(Chicago, IL) — April 8, 2010. Who would have ever thought that Democrats Governor Pat Quinn, House Speaker Michael Madigan (D-Chicago) and Senate President John Cullerton (D-Chicago) might have squeezed from the ultra-conservative Wall Street Journal the headline–”In Praise of Illinois.”
But, yep.
Last month, Madigan and Cullerton engineered legislative approval of an astounding pension-reform bill that focuses on future employees which will save Illinois approximately $119 billion over the next thirty years.
The Wall Street Journal offered only faint praise, but praise nonetheless:
The Pew Center on the States recently honored Illinois as the state with the biggest public pension mess. So it’s a minor miracle that the state’s Democratic legislature passed, and Democratic Governor Pat Quinn is expected to sign, a pension reform that at least takes baby steps in trimming the state’s retirement largesse for its 700,000 government workers. Perhaps bankruptcy concentrates the mind.
Those are kinder words than the Chicago Tribune has managed on Illinois’ pension reform bill.
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