IL & Chicago Pension mess spreads like an unchecked Cancer.

Summary of our March 24, 2025 TV show:
Public Affairs’ Jeff Berkowitz sits down for Part 2 of his conversation with Sheila Weinberg, Founder and CEO of “Truth in Accounting,” since 2002 and whose mission is to try to get government personnel to be truthful so they and she can produce financial reports that are understandable, reliable, transparent and correct.
Sheila Weinberg received her Certified Public Accountant, also known as a CPA, credential in 1981, along with a Bachelor of Accounting degree from the University of Denver, which she attended on an academic scholarship.
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Shelia has spent decades practicing her professional career as a national expert in accounting, government finance and budgeting.
So, on what basis has Gov. Pritzker asserted for the last six years that his budgets are “Balanced.” Only by ignoring the dictates of actuarial science and instead replacing those dictates with the statutory requirements, which were set by politicians, and not the science of financial accounting and sound economics and Policy, which has been practiced for decades by Shelia at Truth in Accounting.
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Pritzker, in his February 2026 address to the IL General Assembly about his proposed FY2026 budget, misrepresented for the 6th year in a row his budget as balanced. The Governor seemingly ignores actuaries, most likely even those on his own Governor’s Office of Management and Budget (“GOMB”) staff, who if they followed their science, told him that IL should contribute 16.8 billion dollars to their five pension funds. Instead, the Governor proposed an 11.7 billion dollar contribution, which shorts the pension funding by more than five billion dollars., or 30%.
It appears Gov Pritzker has engaged in similar misrepresentation and deceptions in his presentation and discussions of his prior budgets since becoming Governor in 2019. Governor Pritzker’s IL pension contributions, as Truth in Accounting documents and as presented during the show, also fell short of actuarially determined (or required) contributions during 2020- 2026. In sum, Weinberg, accuses Gov Pritzker of “Putting IL at risk” of being accused of a fiscal policy misrepresentation each time he publicly stated or states IL has or had a balanced budget.
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Sheila Weinberg said IL under Pritzker will not have enough money to pay the benefits it promised, as calculated by the actuaries, so it will “Have to cut pension benefits, cut other government services or raise taxes to plug the quarter of trillion dollars IL pension hole.” Similar problems exist with respect to Mayor Brandon Johnson and his statements that he has fully funded the pensions and balanced the budgets in his almost two years as Mayor of the City of Chicago.
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Berkowitz and Weinberg discuss whether Gov Pritzker is breaking IL’s promise in the 2013 Settlement Agreement with the SEC not to repeat the policy of making misrepresentations similar to those it made in 2009.
Most importantly, show host Berkowitz contends that Gov Prtitzker, Mayor Brandon Johnson and other politicians in IL have created two classes of citizens. Those who work for State and Local governments in IL often get much higher than market salaries and pensions. Further, the IL Constitution and other conditions in IL make it almost impossible for taxpayers to keep up with the promised pension benefits or for politicians to fix these problems without legislating the power for IL cities to file for bankruptcy and Illinois Citizens voting to amend the IL Constitution to permit a reduction in public sector pension benefits.
These issues are documented and discussed in great detail during the show.
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