SHARING THE HISTORY OF ILLINOIS’ PENSION FIGHT WITH TEACHERS IN KENTUCKY. WE NEED A NATIONAL STRATEGY
I was asked by Randy Wieck of the Kentucky Teacher Retirement Legal Fund to write a brief history of Illinois’ public pension battle, published on their Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=2583633375065710&id=597407450354989
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National education blogger FRED KLONSKY, retired from Illinois public education, and long a hardened warrior in the public education, pension-plunder battle – responds to TRELF’s invitation to relate Illinois’ teachers’ pension destruction, VERY similar to Kentucky’s. There is a pattern here.
FRED KLONSKY RELATES:
For decades Illinois politicians have failed to make the annual required contributions to the state’s pension systems. Hamstrung by constitutional limits on revenue sources, they took the path of least resistance by paying for services and for their “pet projects” without raising taxes and by pension underfunding. In 1995 they invented a flawed re-funding schedule, a funding ramp that only made matters worse. They refused to re-amortize the pension systems’ unfunded liabilities. Favoring corporate interests rather than the interests of retirees or the state’s over-taxed working families, the unfunded liability has continued to grow. It now has climbed to $130,000,000,000, with no end in sight. Seventy cents on the dollar goes to interest on the debt.
For decades Illinois politicians have failed to make the annual required contributions to the state’s pension systems. Hamstrung by constitutional limits on revenue sources, they took the path of least resistance by paying for services and for their “pet projects” without raising taxes and by pension underfunding. In 1995 they invented a flawed re-funding schedule, a funding ramp that only made matters worse. They refused to re-amortize the pension systems’ unfunded liabilities. Favoring corporate interests rather than the interests of retirees or the state’s over-taxed working families, the unfunded liability has continued to grow. It now has climbed to $130,000,000,000, with no end in sight. Seventy cents on the dollar goes to interest on the debt.
In 2013, Democratic Governor Pat Quinn and the Democratic controlled General Assembly passed a bill cutting benefits to current and future state employees. Illinois passed a pension reform bill which reduced retiree cost of living increases, raised the retirement age, limited pensionable salaries, lowered the amounts current employees CONTINUE READING: Sharing the history of Illinois’ pension fight with teachers in Kentucky. We need a national strategy. – Fred Klonsky
