The core of Chicago’s pension problem:

• Overpromising benefits

• Underpaying for those promises

That is fairly simple how they got to where they are today, but dealing with it given where they are now is a real bear because there are loads of stakeholders, legal obligations, and more.

In short, Chicago promised gold-plated pensions to Cops, Firefighters, teachers, and more. They didn't fund those pensions. In fact, if I recall correctly, they appointed people to head the pensions who were connected to political movers-and-shakers who had no business running pension investments. You can imagine how that went. But that is Chicago politics. Corrupt.

By September 2020, I realized I no longer had to fight against the 80% fundedness myth.

(Mind you, I wouldn’t be surprised if it came back. But it has been dead for 4 years. I have had my news search set and never canceled, and it’s all been false positives.)

But the point is that anything less than a 100% fundedness target is an indication that one does not intend to fully pay benefits.

Click thru. If there is a Democrat in the White House, I expect that Chicago will get another bailout. They got one - for pensions, a problem decades in the making - during COVID.