Illinois will not appeal high court ruling on pension reform

[Gidney N Cloyd]

Hopefully this is the end of games and the start of getting down to business on addressing the funding.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/09/09/usa-illinois-pensions-idUSL1N11F2XI20150909

The Illinois Supreme Court's May ruling finding the state's 2013 pension reform law unconstitutional will not be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, a spokeswoman for the state attorney general said on Wednesday.

"In the pension case, we asked the U.S. Supreme Court for a routine extension of time to allow us to consider whether to seek review of the case by that court," said spokeswoman Eileen Boyce. "After completing our analysis, we have decided not to ask the court to review the case."

In July, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan was granted an extension until Sept. 10 to appeal the ruling, which rejected the state's argument that it needed to invoke police powers and cut pension benefits to deal with a fiscal emergency.

The unanimous ruling by the Illinois justices was based on a provision in the state constitution that prohibits the impairment or diminishment of public worker retirement benefits.

That provision was also used by a Cook County Circuit Court judge in July to void a 2014 pension law aimed at shoring up the shaky finances of two Chicago retirement systems. The state supreme court is expected to hear Chicago's appeal in November. (Reporting By Karen Pierog; Editing by Alan Crosby)

[GitRDun]

1. How about this fix?

Fund the damned pensions!

[Gidney N Cloyd]

2. Even normally progressive Eric Zorn is coming up with 'bleed the pensioners' plans now:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/zorn/ct-tough-choice-pension-reform-perspec-0909-20150908-column.html

Here's an idea:

Give each public employee a choice.

Either give up the compounded 3 percent annual cost-of-living increase guaranteed in your pension and accept a lower annual increase, or …

Keep the generous* COLA, but agree that any future raises you receive will not count toward the salary upon which your pension will be based — so if you make $30,000 a year now, your retirement benefits will be calculated using that amount no matter when you retire or how much you're actually earning.

Admittedly, it's not an attractive choice. Either option reduces the amount of the pension check the employee will receive.

But the idea of forcing employees to make the choice may well be constitutional, unlike nearly every other proposal to reduce Illinois' worst-in-the-nation unfunded pension liability.

(* That "generous COLA" is actually a line item in our pension deductions-- we paid for it. Too many lies to count flying around on this pension issue.)

[GitRDun]

3. I for one am sick of this crap.

I am not a state employee..have no relatives that are...but seriously...wtf?

These people we want to bleed are the ones that taught my four kids for 12 years. They did a good enough job, all my kids are successful adults.

These people are the ones that protect my house, "arrested" (lol) my dog and brought him home when they caught him off the property.

These are the people who change the street lights in my town, plow the roads, will fight a fire if I have one.

I need someone to explain to me why we shouldn't all pay a few more bucks a year so these friends and neighbors who've spent a lifetime serving us can retire in dignity with the pension deal we all agreed to.

Pensions cost money. A deal is a deal. The arrogance of a guy like Eric Zorn for seeking an extraction of EARNED RETIREMENT BENEFITS from regular people is just appalling. Even smarmier is using his column at the Tribune to do it...what a joke he is...

[ColesCountyDem]

4. "... the pension deal we all agreed to...."

Exactly! I'm getting sick of the people who want to ignore the fact that each and every contract was a result of collective bargaining.

[GitRDun]

5. I don't blame you

If a business partner came to me and said he wanted to renegotiate our deal I would ask...well...why?

If his answer was, "Well I need it to cover my costs, and while I could charge others more to cover those costs...I thought I would come to you first... "

I would laugh him out the door.

That's the problem with most politicians....no character to live up to deals they've already agreed to.

[ColesCountyDem]

6. And the GOP is trying to pretend that they had nothing to do with the crisis.

The GOP has been very effective at convincing its lemming-like followers to look back no further than the day Rod Blagoevich took office, when affixing the blame for the pension crisis; by doing so, they can blame us for this mess. The reason they don't want to go back, say, 70 years, when the underfunding became virtually institutionalized, is because both the governor's mansion and the legislature were controlled for much longer by Republicans, than by Democrats.

[GitRDun]

7. Yup

Lol every time someone brings this up to me as an issue I say that same thing...politicians on both sides of the aisle have been balancing their books off the backs of their employees pensions for decades.....and now they want to blame the victims....screw them!

[ColesCountyDem]

8. Exactly!

They want to blame the very robbery victim whose pocket they are trying to pick.

[GitRDun]

9. Nice discussion

I'm up in Antioch. Not your neck of the woods my guess...but still a fellow Illinoisan

[ColesCountyDem]

10. And a fellow Democrat.

Pleased to meet you!

[Gidney N Cloyd]

11. Thompson and Edgar (both repub governors) accelerated the problem rather than addressing it.

Look up "Edgar & ramp"
http://www.rebootillinois.com/2012/12/20/uncategorized/mattdietrich/edgar-94-pension-ramp-bill/6369/

Here’s what Edgar said about the “ramp” system that went into effect in 1995:

“We thought it would help. We did not think it was the 100 percent panacea for the problem and we made it very clear that this was a long term, 30-year (plan) and it would put us in what we thought was an acceptable position. We’d still have a deficit, but we wouldn’t have the huge deficit we have now. But we also said, within 10 years you need to take a look at this. Because we’re basing a lot of these estimates on today’s economy and you don’t know what’s going to happen.

“Unfortunately, they did a cursory look at it about seven, eight years later but they really didn’t take a serious look at it. And I think if they had, and made some adjustments, and followed it, I think we could have avoided much of the problem we’re dealing with today on pensions. There is no doubt, and you’ve got to remember that in ’94 we were coming out of the ’91 recession, and we kind of had a pro rata. The amount we were putting in to start with was minor and every so many years it would get bumped up, and Blagojevich did get a pretty good bump.

“Now, it’s something they should have prepared for and it’s something that I think if they had taken a long, hard look and said, ‘OK, we need to do an alternative but we need to have something that is reliable, something that shows consistent effort, I think that would have sufficed. But instead, they just kind of ignored it for a while. Even before that they borrowed money, which was about as bad as ignoring it as far as fiscal policy. They took action that I think really made the pension problem much greater. Then when the recession hit and the stock market went down, since much of the reserves were invested in the market, that made the deficit even greater. Now, you have hopes that the economy gets better, some of that will come back. But missing those payments I think hurt. And again this is not something we Republicans can completely blame on the Democrats. It started really under (Gov. Jim) Thompson’s administration when they really didn’t put the money in that they needed to put in.”