“…[Indeed,] adherence
to constitutional requirements often requires significant sacrifice, but our survival as a society depends on it. The
United States Supreme Court made the point powerfully nearly a century and a
half ago when it struck down as unconstitutional President Lincoln’s use of
executive authority to suspend the writ of habeas corpus during the Civil War,
a period of emergency that, by any measure, eclipsed the one facing our
General Assembly today. In rejecting the government’s argument that wartime
concerns justified the curtailment of the constitutional protections, the
Supreme Court employed language which seems appropriate to this case:
“‘Time has proven the discernment of our ancestors; for
even these provisions, expressed in such plain English words, that it would
seem the ingenuity of man could not evade them, are now, after the lapse of
more than seventy years, sought to be avoided. Those great and good men foresaw
that troublous times would arise, when rulers and people would become restive
under restraint, and seek by sharp and decisive measures to accomplish ends
deemed just and proper; and that the principles of constitutional liberty would
be in peril, unless established by irrepealable law.
“The history of the world had taught them that what was
done in the past might be attempted in the future. The Constitution *** is a
law for rulers and people, equally in war and in peace, and covers with the
shield of its protection all classes of men, at all times, and under all
circumstances. No doctrine, involving more pernicious consequences, was ever
invented by the wit of man than that any of its provisions can be suspended
during any of the great exigencies of government. Such a doctrine leads directly
to anarchy or despotism ***. (Emphasis in original.) Ex parte Milligan, 71 U.S.
2, 120-21 (1866)…”
(In re PENSION REFORM LITIGATION (Doris Heaton et al., Appellees,
v. Pat Quinn, Governor, State of Illinois, et al., Appellants) Opinion
filed May 8, 2015, JUSTICE KARMEIER delivered the judgment of the court,
with opinion. Chief Justice Garman and Justices Freeman, Thomas, Kilbride,
Burke, and Theis concurred in the judgment and opinion).
“[Thus,] one thing we cannot do is ignore the Constitution of Illinois… No principle of
law permits us to suspend constitutional requirements for economic reasons, no
matter how compelling those reasons may seem” (from Justice Rarick who concluded that the General Assembly and the
Governor had violated the Illinois Constitution when they attempted to
eliminate the cost-of-living adjustments to judicial salaries provided by law
for the 2003 and 2004 fiscal years. The circuit court declared that they did).
It is shameful and reckless when a governor and state representatives and senators who have sworn an oath to uphold the State and U.S. Constitutions ignore and challenge the Pension Protection Clause. Breaking a contract threatens the integrity of all laws that govern and protect all citizens of Illinois.
Any unilateral modification of the Pension Protection Clause should be seen as “the result of a violation of fair dealing,” as an accommodation for “only” the Illinois General Assembly who have stolen money from the public pension systems for decades and are, thus, “avoiding a pre-existing duty rule” (Professor of Law, Emeritus, Claude D. Rohwer and Professor of Law, Emeritus, Anthony M. Skrocki, Contracts in a Nutshell).
The significance of any modification of the Pension Protection Clause is “the extent to which [public employees] will be deprived of the benefit [they] reasonably expected; the extent to which [public employees] can be adequately compensated for the part of that benefit of which [they] will be deprived; […and] the extent to which the behavior of the [Illinois General Assembly] failing to perform or to offer to perform [or] comports with standards of good faith and fair dealing” (Rohwer & Skrocki).
The significant issue of so-called “pension reform” has always been its attack on retirees’ and public employees’ rights to constitutionally-guaranteed compensation and the governor’s and legislators’ obligation to safeguard those promises. An unconscionable and relentless constitutional challenge of those rights and benefits generates a serious threat to the security and sense of dignity of both retirees and public employees and creates an unfair economic disadvantage for a particular group of people and their families. This can never be legally or morally justified.
The promise to honor commitments and to pay for the public employees’ pension is of sufficient importance to all citizens of Illinois. Any so-called “pension reform” bill is “an unequivocal manifestation of intention not to perform… legal duties…under a contract… When there is a duty of immediate performance of a promise, failure to perform in full is a breach” (Rohwer & Skrocki).
Public employees are promised certain retirement compensation. It is earned; it is not a gratuity. All citizens of the State of Illinois have legal justification for their rights. The foundation of their rights is the State and U.S. Constitutions that directly support any claims against them. State contracts are protected by the federal government. Understandably, the fifth and fourteenth amendments of the United States Constitution protect due process of law. The legal basis for protection of past-and-future public pension rights are established in both constitutions.
“It is worth noting the inequity inherent in cutting pensions promised to state and local public servants based on alleged underfunding that was substantially caused, in many cases, by funding ‘holidays’ that government employers awarded themselves… The employees of governments are also taxpayers to the same governments and consumers of the government services that they themselves provide. A government contractually-based pension program, designed to be a permanent feature of the employment relationship and intended to provide definitely determinable replacement income to the government’s long-term workforce in retirement, is both sustainable and desirable on both economic and policy grounds...
