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Thursday, March 28, 2024

Illinois Too Broke to Fix: Chicago Police Pension Fund Broke by 2021 at the Latest

Courtesy of Mish.

The Chicago City Wire has a projection regarding pensions that matches my prior projections: Chicago’s police pension fund will be broke in 2021.

Without a taxpayer bailout, Chicago’s police pension fund won’t have enough money to pay benefits to retirees in 2021, according to a projection by Local Government Information Services (LGIS), which publishes Chicago City Wire.

At the end of 2020, LGIS estimates that the Policemen’s Annuity and Benefit Fund of Chicago will have less than $150 million in assets to pay $928 million promised to 14,133 retirees the following year.

Fund assets will fall from $3.2 billion at the end of 2015 to $1.4 billion at the end of 2018, $751 million at the end of 2019, and $143 million at the end of 2020, according to LGIS.

LGIS analyzed 12 years of the fund’s mandated financial filings with the Illinois Department of Insurance (DOI), which regulates public pension funds. It found that– without taxpayer subsidies and the ability to use active employee contributions to pay current retirees, a practice that is illegal in the private sector– the fund would have already run completely dry, in 2015.

The Chicago police pension fund held $3.2 billion in assets in 2003. It shelled out $3.8 billion more in benefits to retired police officers than it generated in investment returns between 2003 and 2015.

Over that span, the fund paid out $6.9 billion and earned $3.0 billion, paying an additional $134 million in fees to investment managers.

Even assuming Chicago taxpayers and active Chicago police officers continue subsidizing the fund at traditional levels, and that the fund manages to generate investment returns consistent with the last 12 years– 5.19 percent per year, on average– its assets will still race to zero, outpaced by faster-growing benefit payments.

Projected Broke by 2021

Income vs Benefit Projections

Higher Salaries Bigger Retirements

Read the article for more gory details but here is one key point: Chicago taxpayers are currently paying more retired police officers than they are active ones as salaries soared by 39% and pension spiking escalated.

2021 at the Latest


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