“Only elected official to eliminate, not cut or reform, a [healthcare] benefit [for retirees]”—Rahm Emanuel

"A good friend of [Fred Klonsky’s] worked for the City of Chicago for 30 years and retired a few years ago. He now must pay over $30,000 a year for health insurance for his family because the Mayor cut off his pension health care benefit.

"In one of the private emails that Rahm Emanuel was forced to release as a result of a Better Government Association law suit, the Mayor gloats about the pain he is visiting on thousands of Chicago public employees.

"On Dec. 31, Mayor Rahm Emanuel will complete a 3-year phase out of the city’s retiree health care program, including a 55 percent subsidy; 10,000 city employees who started working for the city before April 1, 1986 and do not qualify for Medicare, will have to search for coverage that will be difficult to find or too expensive.

"Like [Klonsky’s] friend, the retired city workers will have to choose between crazy expensive premiums that are double their retirement checks or go without health insurance coverage at a time of declining health and old age.

"'We have people who are 75 years old who worked for the city for 30 years and more and none of them qualified for Medicare coverage. They’re being dumped into an abyss,' said Clint Krislov, lawyer for the retirees.

"But the Mayor gloats. Nobody has screwed public employees like he has. He is king of the world."

From Fred Klonsky’s blog

CITY HALL — "City officials will no longer be allowed to use private email accounts to conduct official business, Mayor Rahm Emanuel's office announced Wednesday.

"The new policy was announced as part of a settlement with the Better Government Association, a watchdog group that filed Freedom of Information Act requests and sued the city for access to the emails. The city had also been sued over Emanuel's emails by the Tribune. As part of the settlement, Emanuel released nearly 3,000 pages of emails from his personal account Wednesday afternoon."