Freeze public pensions

Much of the news of late has been the underfunding of the public sector pension plans (teachers, police, firefighters, public works, etc.) and the need to raise taxes.

The underfunding of these pensions has been going on for years and each year our property taxes are increased but all that is achieved is thousands of residents move to other states. As your recent article on the opinion page suggested, "State leaders can't let up on pressure for long term solutions."

Perhaps it is time to take a page from the private sector and put the responsibility for funding the pensions on the people who receive them.

One way to do that is to put an immediate freeze on all pensions. As of that date, funding of these pensions would end.

Whatever the projected value of the individual pension is upon retirement as of that date, the individual would still receive on retirement.

On the same date as the pension freeze, each individual would receive a "one time raise" to be used to open up an individual 401k.

New hires could be hired at higher wages and they would fund their own 401k.

Some companies have matching 401k programs. As new employees would not receive pension benefits when they are hired, the pensions themselves would be phased out over a period of years but less and less monies would be needed each year to fund the programs.

This may not be the solution to pension reform but it may spur our representatives to think "outside the box" and come up with some long term solutions.

Howard Huber

Mundelein