If Illinoisans needed any more proof that the state’s defined benefit pension systems are unmanageable and dysfunctional, they got it on Aug. 26. Dick Ingram, head of the Teachers’ Retirement System, or TRS, informed Illinois’ pension conference committee that TRS’s actuaries made a mistake in calculating the expected savings of House Speaker Mike Madigan’s proposed pension...

After several months of saying that pension reform inaction by the Illinois General Assembly costs taxpayers $17 million a day, Gov. Pat Quinn lowered that number to $5 million per day for fiscal year 2014. That’s surprising, since no pension reform bill was passed in the recent legislative session and the unfunded liability is still almost...

The problem The blame for Illinois’ pension crisis is often laid at the feet of state politicians who supposedly “skipped” payments and caused the state’s five pension systems to be underfunded. This has prompted legislators to add a “funding guarantee” to the current crop of pension reforms bills in order to stop any future pension...

HB 3411 known as Cross-Nekritz – the latest iteration of Nekritz-Biss – paints over Illinois’ pension crisis with more of the same broken policies that have pushed government retirement systems to the edge of collapse. This bill: Perpetuates unstable, unpredictable and unmanageable defined benefit systems – The key driver of Illinois’ pension crisis is the state’s defined...

Illinois is in crisis. According to official government numbers, Illinois has an unfunded pension liability of $96 billion – the worst in the nation. This heavy debt burden, combined with the state’s culture of out-of-control, wasteful spending, has driven the state into an economic death spiral. Illinois cannot be economically prosperous until real pension reform...

The only way to end Illinois’ pension crisis is to empower government workers by transitioning benefits for all future work to a defined contribution system.

Illinois has a long history of fake reforms – legislative proposals that promise to solve the great policy challenges of the day when passed, but never actually accomplish these goals. There is perhaps no bigger fake reform than the 1995 pension ramp passed by the Republican-controlled General Assembly and signed into law by former Gov....

by Kristina Rasmussen Echoing the sentiments of former Gov. Jim Edgar, state rep Daniel Biss made the argument that pension reform will hurt state government employee recruitment in a committee hearing yesterday. From the Tribune’s editorial: Then there’s Daniel Biss, a freshman Democrat from Evanston. In blather-rich questions and a pre-vote soliloquy, he illogically twisted his proclaimed...