by Ben VanMetre Political leadership in Illinois punted on pension reform during the recent spring legislative session — a move that resulted in back-to-back credit rating downgrades. The General Assembly’s inaction and the resulting credit blows caused Gov. Pat Quinn to call lawmakers back to session. The purpose of the June 19 special session is...
The Illinois General Assembly is gearing up for a special session to discuss pensions next week because of lawmakers’ reform inaction during the recent spring session, which resulted in back-to-back credit rating downgrades. The debate during session will likely be over which of two plans will solve Illinois’ crisis – House Speaker Mike Madigan’s proposal or the one...
Teacher contributions to the Teachers’ Retirement System, or TRS, have gone up by 100 percent since 1998. But taxpayer contributions to teacher retirements have gone up by 400 percent since then. In 2012 alone, Illinois taxpayers contributed $1.6 billion more to TRS than teachers did. And the disparity between taxpayers and employee contributions is projected...
Illinois’ pension problem dwarfs the retirement problems in all other states. Officially, the underfunding of the five state-run pension systems total $100 billion. But when more realistic assumptions are used, the shortfall exceeds $200 billion. Without real pension reform, every Illinois household is on the hook for more than $40,000 in additional taxes just to cover...
Though Illinois taxpayers should be disappointed that pension reform was not enacted during the scheduled spring legislative session, they should also be relieved that fake reform was not enacted. The competing proposals offered by House Speaker Mike Madigan and Senate President John Cullerton did not offer solutions commensurate to the severity of Illinois’ pension problem (Senate Bill 1and Senate Bill...
Back in January, Ralph Martire of the union-backed Center for Tax and Budget Accountability proposedwhat he called a “solution” for Illinois’ pension crisis. This plan has been getting more attention lately. But before embracing it, lawmakers should ask: does this plan really solve the problem? After all, Martire’s plan is to leave the broken pension system untouched –...
Flaws of the defined benefit system are really at the core of the state’s pension problems.
After years of denying that the pension funds are in trouble, the head of the state's largest pension fund is finally acknowledging the crisis.
$203 billion and counting: Total debt for state and local retirement benefits in Illinois by Illinois Policy Institute
Increasing local pension accountability would increase each school district’s total costs by an average of 3.7 percent.