State Senator Iris Martinez.
Because Senator Dan Biss misplaced a decimal point, the line to retire at the University of Illinois is long.
Jim Broadway of the Illinois School News Service has lifted his copyright for the day, so I’ll post his comments on Senate Bill 1 in full.
Haste makes costly pension glitch: The hastily drafted (and seriously unconstitutional) pension “reform” bill that the legislature passed and Gov. Pat Quinn was only too eager to sign apparently needed a bit of proof-reading.
As the News Gazette in Champaign has reported, the bill contained a provision that reduced a figure that is 7.75% in current law all the way down to 0.75% – less than 10% of its current value. (Perhaps it was supposed to be 7.5%,) The glitch would affect roughly 60% of the 5,700 retirement-eligible employees of the University of Illinois alone.
Affect by how much? By hundreds of dollars per month – for life – if the affected employees decide to retire by July 1. And they are making that decision in droves. “Right now, people are queued up like homesteaders for the Oklahoma land rush,” U of I spokesman Thomas Hardy told the News Gazette.
Look for the legislature to fix that one fast in May.
Not since Biss famously screwed up his research as a mathematics graduate student at MIT and professor at the University of Chicago has the placement of a decimal point caused so much consternation.
While Biss has much to answer for, we shouldn’t forget that few members of the General Assembly read Senate Bill 1 before voting for it.
And those that did may not have caught the decimal point in the wrong place, but they knew that they were voting for an unconstitutional bill.
Like my State Senator Iris Martinez.
She admitted to her constituents that she knew the law was unconstitutional but voted for it anyway.
I had fifth graders who weren’t that great at math, but who knew the difference between right and wrong.
Does Iris Martinez know more than a fifth grader?
Seems not.
Fred Klonsky 
We all know there was no error. It was wrongly assumed that those affected by the bill would not read it as those who pushed it forward and voted for it did not! You don’t become a professor at one of the greatest public universities by being stupid.
Intentional or not, the “error” not being seen by anyone proves they did not even look at what they voted for, let alone even taking pencil to paper!
It’s kind of like the guy or gal who ignores the provisions of child support knowing that their ex-spouse cannot afford to fight them in court. A deal is cut where the person providing support gets some concession with the promise not to weasel out of the new deal. Of course they will, but their spouse still can’t afford the expense. So…someone has to be willing to pay big bucks in the hopes of winning enough to cover those costs. How much can we afford? We do not have the luxury of using tax payer money to fund our defense. Are they going to wear us down? Are they ever going to deal with the root causes of Illinois’ fiscal problems or will they continue to look for scapegoats who are less powerful than their monied allies?
“There is no true math here, just some make-believe gibberish pretending to be mathematics…”