I have a suggestion of protections to add to the Illinois constitution
How about amendments that guarantee reproductive rights and pension funding?
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The good news in last week’s midterm elections was that the MAGAs got beaten. Not beaten as badly as I would have liked.
I mean, what’s the deal with Florida and Ron DeSantis?
The other good news is the success of the amendment to the Illinois constitution that guarantees union collective bargaining rights.
It is true that Illinois workers already have the right to collective bargaining by statute.
But enshrining the right in the state constitution ensures that no future governor or legislature can restrict those rights.
Former Republican Governor Bruce Rainer tried to pass right-to-work anti-union laws and failed.
By having the right to a union in the constitution is an additional wall of protection.
It is like reproductive rights.
In anticipation of the MAGA majority on the federal Supreme Court overturning Roe, the Illinois legislature passed laws protecting reproductive rights.
Illinois is now a destination point for people from all over the midwest seeking an abortion.
I’m proud of the state for doing that.
But as with union rights, the right to a safe abortion could be overturned by some future legislature.
Abortion rights should be in the state’s constitution.
It would be an additional wall of protection.
When Democrat Pat Quinn and Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan engineered the destruction of the state’s public pensions, the state Supreme Court unanimously ruled the attempt as unconstitutional.
That is because the constitution when it was passed in 1970 included specific language that forbid any diminishment or impairment of pension benefits.
The constitutional guarantee of benefits is fairly unique among states.
But what the constitution didn’t address was pension funding. It is not guaranteed.
Naturally, without the constitution requiring the legislature to fund the system, they have been free to skip their payment obligations. We now have a pension system that is only 40% funded and deeply in debt.
Full funding of the state’s public pension systems should be added to the state’s constitution so we can afford to pay what the state’s public workers were constitutionally promised.