Chicago cop and firefighter pensions have more retirees than workers paying in

Chicago Fire Department station
in Chinatown

One of the reasons that Chicago police and firefighter pension plans are woefully underfunded is that there are more retirees than active cops and firefighters paying into them, Wirepoints Illinois News is reporting.

Other reasons include "pension holidays," over-optimistic forecasts, and sheer malfeasance by so-called public servants.

The Chicago firefighter pension fund is just 24 percent funded and the cops' fund isn't much better--it is only 30 percent funded.

The pension "red-zone" is 65 percent. Nearly all of the recent Chicago tax hikes are tied to bailing out pension funds. More are coming. Politicians lie and they lie about mathematics, math itself does not lie.

Chicago and Crook County have suffered under one-party rule for decades.

Elsewhere in Cook County things are awful on the pension front too, so much so that even the treasurer of Cook County, Maria Pappas, has taken notice. She says 130 of the 549 taxing districts in Cook County have more retirees collecting pensions than workers are paying into those funds.

Cook County's soda tax and sales tax hike are tied to pensions.