Regarding Representative Elaine Nekritz’s Recent Pension Reform Votes and Her Current HB 3411

“My goal is to preserve the integrity of the pension systems and to assure you continue to receive a benefit check well in to the future. Right now, there is no assurance of that. Last March, the TRS Board issued a statement calling in to question the future solvency of the pension system. It is that problem that needs to be addressed.”

Elaine


Representative Elaine Nekritz,

Perhaps there is no assurance of “the integrity of the pension systems” today because of your (and a few legislators’) unswerving obsession and distraction.

Your constant shifting of attention to irrelevant and irrational resolutions obfuscates your credibility and your ability to discover the best legal and ethical solutions available. Frequent mutations of past ill-advised pension reform proposals, including your recent HB 3411, are illegitimate means to obtain the wrong ends.

Your (and a few other legislators’) pension reform bills prove your prejudice and your sycophantic, political opportunism. Your (and a few other legislators’) unwillingness to examine fairly the best solutions in behalf of public employees, and every other citizen of Illinois, is a flagrant disregard of a policymaker’s oath of office.

Your relentless urgings in the media and emails are sustained with flawed rationalizations and tautologies rather than by reasonable, ethical intentions. Your appeals to fear and ignorance are disingenuous variations of the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago’s, the Civic Federation’s and Illinois Policy Institute’s faulty causal oversimplifications, subterfuges and scaremongering.

When you state: “Last March, the TRS Board issued a statement calling in to question the future solvency of the pension system. It is that problem that needs to be addressed,” it is apparent you choose to ignore the TRS Executive Director’s “essential components to solving [the state’s public pension] problem.”

The TRS Board issued an admonition one year ago intended for the Illinois General Assembly. It included a request for a judicious proposal that would utilize “actuarial principles and standards and not the funding scheme and pension bond limits currently [exploited] in Illinois law.” Moreover, the TRS Executive Director’s Report called for “guaranteed” funding by “statutory language”; for “changes to the Pension Code [that] must first correct the existing inequities and funding flaws created with the enactment of Tier II”; and, in the case of “any changes to the Pension Code, [that they] must be based on the simplest and most straightforward changes possible.”

In addition to these abovementioned requirements, there are significant and effective ways to “preserve the integrity of the pension systems.” Assailing public employees’ constitutionally-guaranteed, earned benefits and rights is not one of them. Pension-debt restructuring and revenue reform are also needed to solve the consequences of the Illinois General Assembly’s embezzlements, and not absurd blitzkriegs on the State and U.S. Constitutions.   

-Glen Brown

House Bill 3411