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* Chicago Tonight had a great story last night on Illinois’ incredibly stupid felony penalty for recording a police officer in public…

* Speaking of quality stuff, the Tribune has a fascinating story today about pension funding. According to the article, pension laws have been revised “nearly 700 times” since 2003. Many of those revisions was due to duplication because of the large number of pension funds and regulations here. But check this out…

Not all revisions captured in the review by the Tribune and WGN-TV had a fiscal impact, but the legislative record shows that more than half of the pension laws passed during the last eight years came without any fiscal analysis. [Emphasis added.]

One particularly egregious example of the lack of fiscal analysis was George Ryan’s early retirement program…

The original plan targeted up to 7,000 state employees and had a relatively modest price tag of about $550 million. But as Ryan and legislative leaders gathered around the negotiating table to finalize the incentive, a variety of perks were thrown in. The cost estimates, meanwhile, were not updated in time for legislators to weigh the full impact of the program. […]

In the end, more than 11,000 state employees took advantage of the lucrative deal, which caused the immediate cost of the incentive to climb to $2.3 billion, a fourfold increase from the original cost estimate.

When lawmakers realized how expensive the incentive turned out to be, they asked the staff of the Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability for options. The commission offered various scenarios to pay down the debt over time, but the Legislature opted for the most costly — stretching out payments over 40 years.

* And check out this sidebar…

All it took for former state Rep. Robert Molaro to nearly double his public pension was spending one month as an aide to Ald. Ed Burke, the powerful chairman of the Chicago City Council’s Finance Committee.

Among Molaro’s duties: Write a 19-page white paper about Chicago’s ailing pension funds. For his services, the former lawmaker was paid $12,000.

That paycheck sent his pension soaring, as many lawmakers’ benefits are based on 85 percent of their final pay on the last day of service. When Molaro officially retired on Jan. 1, 2009, his pensionable salary would be calculated at $144,000 — the amount he would have earned had he worked for Burke for a full year.

Oy.

* Not all “hit pieces” are created equal, but this one in the Reader is close to a classic. It’s about Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s “New Chicago Committee” and includes this priceless paragraph about a $15,000 contributor...

I wondered why Southern Wine & Spirits was keen on reforming Chicago, but my calls to the company’s corporate office in Miami weren’t returned. In 2008 the beverage distributor gave $20,000 to the governor committed to reforming Illinois, Rod Blagojevich.

If you don’t return a reporter’s calls, you’re in danger of getting broadsided. But that company has contributed to tons of candidates over the years, so pairing Emanuel up with Blagojevich is grossly unfair and totally unwarranted and really shows what sort of “story” this is.

* Chicago Magazine ran a pretty good piece about gangs and Chicago politics this month. The piece mentioned legislators, but offered up no names or evidence. A sidebar story tried to make the connection between legislators and gangbangers by listing the Chicago legislators with the most requests for Department of Corrections prisoner transfers.

The two topics aren’t necessarily connected, but Chicago Magazine never makes that clear. Legislators are often asked by families to help them get family members transferred closer to home. It’s been common practice for decades, if not centuries. The top requester was Sen. William Delgado. And here’s the one gangbanger whom Chicago Magazine highlighted…

RONNIE “MAD DOG” CARRASQUILLO, 53, a founder of the Logan Square–based Imperial Gangsters, fatally shot a Chicago police officer in 1976 and was sentenced to 200 to 600 years. In June 2008, Delgado requested that Carrasquillo be transferred from Hill Correctional Center to Dixon, a lower-security facility closer to Chicago. The transfer was denied.

The guy has been in prison since Gerald Ford was president and this transfer request is portrayed as evidence that Delgado is somehow in league with gangsters? Pretty thin soup.

…Adding… Let’s do a roundup…

* Quinn to meet with Cardinal George

* Brown: Social Security offset to unemployment insurance unfair to elderly

* Weis weighs in on tickets for marijuana possession

* If Charter Schools Don’t Perform That Well, Why Build More?

* Editorial: Time to put the brakes on driving while calling

* Task force offers options to publicly finance campaigns

* Quinn pleased with judges’ decision on Illinois’ new congressional map

* Percentages of Women in State Legislatures

* Country Club Hills council to review newsletter

* Congressman Kinzinger announces run in 16th

* Ex-Rep. Melissa Bean Backing Businessman Versus Robert Dold

posted by Rich Miller
Friday, Dec 16, 11 @ 11:53 am

Comments

“Gangs” in Chicago aren’t just some kids going on the wrong path for a few years. They’re multi-generational, ongoing organized crime enterprises just like The Outfit or Goldman Sachs.

Of course they have political influence, just like all other organized crime enterprises. It’s a cost of doing business.

Comment by wordslinger Friday, Dec 16, 11 @ 12:26 pm
Chicago Reader angry that money exists. Film at 11.

