For years, whether through benevolence or ignorance, rank-and-file public workers have allowed the General Assembly to get away with not putting the state’s share into the pension funds.
In my 14 years of teaching, I have always contributed 9.4 percent of my paycheck toward my pension while the state has contributed its actuarially required share a total of three times (the last three years). Perhaps unions weren’t spending time “brokering sweet deal,” as the Tribune commonly asserts. Would any other taxpayer allow his or her employer to skip out on the 6.2 percent Social Security payment?
As a teacher, I have been barred from Social Security and my spouse would get a reduced benefit or none at all. Long ago, the state thought that a pension would be cheaper. And it was; the state could skip payments at its whim.
Now I am being asked to pay more than twice as much as most Illinoisans for their Social Security benefits while being “guaranteed” the state will no longer be a deadbeat.
From my perspective this has come to a head because people want something for nothing: safe roads, quality education, police officers, firefighters and even economic stimulus from their government. The Tribune wants its readers to believe pensions are exorbitant and that taxpayers are subsidizing public workers’ retirement.
In reality, public workers, at the mercy of politicians, have been subsidizing the state’s relatively low taxes for decades.
— Scott Meyers, Geneva
