UIC Urban Forum
September 13, 2018
UIC Student Center East,Illinois Room, 750 S. Halsted St.
8:45 a.m. - 1 p.m.
The People's Money: Pensions, Debt and Government Services
Cities and other local governments across the nation have yet to see their revenue streams return to the pre-Great Recession era. Taxpayers and fee-payers, the people who elect their representatives for the purpose of providing for the health, safety and welfare of the people, demand an adequate level of government services. Moreover, they demand that borrowed funds used to build the city’s infrastructure be paid back to the lender and that the pensions be fully funded to support the workforce when it retires. Yet, these demands from the people for good public services and the escalating costs of providing infrastructure and pensions have increasingly clashed, resulting in challenging fiscal times even as the general economy of the nation has improved.
The paradox of both improving economic conditions and challenging fiscal situations of the nation’s cities and other local governments is the focus of the 2018 UIC Urban Forum. The challenge confronting the nation’s cities is no more evident than in Illinois, where the problems of city fiscal challenges are compounded by the state’s fiscal crisis. Papers and panels will be convened around the manifold challenges of city fiscal problems due to mounting pension and health insurance liabilities, deferred infrastructure maintenance and investment, cities’ fiscal architectures that are not firmly connected to a city’s economic growth engines, uncertainty surrounding financial and legal entanglements between the private sector and city government, the changing municipal bond market, and cities’ creative approaches to meeting the needs of their residents.
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