Stop blame game and fix pension system

I found a statement released in Springfield recently very disconcerting. It promised to find a solution to public pension reform this summer and was signed by Illinois House Speaker Michael J. Madigan, Illinois House Republican Leader Tom Cross and Tyrone Fahner, president of the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago.

Why is the President of the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago signing a letter on legislation in Springfield that concerns public employees? The Commercial Club of Illinois is a regular who’s who in big business in Illinois. Not public business but private business.

If the private sector can get the politicians to do to us what has been done to private sector employees, the big businesses will donate more money to the politicians in return for even bigger tax breaks to the big corporations so the elite bosses can make even bigger bonuses and pensions. Then when the politicians retire from public service, they have a great job waiting for them as a lobbyist or a corporate big shot. What a retirement plan.

Why else is the Commercial Club interested in public pensions? Because it is their civic duty? Please, these people have one duty — to themselves. If people were really interested in reforming the public pension system, they would sit down with not only the organized labor bosses but the actual employees that these reforms will affect.

The blame game has to stop. Mistakes were made, that’s it. Now it is time to fix them by coming up with a plan that will repay the underfunded billions of dollars back to the pensions. This can only be done by the politicians since it was done on the employer level and not the employee. Once a plan is put into place to repay the missing money and to ensure that all future payments by governmental entities are made in full and on time then we can talk about asking employees to make concessions. Then and only then can we maybe get the job done right.

Earl ‘Duke’ Filskov

Northlake