The Windy City is like Philadelphia's cool, adventurous, slightly overweight friend who is always plunging head first into crazy situations and making it ok for his skinny, somewhat timid little buddy to follow him.
A lot of that has to do with that city's mayor, aka mayor-for-life Richard M. Daley.
So now Chicago is going out onto the potentially thin ice of solving their own underfunded, city-worker, pension fund. And how is Daley going to do it? By getting everyone, "labor, business and banking," involved from the verrrry beginning.
Judging from the article, it seems that Chicago might be in even bigger trouble with their pension fund than Philadelphia is with its own. The message being given by Chicago city officials is clear - this isn't a crisis now but it will be if we do nothing.
Good luck, Chicago. Hopefully you can figure it out so we can just copy off of you in a few months.
(edited to add) If you are really into the pension fund issue, this might be interesting to you.