Dr. J is a retired IEA member who wrote to correct me when I said that past IEA President Ken Swanson was vague about taxing TRS benefits. Dr. J says that Swanson was never vague on this. He argued for it since the first year he was president. It wasn’t until last year’s RA that he got the IEA Legislative Platform changed to reflect his position.
I asked Dr. J to submit a blog post.
Here it is:
During the battle over changing pension benefits for active teachers last spring, many retired teachers joined the fight by sharing information over the internet, by writing and visiting their legislators and going to schools and talking to the active teachers about the threat of the change to their benefits and the financial implications of those changes. It was ironic that in the middle of this battle, IEA leadership pushed through a change in the IEA Legislative Platform that for the first time supported the concept of taxing retiree benefits. Ironic because while the retirees were fighting to keep active members from paying more or decreasing their benefits, the IEA Board was supporting having some retirees pay more as a trade-off.
Why is this a bad idea? Let me count the ways!
1) Once the foot is in the door for taxing benefits for certain retirees, it becomes so much easier to tax more retirees in the future;
2) Active teachers can negotiate to mitigate increased costs. Retirees can’t;
3) Retirees spend their pensions. That helps the economy. If retirees have 5% less to spend, that has a negative impact on the economy.
The organizational issue for IEA is that there are 2 retired teacher groups that IEA retirees can join; IEA-Retired with about 8,000 members and Illinois Retired Teachers Association (IRTA) with over 30,000 members. IRTA has taken a position against taxing retiree benefits. IEA must decide if it wants to represent retired teachers or not. Advocating taxation of benefits not currently taxed doesn’t seem like a good way of convincing retirees that you’re there for them!
-Dr. J
Fred Klonsky 
Our retirement benefits in PA are taxed (just FED), but in a state where there is no
Social Security, taxing them is really not fair.
All retirement pension benefits are taxed by the feds. We are talking about a state tax on teacher retirement benefits.
Thank you Dr. J and Fred for reminding everyone that the retirees fought for the active teacher benefits. Retirees were not supported by the IEA Board members and delegates at the IEA RA when they voted to change the legislative platform and support state taxes on retirees. I would also like to point out that the one representative on the IEA Board was against supporting taxing the retirees. The IEA, an organization that I love, did not bother to survey their 8,000 members. The IRTA, an organization with 32,000 members and less resources took the time to put a survey out through the Internet. It was disheartening because retirees helped table the last Madigan shenanigan which would have further diminished active teacher benefits. The IEA has never been an organization that supports retirees, and it probably shouldn’t be. Their primary objective is to work for active teachers. Perhaps they should let the retirees loose. If they are not willing to do that, then they should increase their commitment to them.