Comment by Dirt Digger Friday, Dec 16, 11 @ 12:31 pm
For a brief period of time after passage of the “50 year solution”, the Legislative Pension Laws Commission did a fairly good job of blocking, or at least mitigating, the more abusive pension changes. Recall that public members did a fairly decent job of calling-out the goofy stuff. Ryan, Blago, and the leaders pretty much blew its effectiveness apart, but for a very brief time sanity actually prevailed.

Comment by chad Friday, Dec 16, 11 @ 12:37 pm
I’m amazed at the ability of Ray and his new co-imagner to write such unmitigated b______t as they do regarding the 2002 early retirement program. A few true facts would have added immensely to the the quality of their work. (parenthetically, I acknowledge that editing beyond their control may have added to the inaccuracy)

Comment by steve schnorf Friday, Dec 16, 11 @ 12:39 pm
schnorf, please explain.

Comment by Rich Miller Friday, Dec 16, 11 @ 12:40 pm
Just for a walk down memory lane, here is an excerpt from the Reader’s supposed chronicle of the Chicago parking meter lease (http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/features-cover-april-9-2009/Content?oid=1098561)

“October 3, 2008 Fearing a run on banks, Congress props up the industry by passing the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP)—the $700 billion bailout bill. About $10 billion goes to Morgan Stanley. JPMorgan Chase—whose midwest chairman is the mayor’s brother William Daley—gets $25 billion. A few weeks later JPMorgan announces plans to buy a new fleet of corporate jets. Morgan Stanley quarterly dividends are paid out on schedule.”

What, pray tell, does any of this have to do with parking meters in Chicago, or the wisdom of relying on one-time revenues in lieu of sound structural budgets, or anything at all in municipal government?

Nothing. But if you squint and are slightly drunk it looks like those banks are all up to no good so of course it’s relevant to parking meters.

Comment by Dirt Digger Friday, Dec 16, 11 @ 12:42 pm
Quinn lacks the guts to buck the cop lobby, but he should be championing a change in that ridiculous recording law. A cowardly legislature passed it in a past era to try to prevent corruption investigations from gathering evidence via wiretaps and bugs. The cops expanded it out of all reason and proportion.

Every time law enforcement ramps up more camera usage on their side of things, the justification is: “If you are innocent, you have nothing to fear”. Considering their unique role in society, and the incredibly high stakes involved when bad apples act in a corrupt or incompetent manner, it seems only fair that cops should be fair game to record in public, with a few logical exceptions. Good cops will have nothing to fear from an impartial lens witnessing their work. They have guns and the power of life and death, after all; we should at least have iphone cameras. If only to prove that justice was served, after the fact.

Comment by Newsclown Friday, Dec 16, 11 @ 12:49 pm
Well, let’s start with an easy one, “The original plan targeted up to 7,000 state employees”. That’s simply incorrect. The plan “targeted” eligible state employees. SERS’ original estimate of how may would participate was either 5000 or 6000, I forget which. They based their estimates on participation in early similar plans as a percentage of eligibles. They later raised their estimate to 7000 and some, based on the rate at which applications were coming in to the system. But in neither case was it a measure of how many employees were “targeted” for the plan, it was an estimate of how many of the “targeted” would participate.

There’s plenty more.

Comment by steve schnorf Friday, Dec 16, 11 @ 12:51 pm
All one has to do to see if our illustrious GA members are serious about pension reform is to follow the news for a while.
I am not saying they aren’t in favor of taking away someone else’s pension to free up money they can then give to their cronies. I am saying they are not interested in true across the board pension reform. I have often suggested that rank and file State workers should offer to drop their pensions and take the same pension/benefit package as the GA and other elected officials. Many other states have only one pension/benefit system. Everyone is in it together. Maybe if the GA had to consider that cuts to pensions or special perks in pensions would be available to everyone if they were available to anyone, we would have a cleaner more stable pension system.

The recent revelations regarding the two IFT employees who were given a special deal and now the special deal that Rep. Molero got puts an exclamation point on the fact that loopholes for special interests and scams on the pension systems will never go away as long as the current folk stay in charge. It cannot be denied that if you are connected, even if you use public money to do so, you will prosper in Illinois.

The only reason some of this is not illegal is that the GA has been careful to make sure that it isn’t. I just wish this attention to detail was eveident in all the other areas that are not personally beneficial to our elected officials.

Comment by Irish Friday, Dec 16, 11 @ 12:54 pm
Keep going, Schnorf.

Comment by Rich Miller Friday, Dec 16, 11 @ 12:54 pm
OK, “Engulfed in scandal but not yet charged with a crime, Ryan wanted to provide generous retirements to loyal party members who had served under Republican administrations.” The plan wasn’t Governor Ryan’s idea or plan, it was mine. I suggested it to him, and to some others. Ray makes it sound like some sort of GHR master conspiracy thing. For Christ’s sake, Ray was there at the time. Did he just miss the news that month?

