The Cost Shift Is Stupid
Gery Chico is insane. That's the good news. The bad news is that he's got a lot of company. This cost-shifting of the pension system is just a dumb idea. Phil Kadner has it right here.
Quinn and Chico contend that shifting the pension funding will somehow help those children, but I don’t see any proof of that.
There’s no guarantee that if Illinois shifts its cost for teacher pensions to school districts that the state will increase public school funding by a like amount. Nobody can guarantee that the Legislature won’t cut general state aid for education again, even if it frees up the millions of dollars in pension payments.
I'm not sure what these guys are thinking, marrying themselves to the cost shift. It seems to me that if they're trying