The Cook County treasurer’s office has issued a correction after its latest tax bills misstated Chicago’s pension debt by nearly $37 billion.
First installment tax bills mailed last week stated Chicago’s pension debt as $37,271,645 — billions of dollars less than the city actually owes.
The actual unfunded pension liability of the city is $37,271,645,937.
Treasurer Maria Pappas said her office caught the mistake Monday, which was printed on 1.8 million tax bills, and was in the process of correcting the number online.
“Sh– happens,” Pappas told the Chicago Sun-Times.
She said employees in her office working on a yearly tax report had discovered the error and reached out to the city of Chicago, which she claimed provided the incorrect pension debt information.
The city confirmed the mistake on Tuesday, she said, and her office was in the process of fixing the numbers online Wednesday when her office was contacted by a reporter.
A city employee blamed it on a “key punch error,” according to an email exchange provided by the treasurer’s office.
Pappas doesn’t plan to mail a correction — only to correct the bills online.
The treasurer’s office is required by law to post the pension debt of taxing districts on property tax bills. The law, written by Pappas, was implemented in 2016.
North Sider Ed Bachrach noticed the incorrect pension debt number while studying his tax bill.
“When I saw our debt went down by 37 billion, I said, ‘What’s going on here?’”
Bachrach isn’t exactly a layman. He has studied city pensions for over a decade and is founder of the group Center for Pension Integrity.
“So I pay attention,” he said.
Most people struggle to tell the difference between millions and billions, Bachrach said.
To understand this, he plays a thought experiment with people. “I ask them, in standard units of time, how long is a million seconds?” People guess what they do, and he tells them the answer is 12 days.
“Now, how long is a billion seconds?” he asks. Most people answer some time around a month.
“It’s actually 32 years. There’s a huge difference between 37 million and 37 billion,” Bachrach said.