Just saying, as an Illinois resident, it does not matter. I don’t think there is anything to be done. And when republicans get in office they share the blame. So I don’t vote.
Here in Illinois we have a huge debt. Not small debts like in other states. We are larger than New Jersey and California. And we can’t do anything to stop it. Our constitution requires that we pay public pensions that are far better than any pension in the world. They start at 55 with 75% of last three years salaries. Then they go up at 3% a year for life. And to top it off we have to pay it to anybody who worked even one day 20 years ago as a public employee in Illinois. As long as you get one working day under this plan you cannot change it. The Illinois supreme court struck down any changes.
So all these people run on making it better. Of course you can’t make it better. Plus the dems own both houses. And the governor does not have the power he has in other states. He cannot stop payment. So winning the governorship does not help solve the problems of Illinois. We just need to slowly go bankrupt and hope for the deal NY had in the 70’s.
People here don’t do math very well. They think this problem is going to get better some how. The press is really the cause of this. The Tribune company that owns the biggest newspaper TV and radio channels are to blame as well as anybody. They trade government headlines from leakers for support of government pension editorials.
The result is that lots of upper middle class Illinois residents move out of the state. Or live out of the state for 6 months and a day. My house is the same value it was 20 years ago. As soon as interest rates go up or the stock market goes down, Chicago, cook county and the state of Illinois are screwed.
Oh and by the way, pensions are not taxable income here in Illinois. So the public workers pay no state income tax here even with their six figure incomes. Another way to think of it is this. If you were to attribute to all Illinois pensioners wealth as including their pension value as a guaranteed tax free annuity, they would all be millionaires, most would be worth over $4 million dollars each.
PBRCat has described the problem perfectly. Until Ed Burke’s wife and the rest of this state Supreme Court that is devoted to screwing over the taxpayers to benefit their friends and relatives all die then this state will not get any better.