Paul Vallas, pension thief.

City workers voting for Vallas are making a dangerous choice.

The first round of the Chicago mayoral election is over and the two candidates left standing are former CPS CEO Paul Vallas and County Commissioner Brandon Johnson.

I have not kept it a secret that I supported and voted for Lori Lightfoot. Among the reasons, and not the least of them, was that as a retired teacher and pension activist I saw Lightfoot as a unique politician who kept her word in addressing public pensions by keeping the city’s obligation to fund them.

Paul Vallas, on the other hand, is a pension thief.

Brandon Johnson will get my vote.

Vallas may want to avoid his role in plunging the teacher pension fund into debt when he was CPS boss, but I’m here to remind folks about what he did, especially city workers who may have short memories and gave them their votes on Tuesday.

The Chicago Teachers Pension Fund was in fairly healthy financial shape in 1995 when Vallas assumed control of the schools. Until then, city property taxpayers paid into a special levy dedicated solely to funding teacher pensions.

CPS couldn’t touch the money for other any other purposes.

But state law governing the Chicago teacher pension fund was changed as Vallas, who served as Daley’s budget director, shifted over to run the schools.

The pension law change that precipitated the downward slide at the Chicago teachers fund was approved during a two-year interlude in the mid-1990s when the GOP held complete power in Springfield.

Daley and Vallas (“I have always been a Democrat”) took advantage of the the change in the law and began what became a decade in which money once earmarked for pensions was used instead to help cover operating cost.

Like using a credit card to pay a credit card bill.

In a case of gross historical revisionism, Vallas boasts that as schools CEO he balanced budgets and built up surpluses.

The economy was booming in the early years when Vallas diverted pension funding, so the teacher pension fund balance was still sound when Vallas departed CPS in 2001 to run the school system in Philadelphia, Bridgeport and New Orleans.

I’ll talk about his role in those cities’ school systems at a later time.

But the reckoning for the Chicago Teachers Pension Fund began a few years later as the investment market weakened and unfunded liabilities began to rise.

By 2006, Daley’s administration did resume making payments into the pension fund. But a few years later, as another school financial crisis loomed, Daley went back to Springfield and repeated the Paul Vallas script and was able to get another three year “pension payment holiday.”

That partial pension holiday was in effect when Emanuel followed Daley.

Emanuel did nothing to rescind it. In fact, Emanuel asked lawmakers to grant CPS pension relief for an extra two years, only to fail in that effort.

Emanuel and Vallas each blamed the other for failing to heed the long-term needs of the district and its retirees: Vallas for opting not to pay into the pension fund when the economy was strong and Emanuel for waiting into his second term before trying to find new sources of revenue.

But Daley, Emanuel and Vallas all can be blamed for moving the pension fund from being nearly fully funded to the debt Mayor Lightfoot finally addressed when she came into office.

And now Vallas wants another go at pension theft.

We can’t let that happen.