Fifty-two years ago, Illinois adopted a new state constitution that favored a special interest through language that would later decimate the state’s finances and drive the tax burden to among the nation’s highest: the pension protection clause.
That one provision locked Illinois and its taxpayers into funding unsustainable retirement promises for government workers. Even though Illinoisans continue to make pension payments that eat into funding for other critical services, the state’s pension funds have still built up debt that Moody’s Investors Service estimates to be more than $300 billion and other forecasts predict will grow to $143 billion this year.
Now a proposal for another constitutional clause, Amendment 1, threatens to worsen Illinois’ precarious financial situation and place a greater financial burden on taxpayers. Amendment 1 would give that same special interest, government unions, the power to make broad new demands that would drive up the cost of government and force taxpayers to pay the bill. Voters will see this issue at the top of the ballot Nov. 8.
History offers a warning about the dangers of extending special treatment through the Illinois Constitution. When the pension protection clause was first submitted for consideration to the 1970 Constitutional Convention, delegate John Parkhurst of Peoria understood the implications.
“This is a terribly, terribly mischievous amendment,” he said. “It is the desire of a special interest group; it should be legislative; there is no history of impairment; there is no history of welching on any contracts; and to put it in the constitution is simply pandering to a group that haven’t been able to have their way in the General Assembly.”
Today, Illinoisans are feeling the pain of not heeding Parkhurst. The provision’s legacy has been one of costly and unsustainable pension promises. In 1990, 20 years after the new state constitution was adopted, the legislature passed a minimum 3% compounding cost-of-living adjustment completely untethered from inflation. Three years later, the Edgar Ramp, designed to push the pain of pension payments onto future generations, took effect.
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Thank you for reporting on and dissecting so many important issues, local and statewide. Amendment 1, again,takes aim at the taxpayer, and gives more ammo to unions.
Again, thank you Observer,