WFLD: CPS Pension Crisis
Chicago faces another pension crisis – the one for Chicago teachers. While the fighting over a new contract continues, in this editorial, FOX 32 Vice President and General Manager Dennis Welsh shows how neither side is trying to actually fix a broken system.
Politico: Obama's journey of nostalgia and regret
Dwight Eisenhower spent his farewell address warning about the military-industrial complex. President Barack Obama’s spending his farewell tour warning about the political-hate-disenchantment complex.
Obama says that’s the real reason why so few have so much power and everyone else feels left out, and it’s what drives the go-stuff-it politics that’s dominated this year’s presidential campaign.
Chicago Tribune: Spineless aldermen put one over on Chicago
“Some law enforcement officers — and don’t mistake it, IG’s consider themselves prosecutors — we know there have been people railroaded and falsely convicted and on death row.”
— Ald. Will Burns, warning City Council colleagues about alleged perils of letting an inspector general routinely audit spending they control, Feb. 10, 2016
Even by the slovenly ethics standards for which the Chicago City Council is notorious, this dodge of transparency, of accountability for taxpayer dollars — this vote was reprehensible. If you watched Wednesday’s brief debate, you saw the amazing contortions: Chicago aldermen, trying to cover their fannies and their paranoia with great clouds of spoken nonsense. You’d almost think some of these people have something to hide.
ABC7Chicago: Walgreens to sell heroin OD remedy Naloxone over the counter
Walgreens stores will soon start selling a drug over the counter that counteracts heroin overdoses.
Naloxone will be available at Walgreens stores in Illinois and Indiana. How will sales of the powerful drug work?
An overdose antidote soon available – no prescription required.
Sun-Times: What CPS schools took the biggest cuts?
Feb. 29 is the day Chicago Public Schools now says it could lay off school staffers, should the broke district and Chicago Teachers Union fail to agree on a new contract before the end of the month.
But the union repeated accusations that the district with which it continues to negotiate has manufactured another crisis.
WirePoints: Illinois Fire and Police Pension Actuary Facing Actuarial Discipline
WirePoints has learned that the Actuarial Board of Counseling and Discipline (the ABCD) recently recommended that Timothy Sharpe, actuary to dozens of troubled Illinois fire and police pension funds, be expelled from membership in the American Academy of Actuaries. If the Academy implements the recommendation, it will be very unusual since only 11 actuaries have been expelled from the Academy since 1975 and only 20 have been otherwise publicly disciplined (http://actuary.org/content/public-discipline).
The recommendation is the result of separate complaints by two actuaries, one by actuary Tia Goss Sawhney. Those complaints followed three prior complaints, two by actuaries and another by Jim Palermo, then trustee of the Village of La Grange, IL. Actuaries and members of the public may file complaints against actuaries who are members of the Academy of Actuaries for violations of the actuarial Code of Professional Conduct and standards of practice reference referenced in Precept 3 of the Code of Professional Conduct. The ABCD recommends expulsion or other public discipline only for the most egregious, systematic, and/or persistent violations of the Code of Professional Conduct and Standards of Practice.
Sharpe’s work was described in July 2015 by the New York Times in “Bad Math and a Coming Public Pension Crisis.” His work has also been discussed here in WirePoints, the Forest Park Review, and the Rockford Register Star. Some feel that some of Sharpe’s work used unrealistic assumptions about future plan experience that lead to lower estimates of fund liability, lower contributions (tax levies) and higher estimates of funded status than more realistic assumptions. Local officials obviously tend to find that attractive.
Chicago Tribune: Chicago Public Schools slashes budgets midyear
In a move the district acknowledged was unprecedented for the middle of a school year, Chicago Public Schools on Tuesday cut millions of dollars from school budgets, forcing principals to refigure their plans with the second semester just underway.
The cuts to CPS’ per-pupil funding rate were slightly deeper than laid out last week, when the district said it would save $75 million through budget reductions. On Tuesday, the district said $85 million would be cut this school year.
The cuts, however, will be softened by tens of millions of dollars in state and federal money, much of it directed toward schools with low-income students. That means the net impact of the reductions, according to district figures, is closer to $26 million.
Chicago Mag: The Incredible Shrinking Illinois
Illinois’s loss of population is crippling, Bruce Rauner emphasized in hisState of the State address. And the decline is considerable—so much so thatthe state could lose a House seat, according to analysis by Election Data Services, a political consulting firm.
But where is the exodus actually coming from? The Census Bureau doesn’t have county-by-county figures for 2015, but it does have the change from 2010 to 2014. And it looks like this, with green representing degrees of growth, red decline:
WQAD: Illinois lawmaker proposes law against filming, posting videos of fights
Filming fights and posting them online could soon be a crime in Illinois if one lawmaker has her way. Students, who would be the primary focus of the law, have mixed feelings about this idea.
Students can go to school and pay attention in class, but their cell phones are never too far away.
“Yeah, it`s all the time. In school, it`s every single day in the class, you get in there and there`s always somebody on their phone,” Moline High School sophomore Jacob Jensen said.