“[Any] attempt to denigrate the validity of decades of judicial precedents about the binding nature of legislation establishing pension commitments to government employees and to motivate state courts to overturn long-settled premises about these commitments would impose its own, unjustifiable costs. The states and their instrumentalities have promised pension benefits to their employees; those employees have relied on those long-standing promises; and as a result the citizens of the states have benefited from the services provided by those employees.
“There is no sound public policy reason to conclude that promises – based on the reasonable expectations of the contracting parties – should not be fully protected by the laws prohibiting or limiting the impairment of contracts” (Greenfield, Douglas L., Lahne, Susan G. (2012). How Much Can States Change Existing Retirement Policy? In Defense of State Judicial Decisions Protecting Public Employees’ Pensions. National Council of State Legislatures Legislative Summit, 1-16. From http://www.ncsl.org/documents/fiscal/DGreenfield_Presentation.pdf.
It is a matter of moral and legal concern for every citizen of Illinois to pay attention to any proposed violations of rights and benefits of the state’s public employees and retirees, for they will be forthcoming after the elections. It should be of vital concern for all citizens that the government of Illinois would ever want to prove its contracts are worthless, especially when the “most basic purposes of the impairment [of the Pension Protection] Clause [Article XIII, Section 5] as well as notions of fairness that transcend the clause itself, point to a simple constitutional principle: government must keep its word” (Laurence H. Tribe, American Constitutional Law).
What the governor and the Illinois General Assembly need to be reminded of again and again is that the Illinois Supreme Court “has consistently invalidated amendments to the Pension Code where the result is to diminish benefits” (McNamee v. State, 173 Ill. 2d 433, 445 (1996)). “Any alteration of the pension system amounts to a modification of an existing contract between the State (or one of its agencies) and all members of the pension system, whether employees or retirees. A member is contractually protected against a reduction in benefits” (Kuhlmann v. Board of Trustees of the Police Pension Fund of Maywood, 106 Ill. App. 3d 603, 608 (1st Dist. 1982)).
It is shameful and reckless when a governor and state representatives and senators who have sworn an oath to uphold the State and U.S. Constitutions ignore and challenge the Pension Protection Clause. Breaking a contract threatens the integrity of all laws that govern and protect all citizens of Illinois.
Any unilateral modification of the Pension Protection Clause should be seen as “the result of a violation of fair dealing,” as an accommodation for “only” the Illinois General Assembly who have stolen money from the public pension systems for decades and are, thus, “avoiding a pre-existing duty rule” (Professor of Law, Emeritus, Claude D. Rohwer and Professor of Law, Emeritus, Anthony M. Skrocki, Contracts in a Nutshell).
The significance of any modification of the Pension Protection Clause is “the extent to which [public employees] will be deprived of the benefit [they] reasonably expected; the extent to which [public employees] can be adequately compensated for the part of that benefit of which [they] will be deprived; […and] the extent to which the behavior of the [Illinois General Assembly] failing to perform or to offer to perform [or] comports with standards of good faith and fair dealing” (Rohwer & Skrocki).
The significant issue of so-called “pension reform” has always been its attack on retirees’ and public employees’ rights to constitutionally-guaranteed compensation and the governor’s and legislators’ obligation to safeguard those promises. An unconscionable and relentless constitutional challenge of those rights and benefits generates a serious threat to the security and sense of dignity of both retirees and public employees and creates an unfair economic disadvantage for a particular group of people and their families. This can never be legally or morally justified.
The promise to honor commitments and to pay for the public employees’ pension is of sufficient importance to all citizens of Illinois. Any so-called “pension reform” bill is “an unequivocal manifestation of intention not to perform… legal duties…under a contract… When there is a duty of immediate performance of a promise, failure to perform in full is a breach” (Rohwer & Skrocki).
Public employees are promised certain retirement compensation. It is earned; it is not a gratuity. All citizens of the State of Illinois have legal justification for their rights. The foundation of their rights is the State and U.S. Constitutions that directly support any claims against them. State contracts are protected by the federal government. Understandably, the fifth and fourteenth amendments of the United States Constitution protect due process of law. The legal basis for protection of past-and-future public pension rights are established in both constitutions.
“It is worth noting the inequity inherent in cutting pensions promised to state and local public servants based on alleged underfunding that was substantially caused, in many cases, by funding ‘holidays’ that government employers awarded themselves… The employees of governments are also taxpayers to the same governments and consumers of the government services that they themselves provide. A government contractually-based pension program, designed to be a permanent feature of the employment relationship and intended to provide definitely determinable replacement income to the government’s long-term workforce in retirement, is both sustainable and desirable on both economic and policy grounds...
