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Government
Cities across Illinois face pension shortfalls; some already cutting current services
2019-09-22
[Liberty Unyielding] At least one has had to lay off 40 public safety workers to avoid insolvency. In other words, the city’s residents lose those current services because the revenues have to be used to service the pensions. The problem is disastrously widespread.

On Tuesday, the East St. Louis’ firefighter pension fund demanded that Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza intercept more than $2.2 million of East St. Louis city revenues so they could be diverted to the pension fund.

The fund trustees said the city shorted firefighter pensions by $880,000 in 2017 and another $1.3 million in 2018. Under a 2011 pension law, the state comptroller gained the powers to intercept city revenues on behalf of police and fire pension funds shorted by their municipalities. ...

The intercept law was first utilized in 2018, when Harvey, Illinois, revenues were garnished to pay the city’s police and firefighter pension funds.

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That intercept of nearly $3.3 million led to the layoff of 40 public safety workers so the city could avoid insolvency. The city found it couldn’t simultaneously pay for both current workers and pensioners. ...

The most recent numbers show that 301 of Illinois’ 651 public safety pension funds, or 46 percent, were shorted their full payments in 2017, according to the actuarial standards published by the Illinois Department of Insurance.
Posted by:Besoeker

#8  They’ll just end up taxing the people who left - and the rest of the country.
Posted by: Glenmore    2019-09-22 18:24  

#7  My 'who's funding' conversation with public employees is usually dumbed down to to something they can understand....usually.

Imagine a table. On that table the businesses and folks who work in the private sector place a portion of their earnings for government use. This portion is called 'taxes'.

From that table, the government takes bits and pieces to fund their programs for the 'betterment of the community'. Some of those bits and pieces are wages and pensions for the folks who work in the government, who don't really 'pay' taxes.

This statement usually gets the public workers' hackles up and they counter with "We pay Taxes!", to which the response from me is "No, you 'leave' taxes. The money was never yours to begin with."

Hilarity ensues.
Posted by: Mullah Richard   2019-09-22 11:00  

#6  Need border patrol down the Mississippi River...
Posted by: Charles   2019-09-22 10:26  

#5  It was assumed by most that the crisis would be kicked far enough down the road that they would be dead by then; or, the feds would bail them out.
Posted by: AlanC   2019-09-22 07:48  

#4  Politicians and labor unions - two wolves negotiating how to cut up the sheep.

Unions funded politicians to make unsustainable contracts. Seems like a pretty clear case of conflict of interest to nullify any such agreement. I don't recall that any form of legitimate government can sell its citizens into involuntary servitude.
Posted by: Procopius2k   2019-09-22 07:02  

#3  Ref #2: Politicians made promises for votes that anyone that was half way decent at math knew they couldn't keep.

When the majority of your constituency are lottery ticket buyers, math is obviously not a factor.
Posted by: Besoeker   2019-09-22 04:56  

#2  Politicians made promises for votes that anyone that was half way decent at math knew they couldn't keep. This falls on the voters who are now losing "services" there never was, is or will be money to provide regardless of what lying politicians promised.
Posted by: Phaick Uneretle6310   2019-09-22 03:25  

#1  Money doesn't grow on trees? You need deplorabales to produce it? There is a limit on how many parasites: welfare recipients, social workers, most teachers, all MBAs the economy can carry?
Posted by: g(r)omgoru   2019-09-22 02:46  

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