Fran Spielman reports from Chicago’s City Hall that things are bad on the economic outlook front without pension reform. Real bad. Real quick.
Without Springfield tackling the state’s massive funding issue on pensions – if they can pry themselves away from lawsuits over their own paychecks long enough to act – Alex Holt, the city’s budget director, says we could be approaching a $1 billion deficit by 2015.
Without substantive pension reform, all of the things that we’ve done over the past couple of years really do, as the mayor said, come to naught, Holt said in Spielman’s report.
The question may not be whether Chicago is the next Detroit, but whether a serious enough legislative push can be made quickly enough to stave off not only Chicago’s financial cliff, but the state’s deep fiscal hole as well. And can Speaker Mike Madigan actually get that legislation passed?