“[Any] attempt to denigrate the validity of decades of judicial precedents about the binding nature of legislation establishing pension commitments to government employees and to motivate state courts to overturn long-settled premises about these commitments would impose its own, unjustifiable costs. The states and their instrumentalities have promised pension benefits to their employees; those employees have relied on those long-standing promises; and as a result the citizens of the states have benefited from the services provided by those employees.
“There is no sound public policy reason to conclude that promises – based on the reasonable expectations of the contracting parties – should not be fully protected by the laws prohibiting or limiting the impairment of contracts” (Greenfield, Douglas L., Lahne, Susan G. (2012). How Much Can States Change Existing Retirement Policy? In Defense of State Judicial Decisions Protecting Public Employees’ Pensions. National Council of State Legislatures Legislative Summit, 1-16. From http://www.ncsl.org/documents/fiscal/DGreenfield_Presentation.pdf.
It is a matter of moral and legal concern for every citizen of Illinois to pay attention to any proposed violations of rights and benefits of the state’s public employees and retirees, for they will be forthcoming after the elections. It should be of vital concern for all citizens that the government of Illinois would ever want to prove its contracts are worthless, especially when the “most basic purposes of the impairment [of the Pension Protection] Clause [Article XIII, Section 5] as well as notions of fairness that transcend the clause itself, point to a simple constitutional principle: government must keep its word” (Laurence H. Tribe, American Constitutional Law).
What the governor and the Illinois General Assembly need to be reminded of again and again is that the Illinois Supreme Court “has consistently invalidated amendments to the Pension Code where the result is to diminish benefits” (McNamee v. State, 173 Ill. 2d 433, 445 (1996)). “Any alteration of the pension system amounts to a modification of an existing contract between the State (or one of its agencies) and all members of the pension system, whether employees or retirees. A member is contractually protected against a reduction in benefits” (Kuhlmann v. Board of Trustees of the Police Pension Fund of Maywood, 106 Ill. App. 3d 603, 608 (1st Dist. 1982)).
“…The concerns of the delegates who drafted
Article XIII, Section 5, and the citizens who ratified it
have proven to be well founded. Even with the protections of that provision,
the General Assembly has repeatedly attempted to find ways to circumvent its
clear and unambiguous prohibition against the diminishment or impairment of the
benefits of membership in public retirement systems. Public Act 98-599 [was]
merely the latest assault in this ongoing political battle against public
pension rights... [T]hrough that legislation [members of] the General
Assembly [were] attempting to do once again exactly what the people of Illinois,
through Article XIII, Section 5, said it has no authority to do and must not
do…” (In re PENSION REFORM LITIGATION (Doris Heaton et al.,
Appellees, v. Pat Quinn, Governor, State of Illinois, et al.,
Appellants) Opinion filed May 8, 2015, JUSTICE KARMEIER delivered the
judgment of the court, with opinion. Chief Justice Garman and Justices Freeman,
Thomas, Kilbride, Burke, and Theis concurred in the judgment and opinion).
-Glen
Brown
We did. It's called the "Pension Protection Clause."
“No State shall…pass any…ex post facto law or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts…” (The Constitution of the United States, Article 1—Limitations on Powers of States, Section 10).
ReplyDelete“No ex post facto law, or law impairing the obligation of contracts…shall be passed” (The Constitution of the State of Illinois, Article I—Bill of Rights, Section 16).
“Each prospective holder of a State office or other State position created by this Constitution, before taking office, shall take and subscribe to the following oath or affirmation: ‘I do solemnly swear (affirm) that I will support the Constitution of the United States, and the Constitution of the State of Illinois, and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of…to the best of my ability’” (The Constitution of the State of Illinois, Article XIII—Oath or Affirmation of Office, Section 3).
“Membership in any pension or retirement system of the State, any unit of local government or school district, or any agency or instrumentality thereof, shall be an enforceable contractual relationship, the benefits of which shall not be diminished or impaired” (The Constitution of the State of Illinois, Article XIII—Pension and Retirement Rights, Section 5).
“We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution” –Abraham Lincoln
Nearly two hundred years ago, Chief Justice Marshall stated unequivocally: “The power of changing the relative situation of debtor and creditor, of interfering with contracts, a power which comes home to every man, touches the interest of all, and controls the conduct of every individual in those things which he supposes to be proper for his own exclusive management, had been used to such an excess by the state legislatures, as to break in upon the ordinary intercourse of society, and destroy all confidence between man and man.
ReplyDelete“This mischief had become so great, so alarming, as not only to impair commercial intercourse and threaten the existence of credit, but to sap the morals of the people and destroy the sanctity of private faith. To guard against the continuance of the evil was an object of deep interest with all the truly wise, as well as the virtuous, of this great community, and was one of the important benefits expected from a reform of the government.”
