Latest News and Comment from Education

Monday, November 19, 2012

The Civic Committee overreaches on pensions. “Fahner made himself irrelevant.” « Fred Klonsky

The Civic Committee overreaches on pensions. “Fahner made himself irrelevant.” « Fred Klonsky:


The Civic Committee overreaches on pensions. “Fahner made himself irrelevant.”


Talk about a fall from grace.
It was only a year ago.
Ty Fahner, former Attorney General under Governor “Big Jim” Thompson and now head of the corporate Civic Committee, was considered important enough that he signed his name along with Speaker Mike Madigan and Senate President John Cullerton to the letter announcing the withdrawal of the pension gutting SB512 from consideration in the lass General Assembly session.
Now Rich Miller, who publishes the authoritative Springfield blog Capitolfax, reports that one top Democratic official describes him as “irrelevant.”
Fahner has never been considered all that going back to his days when he was leading the investigation of the Tylenol killer. That investigation resulted in nothing. The killer has never been found.
While serving as Attorney General under Thompson, the state’s multiple pension systems were allowed to go underfunded, even though now Fahner admits that a similar practice by an employer in the private sector would


New poll shows no public consensus yet on pension issue. Except for who is to blame.

It should be surprising that with nearly universal corporate and media focus on cutting pension benefits as the solution to Illinois’s broken promises to its public employees, there is no public consensus that punishing employees is the way to go.
But I’m not surprised.
On Friday, Crain’s published an Ipsos poll that displays the confusion that abounds.
On the one hand, the public supports the pension obligation cost shift.
On the other hand, they oppose raising taxes to pay for public pensions, which the