Nearly $6,000.
That's the burden on every man woman and child in Chicago for the area's unfunded pension liabilities.
The jarring figure comes from a Civic Federation report released today that shows those tax burdens have grown nearly 400 percent in nine years.
The federation is a nonprofit, nonpartisan spending watchdog of Chicago and Illinois.
In all, Chicago-area pension funds reached an $18.5 billion deficit in 2008.
"The status quo of benefit enhancements and insufficient pension contributions must not continue," Laurence Msall, president of the Civic Federation, said in a statement.
"The only responsible option for our local governments is to work with the General Assembly to take action immediately."
In the report, the Civic Federation calls on Illinois lawmakers to "implement reforms to pension benefits, increase employer and employee contributions, and improve governance and financial reporting."
It showed that while pension pledges in the Chicago area grew by 69 percent from 1999 to 2008, funding for those pensions grew by only 26 percent. The federation also eliminated a common excuse for recent public-financing woes.
"The economic downturn did not cause local pension underfunding," according to the federation's report. "Many local pension funds have been routinely underfunded for years as benefit enhancements were granted without regard for their long-term cost."
According to the report, several Chicago pensions reached "dangerously low" funding levels as the market suffered in 2008.
The Chicago Fire Fund’s merely 27 percent funded, and the city's Police Fund fared only marginally better at 34.7 percent. The Police Fund's unfunded liabilities alone totaled $4.5 billion, or more than four times current police payroll, the report said.
Last month, the Civic Federation released another report that called for pension reform and a state income-tax increase as solutions to a record Illinois budget deficit approaching $13 billion this year.
While state Democrats have called for a tax increase and passed one in the Senate, Republicans have resisted it, arguing that it would only lead legislators to procrastinate on spending reform.
Windy Citizen 