Senator Mike Noland danced around questions from retirees.
Teacher Retirement System Executive Director Richard Ingram.
TRS Annuitant Trustee Bob Lyons.
It was a long drive in the slushy morning rush hour traffic to an Illinois Retired Teacher Association Area meeting in Randall Oaks. That’s past Elgin.
But by pension-issue standards it was star-studded.
Local Democratic State Senator Michael Noland of the 22nd Senatorial District. That’s Elgin.
Richard Ingram, Executive Director of the Teacher Retirement System.
And Bob Lyons, Annuitant (that’s me) Trustee of TRS.
On the pension issue, Noland represents political cowardice.
He admits that he believes the current pension cutting proposals are unconstitutional. Yet he will vote for them anyway.
As for We Are One’s funding bill, SB2404, he says he hasn’t even looked at it.
Why is it cowardice? Because there is no political price to pay for doing the wrong thing. A Democrat in a Democratic district, he calculates that a bill that cuts constitutionally protected benefits will immediately be challenged in court. In fact, he’s counting on it. It is unlikely that the illegality of cutting benefits will be decided by the courts until past the next election. So everything will stay in place as it is.
Except the debt owed to the pension systems will continue to increase. And it will have to be paid.
Some day.
But not today. Not any time soon. And Noland knows that.
That’s why he’s a political coward when it comes to pensions.
On the other hand there is my friend, Bob Lyons.
The thing I like about Bob Lyons is he is blunt. I may not always agree with him, but he is a good representative for pension retirees.
Bob says (and I’m paraphrasing) that they may as well go ahead and pass this crap so we can get it settled in court. And he’s counting on the courts to rule in our favor.
He makes it clear that he is not naive about Illinois and the political nature of the elected Supreme Court.
But the sooner the court rules that the pension protection provision of the Illinois constitution means something, the sooner the legislature will come back and address the revenue issue.
I think what Lyons is basically is saying is that we should call their bluff.
Both Noland and Lyons are saying similar things: Go ahead and do something.
But Noland does it from the stand point of political cowardice.
Lyons says it from a belief that what is right will win out in the end.
I’m not so convinced.
No matter. It looks less and less likely that anything will get settled this session.
And the debt and liability just keeps getting bigger and bigger.
Bigger than all the other state pension liabilities combined.
It’s THAT big.
Fred Klonsky 
Yes, and by forcing it through the courts, it’s just MORE money that the state (meaning us, the taxpayers) will have to pay. Brilliant!