The Illinois Supreme Court heard arguments last week on whether a controversial law cutting public pension benefits was constitutional. The high court’s decision will play a pivotal role in determining how Illinois deals with its growing unfunded public pension liability, especially as Gov. Bruce Rauner seeks to further cut pensions to close a massive budget […]
pension reform
Posted inOpinion
Plays for governor
By now, it should be self evident that Bruce Rauner has locked up pretty much all the big money in the Republican primary race for governor. Last week’s pension reform vote provides even more evidence. Rauner has built an impenetrable fortress of high-dollar campaign contributors. Ron Gidwitz, long known in GOP circles for being the […]
Posted inOpinion
Quinn vows to veto ADM, cites pension reform ‘issue of a lifetime’
Gov. Pat Quinn refused to say for several days whether he’d support a $1.2 million a year tax break for Archer Daniels Midland to move 100 jobs out of Decatur and open up a world headquarters and new tech center in Chicago. But last week he made it clear that without pension reform, the ADM […]
Posted inOpinion
Pension reform problems linger
House Speaker Michael Madigan was hoping last Thursday to avoid the same results as the previous week when he presented some new pension reform ideas. The previous week, one of his pension reform proposals received just one vote – his own. None of his other pension amendments received more than five votes. That wasn’t supposed […]
Posted inOpinion
Cartoonish charades at Statehouse
Nobody ever really knows what’s going through Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan’s head except for Madigan himself. So, the actual purpose of two highly choreographed gun control and pension reform debates last week ordered up by Madigan weren’t completely clear to anyone. That’s by design, of course. Madigan prefers to keep people in the dark […]
Posted inOpinion
Fahner goes too far trashing pension reform
For the past few years, the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago has been one of the most feared participants in the state’s pension reform debate. Ty Fahner, a former Illinois attorney general who heads the Civic Committee, managed to convince both parties to elbow each other for a position of favor with […]
Posted inNews
Municipal pensions eat more, but they’re still hungry
Whether the city of Springfield is facing a pension crisis in police and firefighter retirement systems depends on who’s doing the talking. Mayor Mike Houston and Bill McCarty, director of the city’s budget and management office, say that while pension costs are always a concern, the city is in relatively good shape. But Ward 7 […]