It is imperative that policymakers and stakeholders examine their own ethical and moral principles and their conduct in view of the fact that they will have to justify their decisions to the citizens of Illinois. Certainly, moral responsibility and legal obligation to fund the public pension systems should not be ignored.
ReplyDeleteIt is a moral concern and legal duty to reform the state's sources of revenue and to address the incurred pension debt through restructuring so the state can provide services for its citizens and fund the public pension systems instead of incriminating public employees, and thereby forcing them to defend the State and United States Constitutions. It is the State of Illinois that has the "primary responsibility for financing the system of public education" (Article X, Section 1 of the Illinois Constitution), and the public employees’ pensions are an integral part of “the system of public education” in Illinois.
There is no justice in granting financial benefits for the wealthy among us and attempting to place the burden of financing public pensions upon schools and taxpayers by Illinois policymakers; there is no justice in granting tax breaks for wealthy corporations and, at the same time, legislating cuts to public employees’ and retirees' constitutionally-promised compensation. It is ethically wrong to perpetuate unfair distributions of debts in Illinois, especially when Illinois legislators give “undeserved weight to highly-organized wealthy interest groups, [those groups] tending to ‘drain politics of its moral and intellectual content’” (Tribe, Laurence H. American Constitutional Law.).
2014 KANERVA v. WEEMS (July 3):
ReplyDeleteThe Pension Protection Clause makes it “clear that if something qualifies as a benefit of the enforceable contractual relationship resulting from membership in one of the State’s pension or retirement systems, it cannot be diminished or impaired… [The State of Illinois or anyone else] may not rewrite the Pension Protection Clause to include restrictions and limitations that the drafters did not express and the citizens of Illinois did not approve... [P]ension benefits are insulated from diminishment or impairment by the General Assembly…” (Kanerva, 2014 IL 115811, 38, 41, 48).
2015 MARY J. JONES et al., Appellees, v. MUNICIPAL EMPLOYEES’ ANNUITY AND BENEFIT FUND OF CHICAGO et al., Appellants (March 24):
“…In this case, it is undisputed that the unions were not acting as authorized agents within a collective bargaining process. Thus, we need not resolve whether the vote taken by union representatives as expressed in the Brandon affidavit bound members of the Funds in a collective bargaining process. Rather, we agree with the trial court that ‘these negotiations were no different than legislative advocacy on behalf of any interest group supporting collective interests to a lawmaking body.’ The individual members of the Funds have done nothing that could be said to have unequivocally assented to the new terms or to have ‘bargained away’ their constitutional rights. Accordingly, nothing in the legislative process that led to the enactment of the Act constituted a waiver of the Funds members’ constitutional rights under the pension protection clause… The judgment of the circuit court declaring Public Act 98-641 to be unconstitutional and permanently enjoining its enforcement is affirmed.”
“[Furthermore, consider that] in the context of the collective bargaining process for public employees, employees designate a particular union as their exclusive agent for collective bargaining negotiations. See 5 ILCS 315/6 (West 2014). The cases that defendants rely upon to support a bargained-for exchange argument involved agreements reached through the collective bargaining process. See Ballentine v. Koch, 674 N.E.2d 292, 296 (N.Y. Ct. App. 1996) (“[B]ecause plaintiffs designated the PBA as their agent for the collective bargaining negotiations at issue here and were thus bound by its actions taken on their behalf during the negotiation process [citation], the PBA’s waiver of the constitutional protections of [New York’s pension protection clause] is valid as to plaintiffs ***.”); Schacht v. City of New York, 346 N.E.2d 518, 519 (N.Y. Ct. App. 1976) (“Plaintiff, having designated the union to be her agent for collective bargaining purposes, is bound by agreements made by that union on her behalf”)…” (2015 MARY J. JONES et al., Appellees, v. MUNICIPAL EMPLOYEES’ ANNUITY AND BENEFIT FUND OF CHICAGO et al., Appellants): Thus, unions need ratification by its membership, retirees, and non-members for any consideration.
2015 DORIS HEATON, et al. v. PAT QUINN, in his capacity as Governor of the State of Illinois, et al. (May 8):
“…The concerns of the delegates who drafted article XIII, section 5, and the citizens who ratified it have proven to be well founded. Even with the protections of that provision, the General Assembly has repeatedly attempted to find ways to circumvent its clear and unambiguous prohibition against the diminishment or impairment of the benefits of membership in public retirement systems. Public Act 98-599 is merely the latest assault in this ongoing political battle against public pension rights. As we noted earlier, through that legislation the General Assembly is attempting to do once again exactly what the people of Illinois, through article XIII, section 5, said it has no authority to do and must not do… The judgment of the circuit court declaring Public Act 98-599 to be unconstitutional and permanently enjoining its enforcement is affirmed.”