Illinois governor vetoes Chicago pension fix, angers city's mayor

[Eugene]

Source: Reuters

Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner on Friday vetoed a legislative fix favored by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel for two of the city’s struggling pension funds and castigated it as a “kick-the-can approach.”

The financial footing and credit ratings for the nation’s third-largest city have slipped precipitously as its unfunded pension liabilities grew to $33.8 billion for Chicago’s four retirement systems in the most recent accounting.

The plan that passed the Illinois Senate unanimously in January and cleared the House overwhelmingly last December would have granted the state’s blessing to alter the city’s pension repayment schedule for its municipal and laborers' retirement systems.

The systems are projected to run out of money in the coming decade and were depending on legislative sign-off of the city’s enactment of a water and sewer usage tax and telephone surcharge designed to help get them 90 percent funded in 40 years.

[font size=1]-snip-[/font]


Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-illinois-pensions-idUSKBN16V2VU

---

POLITICS | Fri Mar 24, 2017 | 6:17pm EDT
By Dave McKinney | CHICAGO

[DK504]

1. CALPERs, the pension plan for public employees for California,

is always the strongest in the country. Seems they can actually have a competent manager to make sure the program doesn't fall off into the abyss.

The stock market hat risen 9,000 points in 8 years, none of these other states can't do the same? Public employees need to riot against the governors and the legislature.