Governor Quinn wants teachers to pay twice.
The Cullerton-Quinn plan to shift the state’s constitutionally mandated pension obligation to local school districts is not going over too well.
The plan would have the effect of having teachers pay their current contribution of 9.4% and then give up salary and benefits so that their local school boards could afford to pay into the Teacher Retirement System.
“It’s either going to affect school districts who don’t have the money to absorb those costs,” said Elgin Area Unit 46 spokesman Tony Sanders, “or it’s going to affect the teachers who will have to pick up an increase on their paychecks for their pensions.”
A spokesman from College of DuPage said if the plan were to become law, it would create an annual cost of about $17 million, which could require an increase in local property taxes to cover the additional costs.
Shifting pension costs to local government would be a different way for lawmakers to reduce pension costs to the state from the more common way they’ve been talking about doing it — reducing future pension benefits for current teachers.
The idea is still in its infancy, and as a result, some districts contacted about it, including Maine Township School District 207 and Indian Prairie School District 204, didn’t want to comment yet.
Last fiscal year, the state paid $2.1 billion into the Teacher Retirement System and about $352 million into the State Universities Retirement System.
School districts now kick in about 1 percent of a teacher’s salary toward retirement, and a teacher contributes 9.4 percent. But districts, through negotiation, sometimes pick up some or all of a teacher’s share, too.
Cullerton has suggested that if pension costs were sent to local schools, suburban districts would have to pay more than downstate ones. Suburban teachers are paid more by comparison, and bigger salaries mean bigger pensions and pension costs.
There is no legislation addressing the idea, and officials in Quinn’s office have said it is merely being evaluated as an option.
Fred Klonsky 
Arrah! For sure, and its worse than taking candy from babies. and just as easy for them. Its all about widespread plunder, rapine, and booty! Shiver me timbers, Fred. I say, “If you steal our pensions: we’ll gouge your eyes out!” Howzat sound? Despise the poor their pittance, and go to hell…that kind of thing. Its death to the crooks, oath-breakers, and public privateers! I say let’s give ’em the jib-jabber, a yard-arm and the use of a stout rope, even though hanging’s too goddamn good for most of them, really, and hanging themselves would require a sense of shame with which they do not usually come equipped now a days.