The FOP. The IPI. COLA.

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John Catanzara is the head of the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police.

He had told his members to disobey the Mayor and ignore the city’s vaccine mandate.

Catanzara chose to announce his anti-vax position at nearly the exact moment his FOP predecessor, Dean Angelo, died from Covid.

The guy has a knack for timing.

Catanzara also made his defiance known on the day that the NY Times reported that Covid, not gunfire, is the leading cause of death among police officers since the start of the pandemic.

Some have objected to calling the FOP a union.

It’s a good point.

Neither the AFL-CIO nor the Chicago Federation of Labor have them as affiliates.

But they bargain contracts on behalf of their members and they are subject to labor laws.

I have argued that the state legislature should act to remove from subjects of bargaining anything that allows contractual due process to be used to shield cops from criminal charges of misconduct and abuse of their position.

Then they can call themselves whatever they want.

In other news I see that the Illinois Policy Institute (the folks who gave us Bruce Rauner as governor) published an op-ed piece in the Chicago Sun-Times attacking Mayor Lori Lightfoot for failing to cut city retiree pensions.

Actually what they want is a constitutional amendment that would remove language that prevents public pensions from being cut.

But both Mayor Lightfoot and Governor Pritzker have made it clear that they oppose any change to the language of the Illinois constitution.

Like FOP President Catanzara, the IPI has chosen an odd time to post their op-ed.

For one thing the city of Chicago like the state of Illinois continues to short their pension payments.

Neither are meeting their actuarial obligations.

Illinois public pension cost of living increases are locked in at 3% a year.

The 3% annual increase has kept us even with the Consumer Price Index for the past 20 years.

But another surge in consumer prices in September sent inflation to 5.4% from a year ago, matching the highest such rate since 2008.

The annual increase in the consumer price index matched readings in June and July as the highest in 13 years.

This is a major hurt on retirees because inflation this year reflects sharply higher prices for food and energy.

Food and heat are not discretionary expenditures for older folks like me.

For many years some retired friends would criticize me for calling our yearly COLA increase a COLA.

“It’s not a cost of living increase,” they would tell me. “It’s a post-retirement payment.”

I got their point. Our pension increases were paid for as post-retirement compensation for the work we did. It was not really intended to be tied to inflation or the consumer price index as is suggested by calling it a COLA - a cost of living adjustment.

Yet in some ways that is the problem.

Unlike active teachers whose union bargain a new contract and a new compensation package every three or four years, our benefit is fixed.

That worked for the past couple of decades.

Now inflation increases are being measured in quarters, not months.

I can still remember back in the 80s when inflation was in double digits and pension increases were at 3% simple.

I’m hoping that Illinois legislators are not so stupid as to pick this moment to listen to the haters at the Illinois Policy Institute.