And even more of a shame, Lawrence was there at the time. Surely to God Ray didn’t raise his conspiracy theory with Lawrence, or Lawrence would have added at least a modicum of reality to the piece.

And there’s much more. Do I have to do all the work Ray didn’t do, or ignored?

Comment by steve schnorf Friday, Dec 16, 11 @ 1:01 pm
===Do I have to do all the work Ray didn’t do, or ignored? ===

Yes.

lol

What I mean is, get to the heart of the matter here and tell us why you believe the numbers are so off, particularly costs.

Comment by Rich Miller Friday, Dec 16, 11 @ 1:05 pm
OK, again; “can be a useful budget tool if they are properly structured and the pension costs are paid for upfront.” That’s why we set a very short time frame for paying the added liability to the pension system-10 years. That was supposed to be a good thing. The next administration (no names so I’m not piling on) changed that to 40 years.

The original repayment plan for the added unfunded liability would have cost the state about $275M per year, if I recall correctly. I can certainly understand the financial pressure they were under to look for any spending avoidances possible, but in doing it that way that Administration took the ERI savings and shoved the costs off into the future.

And more: Remember, we put this together at a time when revenues were tanking and we were looking for ways to reduce costs. Were there payroll savings? Yes, more than %1.5B in just the first three years of that Administration, approximately $2.9B to date. Present value cost to the system, as we laid the plan out-$1.75B.

I’m getting tired, going to take a break. Do I get union scale for this? What is union scale anyway?

And in fairness to Ray a Steve Schnorf conspiracy scan isn’t nearly as sexy as a George Ryan one, huh?

Comment by steve schnorf Friday, Dec 16, 11 @ 1:26 pm
scandal, obviously

Comment by steve schnorf Friday, Dec 16, 11 @ 1:27 pm
I can attest to the savings in the payroll since that buyout program. My staff was cut in half by the retirements. They were never replaced. Had not the next administration used smoke and mirrors to claim a balanced budget and had not the GA enabled him by allowing the can to be kicked so far down the road we would not be in the position we are today. And it continues.

Comment by Irish Friday, Dec 16, 11 @ 2:27 pm
We would still be in pretty much the same position we are in today give or take 10 or 20 billion. The flaw was in the original 1995 ramp where payments into the systems were greatly reduced until sometime well into the future which is now. They just couldn’t fathom that the boom times of the late 90s wouldn’t continue forever and that by 2012 the money owed wouldn’t be just a minor annoyance. They also knew that by now they would all be safely out of office collecting their own 6 figure pensions. All that being said,I would never accuse Ray of being a paragon of truth. He just spouts the company line. The Trib is simply a house organ for the Civic Committee.

Comment by Bill Friday, Dec 16, 11 @ 3:19 pm
The Chicago Magazine piece is really disturbing particularly as with regard to Ricardo Munoz. Selling out merchants to support gangs? That seems to go farther than most. That somebody with those alleged ties wants to control the paperwork for the court system raises a lot of questions.

Comment by Skeeter Friday, Dec 16, 11 @ 3:45 pm
The initial cost estimates of the 2002 ERI and the resultant amortization program were all rendered moot by SB 27, which rolled the ERI liabilities into the regular funding plan. Schnorf is right in that the ERI would have passed regardless of any “estimate” of potential takers.

Comment by Marshal Zhukov Friday, Dec 16, 11 @ 3:52 pm
= Weis weighs in on tickets for marijuana possession =

If only there was a state agency in-charge of issuing state IDs. And if only that supposed state agency made itself available at satellite locations other than its supposed multiple permanent locations. And if only this supposed state agency were able to strategically position some of those supposed satellite locations in high pot possession arrest areas.

Hey, wait a minute!

Comment by Dirty Red Friday, Dec 16, 11 @ 3:56 pm
I would also take issue with the assertion that a lack of fiscal analysis of the ERI was “egregious.” Who could have known in 2002 that just 3 years hence, the Legislature would have punted on the original 10-year amortization plan? In that same vein, who could have predicted the 2008 market crash and the impact that had on the pensions? It’s easy to cast aspersions with the benefit of the perfect knowledge that hindsight gives us.

Comment by Marshal Zhukov Friday, Dec 16, 11 @ 3:56 pm
Back again:

“But as Ryan and legislative leaders gathered around the negotiating table to finalize the incentive, a variety of perks were thrown in…among the new perks were the….ability to purchase up to five years of service credit” Yes, Ray, there were some modifications to the original program design, and as a result, if you had bothered to do your homework, a grand total of 738 people took advantage of them who would not have otherwise been eligible to retire.

