Tag: Illinois pensions

Illinois, don’t throw the game to reform opponents: Reject what’s coming from the pension committee

November 3, 2013, By: Mark Glennon “We’re at the one yard line.” That’s how State Rep. Elaine Nekritz recently described progress by the special Illinois legislative conference committee towards presenting a proposal to fix state pensions. Wrong football metaphor.   No, it’s not that the committee will “punt” on pension reform. It’s worse than that.   The right metaphor is from Green Bay Packers defensive back Charles Woodson last year about Bears’ quarterback Jay Cutler. Woodson said the Packers will win because “Jay will just throw us the ball.” The pension committee appears ready to propose legislation that likewise gives

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The “average” public sector pensions numbers every Illinoisan should read

September 27, 2013 You’ve been lied to. Pension supporters and public employee unions have long gotten away with claiming average pension payments are in the thirty to forty thousand dollar range. That was dishonest.  Those averages include pensioners who worked part of their careers in jobs not covered by the pension, part time workers and early retirees.  Those retirees have additional retirement income from other sources. The relevant averages are for people who work a full thirty years in a job covered by the pension system. They are excessive.  Keep in mind as you look at these that the mean

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Great summary of the Illinois pension crisis

You may or may not like libertarian politics, but if you want hard facts on the Illinois fiscal crisis you’d be wise to follow the research of the Illinois Policy Institute, a libertarian think tank. Yesterday they published this great snapshot summarizing how bad the real numbers are. WirePoints recently collected some of the research from outside the state saying essentially the same thing — that the official numbers used by the state are off by at least 100% — the pension hole is twice as large as Springfield is telling us. Remember that this summary and almost all the

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Outside experts size up Illinois pension mess: twice as big as the state admits — WirePoints Original

  “A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.” Edward. R. Murrow December 9, 2012, Updated January 9, 2012 A primary reason for the fiscal calamity in Illinois is sheepish acceptance of the state’s narrative about pensions. The official unfunded liability of the five state guarantied pension funds — the key number in the narrative — is $96 billion, a number repeated endlessly and mindlessly by most of the media and some “pension reform” groups. It’s nonsense.  [Update:  The first two of the sources below lump in local unfunded pension liabilities with the state’s.  However, the Illinois Policy

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Illinois’ body parts likely to be divided among pensions and bondholders — WirePoints Original

December 6, 2012 Legislators in Springfield and public worker unions have said regularly that any pension reform measure should include a guaranty mechanism assuring that the state’s contributions to pensions actually get made.  The pension reform proposal put forth today by a group of legislators headed by Senator Nekritz includes such a provision to intercept state cash and divert it to pensions.  Details are sketchy, but the mechanism will probably be in the form of legislation that automatically appropriates the money and establishes a payment priority over other state obligations (other than bonds, discussed below), all of which would be

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Just who is endangering Illinois’ municipal pensioners? WirePoints Original

  We pension pessimists are actually pension villains — the hardball folks happy to cut pensions, starve retired teachers, steal from cops, and so on. We villains overstate pension shortfalls so government will cut them off.  Right?   Consider instead if it might be the deniers — those who say the pension and fiscal crises are manageable, mostly through tax increases — who are really endangering pensions of rank and file municipal workers.   Illinois was broke long before the “Illinois is Broke” campaign began.  Insolvency was apparent to anybody half good with numbers who took some time to look

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Cost of fiscal storm coming to Illinois will dwarf damages from Sandy and Katrina

By: Mark Glennon* Illinois has yet to come to grips with the enormity of the catastrophe it faces faces from its fiscal mess. Comparison to devastating storms may help. Let’s start with the high end of current damage estimates for Sandy — about $50 Billion, as detailed recently in the Washington Post, using data from the National Hurricane Center.  Katrina was worse when it hit New Orleans and the Gulf Coast in 2005 — $108 Billion, according to that same data, which would be about $128 Billion in today’s dollars.  Combined, the two storms total $178 Billion. What does the

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