No surprise that Illinois’ Tier 2 pension law being challenged in court given how it was passed – Wirepoints Quickpoint
The law was bulldozed through in 2010 by House Speaker Michael Madigan and Senate President John Cullerton in less than 12 hours with no analysis, debate or actuarial assessment.
I consider Jim Edgar to be one of our best BUT to claim pension prowess is a stretch. The “can kicking” to solve “can kicking” is well documented. He also transferred $21 million from a fund earmarked for state employee pensions into the General Revenue Fund. Some elected officials could be well served to follow the example of Herbert Hoover, John Kennedy, and Donald Trump (no not THOSE examples) and donate their $ when they don’t need it. Since I paid into Social Security since 1968 (pumping gas & painting houses in the summer) but cna’t under the Gov Offset… Read more »
I don’t mean to quibble but republicans didn’t control both houses for much of Edgar’s term. They controlled both houses for 2 years, the democrats controlled both houses for 2 years, and then the other 4 years of Edgar’s term had the democrats controlling the house and the republicans controlling the senate. One thing I won’t quibble about is the damage the Edgar ramp has done to the pension system. Also the cost of living increases that began under Thompson haven’t helped either. At the state level the blame can be spread evenly between democrats and republicans. As for the… Read more »
Well I guess I’ll use a more unique name since someone else posts as Mike sometimes.
I’ll change my posting name since you were here first.
One state, two teacher’s systems – very telling!
“We’ll just have to pay the pensions” (or move out of state, of course).
The idea that “we’ll just have to pay the pensions” directly correlates to whether or not you’re being paid one of these obscene pensions.
If Edgar had made full pension payments (straight line) instead of his measly ramp payments, what would Edgar’s so-called balanced budgets have looked like? Not balanced. And it was under Edgar that the state began picking up the employEE pension contributions, which lasted many years.
What a loser. It’s was easy to cave to public unions and of course he feathered his own nest. We MUST get politicians out of the pension business. How do we do this? Form a taxpayers union?