Unfortunately for your story, Ray, was that the ability to purchase additional years of service credit was not among them those “perks added in”. That was the basis of the program from the beginning Ray, the Early Retirement Incentive itself, was that people could purchase up to 5 years of additional service credit AND AGE (Watch for a new Trib headline tomorrow, “Ryan scammed with legislative leaders to allow employees to purchase additional years of age”).

“The funding plan passed in 1994 was supposed to force the state to stick to a payment schedule that would bring the pension system up to a 90 percent funding level by 2045….That hasn’t happened for a variety of reasons…”

Ray, I hate to shock you, but in spite of all the screwing around of ‘03-’08, we’re still on schedule to be 90% funded in 2045. Did you not check, or did you just not bother to report?

“Illinois’ pension system was in precarious enough shape in 1994 that Democrats and Republicans came together to solve a crisis threatening the state’s financial future….Since then, the system has fallen deeper in debt, with the shortfall growing to more than $85 billion.”

Well, the system has fallen deeper in debt, Ray, so I guess you got that fact right, but did you bother to read the law. The system hasn’t fallen deeper into debt because of a failure of that law, Ray, that law was predicated on the system falling farther in to debt, and to continue to do so for quite a few more years,Ray. It was all right there for you to understand, but somehow you missed (among many things you missed or ignored) what was really an important fact about the ‘94 law.

But, this grows as tiresome for me as it surely does for the rest of you, so I’ll quit now, though there is quite a bit more. All in all, a few facts, some terrible misinformation and misdirection, all tied together with a fictitious narrative suiting the Tribune and the Civic Committee’s purposes, courtesy of Ray the gullible.

Bill, you do a better job in a few words than the Trib does in many. One little factoid; the average monthly pension benefit of the people who retired as a result of the ‘02-’03 ERI was $2500. Not many of us get 6 figure pensions.

Comment by steve schnorf Friday, Dec 16, 11 @ 4:05 pm
Schnorf, thanks for your thoughts. We should add that the stock market took a major hit in 2002-2003, which had a devastating impact on the pension funds’ holdings, as I recall.

One more question — was there ever a discussion of putting a lid on the number of employees who could opt for the ERI?

And Bill — you’re absolutely right that the 1995 ramp had no reality base. The GA needs to revamp the ramp. (And I’m still sorry you didn’t get the Senate appointment - the Bill is overdue…)

Comment by soccermom Friday, Dec 16, 11 @ 4:29 pm
Thanks,Steve. I certainly don’t begrudge the dedicated, hard working state employees their fair pensions. I was talking about the administrators, leaders, and governor at the time in ‘95. I just can’t help myself sometimes.

Comment by Bill Friday, Dec 16, 11 @ 4:33 pm
here’s the sentence that bothers me: “The agreement they forged was supposed to take politics out of pension funding by requiring a steady stream of payments over the next 50 years.” To me, a steady stream would require roughly the same amount each year. That’s hardly a fair description of the ramp.

Comment by soccermom Friday, Dec 16, 11 @ 4:34 pm
a steady stream? “A decade ago, contributions to the pension system cost the state about $1 billion. Next year, they are expected to reach more than $5 billion, according to the governor’s budget office.” A five-fold increase in ten years — how could any state budget withstand that?

Comment by soccermom Friday, Dec 16, 11 @ 4:35 pm
Schnorf, this may be tiresome for you, but I’m fascinated. Thanks so much.

Comment by soccermom Friday, Dec 16, 11 @ 4:38 pm
Mom, no there wasn’t any discussion of a lid. We did realize that too many early retirements could cause a problem for the new administration, That’s why we added the holdover provision, but we just never dreamed that many would take the program. Had we, we might well have put a cap on.

Comment by steve schnorf Friday, Dec 16, 11 @ 5:01 pm
Schnorf
Your lengthy comments do not appear to include the answer to Rich’s question: “…tell us why the numbers are so off, particularly the costs.”

Comment by capncrunch Friday, Dec 16, 11 @ 5:10 pm
And Rich, one last point about the 90% target. Don’t lose sight of the fact that changing it should give us no relief. Wr’re currently about 38% funded I think. To keep our funding at that level, not increase it, my in-my-head calculation is that our annual contribution would need to be about $8.4B,not including debt service on POBs already issued, some $3B HIGHER than it is today.

Comment by steve schnorf Friday, Dec 16, 11 @ 5:10 pm
Oh, and lowering the actuarially assumed rates of return (which I understand a couple of the systems have done lately) doesn’t change the numbers, just how you calculate them (lower assumed return x higher unfunded liability)

Comment by steve schnorf Friday, Dec 16, 11 @ 5:16 pm
Yes, Steve, but I’m referring to the long 2045 ramp as well here.

Comment by Rich Miller Friday, Dec 16, 11 @ 5:27 pm