By Mark Glennon -
Politicians and the media routinely describe state and local budgets in Illinois as balanced, including Crain's in a recent editorial about Chicago's. That's badly misleading. Governments gush red ink while claiming balanced or nearly balanced budgets. The public should understand that most budgets in Illinois aren't remotely close to balanced under any common-sense approach.
In the phony world of government budget accounting, routine gimmicks include counting borrowed money, asset sales and raids on segregated funds as income. Most important for Illinois and its municipalities, budgets entirely ignore growth in unfunded pension liabilities, which are the primary source of our fiscal crisis.
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