Monday, September 5, 2016

From Fred Klonsky's Interview with Bob Lyons, a Retiring TRS Trustee in 2017





“…Question: Looking forward, what do you see as the main short term and long term challenges?

 Fred, the short and long term challenges are the same.  Illinois is putting more than 20% of their general revenue into the five pension funds. It is not enough.  They will likely continue to try to come up with a way to cut payments until they are forced to face reality and finally raise the necessary revenue. We did not put them in this predicament, they did it themselves, and the constitution does not allow them to solve their problem by denying us what is owed.

“Question: People often talk about the need for pension reform. What reforms do you think are needed?

The reform that is needed is to amortize the total debt, to pay it off in thirty years of equal payments.  That would save the state in the long run billions of dollars, but it would mean even higher payment and be too painful in the short term.  It will never happen…”

For the other three questions, click here.


1 comment:

  1. We still refuse to talk about corporate transparency and the fact that 73% of public corporations in Illinois do not pay state taxes. We go nowhere in efforts to have a fair, progressive tax. State lawmakers argue that if corporations have to pay taxes, they'll leave the state, which we no is not true. They also say the amount of money owned by these corporations is insignificant. Bottom line, these corporations that get every tax break possible will not leave the state and considering the fact corporate America has moved jobs and factories overseas with little push back from the public, what's the big deal moving corporations to other states if they're not paying taxes any ways. They get these tax breaks, then proceed to fire good chunks of their staff with all benefits, as usual, going to the top. They must be held accountable and a progressive tax must be implemented if we're to make any headway in solving our debt problems. The public can no longer sustain ever-increasing real estate and other individual taxes.

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