The average lifetime pension benefit among the county’s 20 highest-earning municipal retirees is more than $1.2 million, while their average total retirement contribution is less than $75,000.
Cities and villages across the state are raising taxes or implementing new ones for a variety of functions, from attracting a fast-food restaurant to catching up on rising pension costs.
While major headlines broke over news that Chicago was the only one of America’s largest 20 cities to shrink from July 2015 to July 2016, most of Illinois’ other cities with 50,000 people or more also lost population.
Chicago’s $1.15 billion projected budget gap is the latest in a decades-long string of structural deficits. Making Chicago’s high taxes worse is not the solution.