This is what democracy looks like. Two billionaires sitting in a room.
Griffin and Pritzker discussed cutting our pensions. Pritzker said no.
Greg Hinz tells an interesting story today in Crain’s.
It about two Illinois billionaires meeting secretly, taking tea behind closed doors.
It was just the two of them: Ken Griffin and JB Pritzker and one of Griffin’s gofers.
The meeting took place shortly after Pritzker beat Griffin’s pal, Bruce Rauner, in the race for governor.
Was there a way for two of Illinois’ richest residents to reach peace and avoid a years long war, with Gov. J.B. Pritzker getting the tax revenue he wanted to run the state and Citadel’s Ken Griffin keeping both his residence and his company headquarters in Illinois?
Much of the answer to that question lies in what happened at a previously undisclosed, one-on-one meeting between the two billionaires in the early days of the Pritzker administration.
There are some striking similarities between what the two sides are saying now about the session—and some striking differences. On balance, what happened then tells a lot about how a possible understanding of sorts instead became an expensive and nasty all-out feud that has dominated Illinois politics for years. This meeting set the tone.
News of the gathering first emerged when, a few days after Griffin recently announced that he and Citadel’s HQ were decamping for Miami, I asked Pritzker why he or his aides hadn’t reached out to Griffin to see if there was a way to avoid an economically damaging move, one that Griffin had been publicly hinting at for many months.
“That’s not true at all,” Pritzker said. In fact, “I actually met with him when I became governor” and asked what would make Citadel happier. But Griffin’s wishlist included unacceptable items, such as amending the Illinois Constitution to slash pension payments, Pritzker said.
There’s several parts to this story I find interesting.
One is the story Griffin told about leaving Chicago and Illinois for Florida because of crime?
Total bullshit.
Of course nobody can be surprised that these billionaires have these private meetings over tea or whatever and make deals about things that greatly impact our lives. But there it is in print.
Pritzker, to his credit and because he doesn’t really need Griffin’s money, and has presidential ambitions, said no.
In the Pritzker account, Griffin talked mostly about the necessity of cutting the state’s spiraling pension costs by using Pritzker's political clout to push for an amendment to the Illinois Constitution allowing a cut. There also may have been discussion about moving new state workers to a defined-contribution 401(k)-style retirement plan.
Pritzker said no, on the basis that pensions are a promise that should be maintained and that dumping the Constitution’s pension clause would be rejected by the courts.
The Griffin version of events is somewhat different—and contains one big additional detail.
Griffin told Pritzker he had a rare opportunity to run the state not from the political left but the center, dealing with unaffordable pension costs, such as a 3% compound annual cost-of-living increase for retirees, while stabilizing state finances with additional revenues, the Griffin account goes.
“If you do these things, I certainly won’t get in your way and in fact will support you,” Griffin told Pritzker in so many words. In other words, Griffin urged Pritzker to make pension changes that could result in the governor getting some political cover from his rightward flank for a companion tax hike.
Team Pritzker says that wasn’t the case, that there was no quid pro quo offer. Pritzker wouldn’t even consider engaging in “a backroom deal with wealthy people who want the laws to benefit them at the expense of working families,” says a spokeswoman.
So, taking Pritzker at his word, he wouldn’t consider the deal, even though he did take the meeting.
And taking him at his word, he considers our pensions non-negotiable.
But it’s a reminder that the billionaires take tea and not all can afford to say no.