Legislators pitch pension reform at Chamber lunch

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State Senator Ron Sandack addresses the Naperville Chamber Commerce at Hotel Arista on Monday February 20, 2012 in Naperville IL. | Terence Guider-Shaw~For Sun-Times Media

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Updated: March 25, 2012 8:04AM

The state is running anywhere from $80 million to $85 million behind in its obligations to funded public pensions and State Sen. Ron Sandack has an idea about how to begin fixing the problem.

He wants to eliminate one of them.

“Of the five state pension systems, the General Assembly’s is the worst-funded,” he told the lunch crowd Monday at the Naperville Area Chamber of Commerce legislative luncheon.

Noting that the pension is only funded at 18 percent, Sandack, R-21st District, believes that a pension system for what he termed a “part-time service” position was not only inappropriate, but a conflict of interest for legislators.

That conflict of interest led him to decline accepting pension and health care benefits for himself and his family, Sandack said.

SB 2498 would limit the participation to legislators to only those who were in the system prior to Jan. 1, 2013, effectively grandfathering current members.

“It doesn’t take a benefit away from anyone,” Sandack said.

He also introduced SB 2570 calling for ending the General Assembly scholarships after June 1, 2013.

Sandack pointed out that not only have the scholarships led to abuse and charges of favoritism over the last few years, but they also not funded.

“They are not a scholarship, they are a mandate,” he said.

Sandack’s third proposal, SC 0041, calls for term limits for General Assembly members, limiting them to no more that 10 years of service in either body of the legislature, or combination of service in the two houses.

State Rep. Darlene Senger, R-96th District, also has pension reform on her agenda.

Senger is on a 4-member committee— one Democrat and one Republican from both the House and Senate — formed by Gov. Pat Quinn to analyze the problem. She said that the group won’t have anything to report until April 1.

“Where we are right now in the process of fact-finding,” she said.

Senger acknowledged recent suggestions made by Quinn and the State’s other top Democrats, Senate President John Cullerton and House Speaker Michael Madigan, that some of the burden of funding teacher’s pensions should be shifted to local districts.

But Senger pointed out that the unfunded part of school pensions remains the state’s responsibility. “Every year that payment gets bigger and bigger,” she said.

State Rep. Michael Connelly, R-48th District, said he saw some hope for the state’s fiscal problems, but stressed that the process would not be easy.

“Both sides of the aisle understand that there is going to be pension reform,” he said.

But Connelly wanted those in the room to know that pension reform was hardly the only fiscal problem Illinois faced.

He spoke of an explosion in Medicaid spending, saying that roughly half the children born in Illinois were born into the system.

Connelly highlighted the need for Medicaid eligibility reform by pointing out that a family of four with a $70,000 income could still qualify for Medicaid.