XPost: alt.government.employees, talk.politics.guns, sac.politics   
   XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, chi.general   
   From: nospam@comcast.net   
      
   While Mayor Brandon Johnson and the City Council battle over a   
   staggering $1 billion 2025 budget deficit, a related but much larger   
   problem looms. The city — and its public schools — are insolvent.   
      
   Two generations of state and city leaders have raised salaries and   
   pensions beyond the capacity of Chicago citizens to pay. Consuming   
   nearly a third of the budget and growing, retiree benefits and debt   
   service are crowding out the city’s ability to provide critical   
   services. Despite endemic violent crime, Chicago has 13% fewer police   
   officers than in 2019. Only half of all spending at Chicago Public   
   Schools reaches classrooms, contributing to poor student achievement.   
      
   Conventional wisdom says pension funds have been inadequately funded. In   
   a seminal 2018 report, however, the conservative economic research group   
   Wirepoints documented the real culprit: from 1987 to 2016, the Illinois   
   General Assembly increased pension benefits an astonishing 1,061%, while   
   state revenues grew 176% and median household income 127%.   
      
   Currying favor with public sector unions, legislators and governors of   
   both parties raised service-year credits, permitted pensions as high as   
   75% of final salaries, lowered the retirement age , allowed unused sick   
   days to count as pensionable service, and created the ticking time bomb   
   of compounding annual cost of living adjustments. Gov. JB Pritzker   
   signed bills adding new pension sweeteners costing city taxpayers $100   
   million annually.   
      
   Those pensions are based on skyrocketing salaries. More than 140,000   
   state and local workers collect six-figure salaries or pensions. The   
   median CPS teacher salary is $95,000, among the nation’s highest; the   
   Chicago Teachers Union is seeking four years of 9% raises. This despite   
   a Tribune Editorial Board investigation showing 40% of CTU teachers are   
   “chronically absent.”   
      
   One-third of CPS schools are more than half empty yet the CPS board — a   
   vassal of CTU — has increased salaries and benefits by nearly 50% since   
   2019, going on a 9,000-staffer hiring spree even as 37,000 more students   
   left the system.   
      
    From 2015 to 2023, taxpayers funneled an extraordinary $20 billion into   
   Chicago’s five pension funds only to have the combined debt rise a   
   whopping $24 billion, according to a new Wirepoints analysis. The funded   
   ratio fell from 42% to 30%.   
      
   In a desperate attempt to keep up, Chicago mayors and City Councils have   
   cut services, used one-time revenues, and borrowed to plug budget holes   
   while forcing businesses to pay the highest property taxes in the   
   nation. Record tax increases have pummeled city homeowners too; and   
   Chicago is a tenth of a point shy of the highest sales taxes in the nation.   
      
   In physics, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. So too in   
   politics. The reaction to Chicago’s high taxes, violent crime, and   
   declining schools has been an out-migration of people, businesses, jobs   
   and wealth. The most affected citizens have led the exodus, including   
   many of the more than 400,000 Black taxpayers leaving Chicago, a loss   
   greater than the population of Cleveland.   
      
   Illinois has lost population for 10 consecutive years, even as the   
   nation grows. Its unemployment rate is the third worst in the U.S. Its   
   remaining citizens have fewer job opportunities and less ability to fund   
   soaring government pensions.   
      
   Incredibly, leading civic and business groups have joined unions in   
   calling for even higher taxes, including more city levies and a state   
   income tax surcharge to address Illinois’ unfathomable pension debt.   
      
   Chicago and Illinois are sinking in a quicksand of pension debt. The   
   more vigorous the struggle to escape, the more debt that consumes the   
   drowning victim.   
      
   Any rescue from the muck rests with ordinary citizens taking city and   
   state government back from the politicians serving special interests   
   rather than their own; and shunting aside the go-along-to-get-along   
   business and civic elites settling for decrepitude.   
      
   Although painful, the solutions include deep cuts to bloated   
   bureaucracies bleeding taxpayers and adoption of modern management   
   practices; restructuring of pensions to resemble social security,   
   including reasonable caps (the maximum current social security benefit   
   is $45,864); and consolidating dilapidated and academically failing CPS   
   schools into smaller, modern ones.   
      
   The Illinois Supreme Court has struck down all pension reforms. Thus, it   
   falls to citizens to petition and adopt state constitutional amendments   
   reestablishing the balance between taxpayers and the public sector   
   unions controlling city and state government. In addition to pension   
   reform, those amendments should ban teacher strikes (like 37 other   
   states), ending the routine hostage taking of parents and taxpayers.   
      
   The fix is not easy but it starts with telling the truth: pensions   
   cannot be paid in full. To continue pretending otherwise is to consign a   
   once great city and state to permanent decline.   
      
   Forrest Claypool is the author of “The Daley Show: Inside the   
   Transformative Reign of Chicago’s Richard M. Daley.” He served twice as   
   Daley’s chief of staff and was CEO of Chicago Public Schools from 2015   
   to 2017.   
      
   https://www.chicagotribune.com/2024/12/05/opinion-chicago-budget   
   brandon-johnson/   
      
   --- SoupGate-DOS v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)