Pension reform should start with lawmakers
Jake Griffin's Dec. 2 column again highlights serious flaws in Illinois' notoriously broken pension system.
While the judicial and legislative pension funds represent less than 2 percent of the state's overall pension obligations, reform should begin there.
It's legislators and governors who ultimately approved pension benefit promises along with annual expenditures that included increases in education, transportation, social programs, and other budgetary needs and wants. Lawmakers' past shortsightedness and/or self-interest created a system that kept most public employees happy in the short-term but accumulated a mountain of promises to be paid later by taxpayers.
We all face major challenges as a result.
This is why pension reform must begin at the top if there's any hope of fixing our problems long-term. I have spoken with many public employees, and they are much more open to objectively discussing fair solutions to the pension dilemma once they discover there are dozens of reform-minded General Assembly members who voluntarily opted-out of the pension plan in the past five years.
Once that dialogue opens, it's much easier to discuss the numerous harmful consequences of the staggeringly deep pension debt. Current education expenditures, transportation, public safety needs, the social safety net, as well as other budgetary priorities, are being continually squeezed out.
Municipal governments are under similar pressures to maintain staffing levels of police, fire, and other staff with increasing annual pension payments.
Current local and state elected officials must lead by example and disallow the accumulation of any more pension credits for themselves or for future office holders.
There is understandably great public distrust for elected officials, but sacrificial and visionary action will open the door to the bold pension reforms so desperately needed to rescue our current pension systems from collapse and enable us to pay for government services we need today and in the future.
State Rep. Tom Morrison
Palatine