Teacher pensions.
My drawings and paintings are on Instagram @klonskyart
I wrote a post the other day that there never was a pension crisis in Illinois.
This surprised some of my friends who know I’ve been active in defending Illinois public pension rights for years.
But it’s true.
Yes. The pension system is way underfunded, the fault of a state legislature that has historically diverted money that they were obligated to budget for public pensions.
But the idea of it being a crisis that needed an immediate and rash solution was manufactured by right-wing anti-government types like the Illinois Policy Institute (IPI) and Madigan Democrats looking to avoid raising taxes and viewing teachers as an easy target.
There were solutions to the underfunding of pension other than mugging teachers’ contractual benefits.
They were solutions that required time.
Not rash, unconstitutional, breach-of-contract solutions.
After all, it was a problem that took decades of political cowardice to create. It couldn’t be solved overnight.
In 2015, the Illinois Supreme Court took one of the politicians’ solution off the table. They ruled unanimously that current members of teacher and other Illinois public employees pension systems could not legally have their pension benefits diminished or impaired (Article VII, Section 5. Illinois Constitution).
The Illinois Supreme Court ruling in our favor was unanimous.
We current retirees will continue to receive our full pension benefits.
And the pension funds will remain underfunded.
I wrote the other day that I wondered about where the pension issue went.
This is an election year and there seemed not one word about pensions.
“It is still there--they just got a small reprieve when the systems generated $10 B more in investment returns than anticipated last year, much of which is being lost in the market this year. So the funding crisis will be topical again late next year--especially when they all realize the state is about to blow the Social Security safe harbor for Tier 2, which will require a significant increase in Tier 2 benefits,” Ralph Martire told me.
Ralph is the executive director of the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability
Tier 2 are all those public employees hired after January of 2011. They are screwed. They have to work longer to qualify for a pension and pay into the pension system money they will never get back in benefits.
The “Social Security safe harbor,” Ralph is talking about is the federal requirement that a state pension system must provide a benefit as good as Social Security.
Illinois’ Tier 2 likely won’t do that.
That’s the genius of the Illinois state legislature.
Tier 2 and safe harbor are ticking time bombs because local school systems or the state legislature may have to pay back Tier 2 teachers for having robbed them and pay them going back over a decade.
I was reminded off all this yesterday when I read the Chicago Tribune’s endorsement of Democrat Andy Peters for state rep in the 13th district.
Andy didn’t get the memo that this was not the year to make pensions a campaign issue.
Andy’s yard signs refer to himself as “Nerdy Andy.”
Being nerdy is no excuse for being ignorant.
He’s gone and made cutting public pensions his main campaign theme and that disqualifies him in my book.
Of course the Trib endorsed him.
The Chicago Tribune has never seen a public pension they approved of.
“The legislature needs to stop kicking the can down the road and tackle the pension deficit problem now,” he tells us. He’s right in backing a pension reform referendum that would ask voters to amend the Illinois Constitution to allow a reduction in future benefit growth to levels that the state can afford, while keeping current benefits untouched, explains the pension hating Trib in their endorsement of the "nerdy Democrat."
Declaring that Andy will leave “current retiree benefits untouched” is a no-brainer. The Illinois Courts have already said they can’t touch current benefits.
But changing the constitution to permit cutting many current and future teacher, firefighter and police pensions?
Is he kidding?
Has Peters heard there is a teacher shortage and many are fleeing the profession. And he wants to cut teacher benefits?
The guy should stick to running his coffee shop in Andersonville, where I, by the way, will never get a coffee.