Rapidly rising property taxes and growing pension costs leave homeowners asked to pay more to get less. Relief requires structural pension reform, starting with a constitutional amendment.

Illinois’ pension crisis has been a growing problem for decades, and its negative effects on state residents are well documented.1 Economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic and related government shutdown orders threaten to bring that long-running crisis closer to its breaking point. The state’s five pension systems collectively held nearly $139 billion of debt at...