Illinois financial troubles started far earlier than 1998.....

[beachbum bob]

Illinois financial troubles started far earlier than 1998.....

Four crucial decisions were made during Gov. Jim Thompson’s tenure (1977-1991) that we’re still feeling today: 1) 3 percent compounded pension COLA; 2) Exemption of retirement income from the state income tax; 3) Exemption of food and medicine from the state sales tax; 4) Reduced overall state support for K-12.


Gov. Jim Edgar (tenure 1991-1999) passed a bill to make the pension payments, but he backloaded the schedule until after he was safely out of office. Edgar famously left George Ryan with a billion-dollar surplus instead of putting that into the pension funds. Ryan spent that billion dollars almost before he finished taking the oath of office.

BTW, Thompson and Edgar were Republican governors. The decisions made 40 years ago have had devastating impact on Illinois. Combined with cowardly politicians democrats and republicans alike who are afraid to make the hard decisions and we have what we have. Can the system be fixed? Sure. Will it be pain-free? Not a chance.

First step is to have people in Springfield that care more for their state than for politics.The nature of government in Illinois must change.

We must begin by ridding our state of 10's of thousands of taxing districts by elimination of "townships" for starters, consolidating services to a county level for schools and law enforcement, place pension obligation of educator/teachers retirement on the specific schools districts to fund, not all Illinois taxpayers, term limit all state elected offices, have a progressive state income tax system, have legislation that requires all businesses to payback (previous 20 years) public investments, tax abatements, etc if they choose to leave Illinois or close down.....

[murielm99]

1. Where are you getting all this about

townships, pensions and term limits? That is bogus. Are you going to change the state constitution? When and how?

[beachbum bob]

2. Illinois has the most taxing districts of all the states,

Multi-layered and totally costly to the Illinois tax payers....the pensions for teachers/educators need to funded by the school districts that hire them, sign the contracts.....and not passed thru to all Illinois taxpayers. The Chicago public school retirement is paid by the Chicago taxpayers and their taxpayers also pay for downstate teachers. Elected officials need term limits, will it a constitutional convention to do so, yes. As for a progressive state income tax, it's badly needed.

If you want financial stability and fairness in Illinois, this is a way.

[murielm99]

3. I will never go along with term limits.

We would lose good, experienced leaders that way. Term limits are a bad idea.

As for the rest of your comments, I don't go along with them, either. Teacher pensions need to be funded centrally. Our income tax was reduced. It needs to go back to the higher rate, for starters. If it needs to be changed later, okay.

[raising2moredems]

4. IL pension problems started back in the 1940s..

[link:http://www.chicagotribune.com/ct-illinois-pension-crisis-info-20150512-story.html|

The first step to dealing with the pension problem is to stop double dipping. "Retire" from one state job, start collecting pension. Be "appointed" to another state job, new pension meter starts.

Or take Denny Hastert - teacher with pension. State legislator with pension. Federal representative with pension. Absolutely NO offset, talk about welfare. I have a copy of my grandfather's pension papers. Company offset his pension with what he would collect from social security, his company "pension" was a joke. And of course private sector retirement benefits can be cut or eliminated at any time. No such problem exists for public sector retirement benefits.

And for full disclosure, I also think Obama's state pension should be offset by his federal/presidential pensions.