Since Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan prefers to see the cost of the pension benefits as the cause of our state’s pension problem, it came as no surprise this past spring that he proposed a solution that called for reducing the cost of the COLA for active teachers and other current public employees. What did come as a surprise is that the proposed legislation also included the possibility of retirees’ COLA benefits being diminished. Actually for me the word “surprise” was an understatement. I was shocked! Legislators of all stripes – Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals – had repeatedly said that their efforts to reduce the size of the unfunded pension liability for TRS and the other systems would never ever even consider touching the benefits of those already retired. They told us we had not only already earned what benefits we were receiving, but that those benefits were guaranteed to us by the Illinois State Constitution. Having
