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Chicago careens toward insolvency

Posted in Cook, County, Look For The Union Label, Pension Funding, Politics, Taxes, Unions, Washington Post, Who Cuts Your Hair? on March 16, 2026| Leave a Comment »

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson (D) on Feb. 26. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Editorial Board | The Washington Post

It takes a long time to kill a city, and the bigger the city, the longer it takes. But Chicago’s “public servants” have done a fine job speeding up the process.

The Windy City was forced this week to put off a planned sale of $292 million in tax-exempt municipal bonds, part of an $800 million debt-service package. Authorities blamed volatility caused by the Iran war, but other bonds were priced without incident.

The truth is it’s never a good time to float the kind of debt Chicago wants. The city seeks to structure bonds to make no payments at all — not even interest — for the first couple years. That obviously raises the overall cost of borrowing.

The city has played this same old game for decades. Keep public-sector unions happy by punting obligations onto future taxpayers. Cover the snowballing costs with more borrowing and short-term fixes, such as the city’s 2008 decision to sell off 75 years worth of parking meter revenue for a one-time, $1.15 billion payment.

Pension payments and debt service now consume almost 40 percent of the city’s operating budget. Seven of the country’s 10 worst-funded pensions are in Chicago. The best of those, the Chicago TranChicago Mayor Brandon Johnson (D) on Feb. 26. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)sit pension, has roughly half the assets needed to pay promised benefits. Those in the worst condition, covering police and firefighters, are now less than 20 percent funded because of a “sweetener” rammed through the state legislature last year.

Last month, two ratings agencies downgraded the city’s debt. The school district’s bonds are already rated as junk. The city council’s laudable rebellion in the fall against the feckless budget proposed by Mayor Brandon Johnson (D), a former organizer for the teachers union, was a hopeful sign, but the modest tweaks they forced him to accept in December won’t change the fiscal trajectory.

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Chicago has lost its mind – The Washington Post

Posted in Clown Car, Cook, Cost of Living, County, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), Dumb and Dumber, Dumb Bunny, OP/Ed, Pension Funding, Politics, Pritzker’s Rules of Order, Taxes, Uncategorized, Unions, Washington Post on December 15, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson (D) at an October news conference. | Joshua Lott/The Washington Post

The city’s fiscal situation is dire, and Mayor Brandon Johnson is determined to make things worse.

Chicago has long-term structural problems with its finances, thanks in large part to wildly underfunded pensions. The country’s third-largest city has a history of using short-term gimmicks to paper over its problems, such as a notorious 2008 deal that sold off 75 years of future parking meter revenue for $1.15 billion, which was quickly spent. That deal is still hurting finances today, which should have taught local politicians that there is no substitute for serious fiscal reform. Alas, apparently not.

The city’s net operating budget increased almost 40 percent between 2019 and 2025, “subsidized in large part by temporary federal pandemic funding that kept the City financially afloat,” according to Grant McClintock of the Civic Federation. “The pandemic is over, but many of the programs and personnel positions established during that time remain, and without the benefit of the federal funding that previously supported them.”

Mayor Brandon Johnson (D) proposes to offset a $1.15 billion shortfall by taxing the businesses that anchor Chicago’s economy, borrowing and more gimmicks.

The mayor proposes to increase the tax on the lease of “personal property” like computers, vehicles and software from 11 percent to 14 percent, and to bring back the city’s “head tax,” which would result in large employers paying $33 per worker, per month.

By making it more expensive to do business or hire workers in the city, these measures threaten Chicago’s future economic growth and tax collections. These moves are especially reckless given that the Chicago Fed’s 12-month hiring outlook is the weakest it’s been since the pandemic. Gov. JB Pritzker (D) says the head tax would penalize employment.

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Pritzker Blames Trump for Charlie Kirk Assassination

Posted in Ethics, Fat Bastard, OP/Ed, Politics, Washington Post, Wirepoints on September 11, 2025| 1 Comment »

Pritzker making his comments on Kirk on Wednesday

Washington Post editorial: “a disgracefully ill-timed comment” by Pritzker

By Mark Glennon | Wirepoints

Here’s what JB Pritzker said Wednesday about the murder of Charlie Kirk:

“It’s got to stop. And I think there are people who are fomenting it in this country. I think the president’s rhetoric often foments it. We’ve seen the January 6 rioters who clearly have tripped a new era of political violence. And the president, what did he do? He pardoned them. I mean, what kind of signal does that send to people who want to perpetrate political violence? Not a good one.”

Even the Washington Post editorial board couldn’t stomach that, writing, ”Though Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D) decried the violence, he couldn’t help himself from taking a dig at Trump. ‘I think the president’s rhetoric often foments it,’ he said, a disgracefully ill-timed comment.

Other condemnations of Pritzker are flooding social media.

What makes this more extraordinary is that Pritzker’s words have been among the most incendiary in American political history.

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