The Illinois State Employees Retirement System has now sunk to the bottom among all the states. It is now 50th in terms benefits paid, and retirees have a pension that is 40 percent less than their counterparts in all the surrounding Midwestern states. It is also far below other governmental retirement plans, such as the Illinois Municipal Fund.
For the first time in 25 years, legislation to improve state employee pensions finally was called out of committee this spring and made its way to the floor of the House and Senate. With great anticipa-tion, we sent cards, letters and made calls to our legislators and offered to contribute to the pension fund. We had high hopes that our state would at last pass legislation bringing Illinois to at least the middle of our 50 states. In the wee hours of May 23, all hope was dashed with defeat in the Illinois Senate.
Our leaders in the General Assembly claimed that the cost was too high and that there wasn’t money in the budget for pensions, all the while proposing and authorizing $77 million for pork projects in this, an election year.
It’s time to get the politics out of the state employees’ pensions. We deserve a fair pension, and the time has come to correct it!
