Lightfoot's half billion dollar payment to city pension funds.

Public pension funds such as my Illinois Teachers Retirement System and Chicago teacher’s Chicago Teachers’ Pension Fund stand on several funding legs.

Active teachers pay into the system every paycheck. Government, whether the city or the state, is supposed to pay into it. And pension funds are invested and provide a return.

Sometimes.

This year the market has not performed so well and the returns have been limited or nonexistent.

That’s the problem when our pensions are so closely tied to Wall Street.

When pensions systems are underfunded by the city and state - as TRS and CTPF are - those missing dollars can’t be invested and so there is a double hurt.

Chicago public pensions are only funded at 25%. Illinois’ TRS is 60% underfunded.

The underfunding is a form of wage theft. Pensions are not a gift. They are deferred compensation. It is a contractual obligation just the same as our salary is a contractual obligation.

Some, like the right-wing Illinois Policy Institute, refer to “overly generous pensions” given to public employees. That’s because they can’t refer to “overly generous teacher salaries.”

There is no such thing as an over-paid teacher.

It appears that Chicago’s Mayor Lightfoot is breaking the mold on public pensions.

And it’s interesting to me how none of the other candidates have anything to say about this subject.

In response to problems at the County level, the city wasn’t going to have the dollars to pay into the pension funds again.

Even before the most recent problems, Lightfoot has increased pension payments.

For three years Lightfoot, has been increasing its contributions to the pension funds to the actuarially required level needed to reach a 90% funded ratio of assets to liabilities in coming decades.

The state of Illinois does not meet its actuarial obligations, even now.

However Lightfoot has made an apparently unprecedented payment of more than half a billion dollars. And made it early.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s office is confirming that in recent weeks it made $574 million in “voluntary” early payments to funds that cover city police, firefighters, laborers and white collar workers. (Crain’s)

I’m not sure why Crain’s put voluntary in quotes, but the payment was made none the less.

That’s good news as far as I’m concerned.

My paintings and drawings are on Instagram @klonskyart.