May 8, 2015. The Illinois Supreme Court ruled that public pensions could not be diminished or impaired. Thank you Henry Green and Helen Kinney.

I joined other public workers in Springfield to lobby legislators in 2011. “Don’t mess with my TRS.” They didn’t listen.

At the time the delegates to the Illinois Constitutional Convention met in 1970 to draft a new constitution, public employees had very little pension protection.

Back then we were at the mercy of Springfield legislators who could take away any pension that workers earned at the politician’s whim or will.

Only judges and legislators’ pensions were constitutionally protected.

Henry Green and Helen Kinney were delegates to the convention.

So was former House Speaker Michael Madigan, by the way.

Green and Kinney believed that the pension situation for the thousands of state workers, including public school teachers, was unfair.

They believed that the state’s workers deserved to have the same pension protections as the politicians who sat in the state legislature.

“Benefits not being diminished really refers to this situation: If a police officer accepted employment under a provision where he was entitled to retire at two-thirds of his salary after 20 years of service, that could not be subsequently changed to say he was entitled to one-third of his salary after 30 years of service, or perhaps entitled to nothing,” Kinney said.

“[I]f you mandate the public employees in the state of Illinois to put in their 5 percent or 8 percent or whatever it may be monthly, and you say when you employ these people, ‘Now if you do this, when you reach 65, you will receive $287 a month,’ that is in fact what you will get,” Green said.

On Aug. 31, 1970 the pension protection clause was approved by a 99-3-2 vote.

In August 1970, state Sen. E.B. Groen, the chairman of the state’s Pension Laws Commission, asked Green to change the clause so lawmakers could make “reasonable modifications” to benefits.

Green rejected the suggestion.

The adopted language read, “Membership in any pension or retirement system of the State, any unit of local government or school district, or any agency or instrumentality thereof, shall be an enforceable contractual relationship, the benefits of which shall not be diminished or impaired.”

In 2013, Michael Madigan, Senate President John Cullerton, Governor Pat Quinn and members of the General Assembly voted to ignore the pension protection clause and to take away what we earned.

We sued the bastards.

Michael Madigan was sure the Court would uphold the theft.

“I’ve got the votes,” he smirked to the press.

It ended up that he had bupkis.

On May 8, 2015 the Illinois Supreme Court ruled unanimously in our favor.