For the Good of Illinois - Illinois Reality Check

I receive a number of emails from political parties and elected officials from being on email lists. I dont have to necessarily support or agree with Costello, Obama, the Republican Party , or our mayor to want to receive emails from them when the send out update emails. Being informed is always a good idea. They are my elected officials even if I didnt elect them and I should want to know what they are up to, or at least what they say they are up to.

I received an email invite from the Monroe County Republican Party from Myron Neff earlier this week for their annual Lincoln Day Dinner. I scanned through the speaker list to sees whose coming to our city. The Democratic Party recently had the Governor come to town. The keynote speaker for the Lincoln Day Dinner is Adam Andrzejewski, who is the founder and CEO of forthegoodofillinois.org. I'd never heard of the site so I browsed on over to it. I started reading some info on their site regarding the state budget. This pointed me over to another site called http://illinoisrealitycheck.com/ promoting a Republican backed plan to fix the state's budget. This I had to read. Their plan tallies a quick savings of $6.71 billion. Some items are well explained and appear to be thought out, while others were quickly mentioned with little explanation.

I have no issue with a well thought out plan to save the state over $6 billion. But when a savings titled "Pension Reform" recieves the following explanation,

Meaningful reforms reduce state liability going forward and, therefore, reduce the required payments on that unfunded liability. Illinois must adopt significant pension changes, such as those proposed by the Civic Committee. Targeted Savings: $1.35 billion

I have to ask someone for the details. The total saving of their plan is $6.71 billion and the line item that saves $1.35 billions has a two sentence explanation? The document is twenty-two pages long and they documented 20% of their savings plan with two sentences split over the end and start of two pages which made it easy to glance over.

Later on in their plan there is a cherry of an item anyone living in Illinois should pay attention to.

Local Government Revenue Sharing: Review the over $6 billion that local governments receive in revenue sharing from the State of Illinois. They receive around 6% of income tax receipts, over half of all gas tax receipts, 20% of sales tax receipts on items other than food and drugs, 100% of sales tax receipts on food and drug purchases, and 100% of revenues from the Personal Property Replacement Tax. A $300 million reduction represents around 5% of those revenues. This approach has been suggested by many groups including the Governor’s Taxpayer Action Board, the Illinois Policy Institute and the Civic Committee. Targeted Savings: $300 million

The state cannot pay what they owe local communities now. Local communities are trying to find new sources of revenue and someone thinks its a good idea to take more money from what local government was operating on? Someone thinks that will be a positive for the taxpayers?, how?

I fired off an email.

After reading your plan I have one concern. You offer good explanations regarding many of the proposed cuts and ideas for saving money for the taxpayer.

I expected to see a line item regarding pensions and I found it split between pages 16-17. A proposed savings of $1.35 billion should have a little more explanation than what was given. Who will this affect and how will it affect them? How will it be implemented? Smaller dollar amounts were given much better explanations than what was provided for a cut the covers 20% of the proposed savings.

I would caution the idea proposed in the section Local Government Revenue Sharing. The state of Illinois has been overdue on paying these funds to local communities for a few years. Communities have been struggling with paying their bills without these funds. You have named nearly every revenue source smaller communities in the state have and you feel a 5% reduction is fair. Your simply passing the responsibility of raising revenue on to local government and thsi will come at the cost of the taxpayer in the end. Its money raised in those communities for those communities, why should the state simply get more of that pie?

I would welcome a response of any kind. Thanks
-Levi Ottwell

After re-reading that I suppose I had more than one concern. I didn't really expect a reply, usually nothing is sent back when you fill out the web form like they provided to contact them. I received a reply back in a little over 24 hours.

Dear Mr. Ottwell,

Thank you for your thoughtful comments on the Senate Republican Caucus' "Reality Check" plan.

In retrospect, I would agree with you that we should have offered more explanation on the proposed reforms to state pension systems. This issue has been debated and discussed to such a degree here in Springfield that I think we fell victim to assuming that everyone would be as familiar with the proposals as we are.

The truth is, the debate over pension reform could easily have filled the entire document and then some. It is a very challenging issue, as any discussion of changing retirement benefits always is. The challenge facing Illinois is that the cost of anticipated pension benefits for teachers and other public employees is consuming an ever-growing percentage of the state budget. It will become increasingly difficult to meet our basic obligations to provide public safety, fund education, provide health care and also to meet the obligations of our pension systems.

Yet, those obligations represent a constitutionally protected contract between employers and employees that cannot be lightly dismissed. Much of the debate in recent months has focused on differing legal opinions as to whether or not modifications in benefits for existing employees would violate that constitutionally-protected contract. Beyond that, significant questions exist as to what form appropriate modifications might take.

At least two organizations have taken an active role in promoting pension reforms. You may wish to visit their websites for a more thorough discussion. They are the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago http://www.illinoisisbroke.com/index.aspx and the Illinois Policy Institute http://illinoispolicy.org/news/article.asp?ArticleSource=3929. These are just two organizations and two sources for additional information.

Our purpose in the "Reality Check" document was not necessarily to endorse any particular plan, but rather to acknowledge that pension reforms must be a significant part of any budget solution. We set an aggressive, but also realistic, goal of finding $1.35 billion in savings from the state's retirement systems. One of our goals is to jump start negotiations as to how to achieve those savings.

Your point regarding local government revenue sharing is well-taken. This is also a very difficult issue that will require balancing the needs of the state and the needs of local governments. As with almost every reduction recommended, Senate Republicans recognize that these are difficult choices and that ultimately negotiations will be needed to balance the needs of the state with the needs of the local governments. However, you are exactly correct that we should not simply pass on the costs to local taxpayers. Protecting local taxpayers must be an integral part of any negotiation.

Again, on behalf of the Senate Republican Caucus, I want to thank you for taking the time to review the proposal and for your thoughtful comments. Illinois would be in much better shape if all citizens took the time and interest that you have taken to learn more about these public policy issues.

Sincerely,

Mark Gordon
Director,
Communications and Public Affairs
Illinois Senate Republican Caucus

Now I have some more reading to see what the plan is really based on. I do appreciate getting a response. I am very appreciative that it was not a canned response. Sounds like the plan is centered around a few negotiations. How do you negotiate with all of the local communities in Illinois? At least the document had savings explained and outlined in a way most people could understand there may be hope for the state budget.