The reason Y2K was no big deal, imho, was that so much advance planning addressed the expected issues. I work for a state agency, and our programmers were delving through code for months in advance, and fixing what needed fixed. I expect the same was happening at most businesses and government entities.
I agree with you about Y2K. My girlfriend works for a very large banking company and was part of their team that dealt with the problem. Everytime we hear Y2K skepticism on TV she says that the problem was seen many years in advance and taken care of. That’s not to say that all the bad stuff would or would not have happened, we never had the opportunity to find out.
As for this story, the last thing we need up here are more Chicago transplants. Especially right before the recall. We had a bunch of them come up here when Doyle loosened and expanded welfare.