24 Comments - Reality Check - Wednesday, Dec 10, 14 @ 4:14 pm: This is a compromise. The State had presented three alternative schedules for an accelerated docket. The plaintiffs replied that if any alternative was approved it should be this one, the other two being unfairly truncated. - Norseman - Wednesday, Dec 10, 14 @ 4:27 pm: The main point I see from the plaintiffs’ reply is that they wanted 35 days to reply to the AG brief. The SC gave that to them. I suspect that the SC may want to get this out of the way ASAP. I think the world would be surprised if the SC sided with the State in light of Kanerva. - TANKR - Wednesday, Dec 10, 14 @ 4:34 pm: Rich,speaking about the IL Supreme Court, why is there no info about the amendment to Senate Bill 1342.Is it true IL. residents can no longer video tape police officers in the line of duty? - Andy S. - Wednesday, Dec 10, 14 @ 4:44 pm: While I would have preferred that the SC take its sweet time, I am not surprised. The plaintiffs all but suggested in their brief yesterday that they would be OK with this schedule, which gives them 35 days to respond. - SkeptiCal - Wednesday, Dec 10, 14 @ 4:45 pm: This is the schedule I posted as a possibility with a prediction that the earliest release of a ruling with an opinion would still be May. If it is a short affirmance citing Kanerva, that is the end of it and no one will get any insight as to what would pass Constitutional muster. (This is my prediction on the outcome). That will NOT give the Gov elect nor GA any guidance that would be useful in any other legislative options. At that point, the question is how to start moving the ball toward proper funding. Everyone should just be doing that now. - steve schnorf - Wednesday, Dec 10, 14 @ 4:53 pm: since the world always moves on, with or without us, news always intervenes - John Parnell - Wednesday, Dec 10, 14 @ 5:25 pm: When was the last time the Supreme Court gave advice to the legislature? - Anonymous - Wednesday, Dec 10, 14 @ 5:39 pm: No guidance necessary Repay what was taken….figure out how to do so within the law. Stop spending taxpayer money trying to weasel out of your theft. Simple. - Grandson of Man - Wednesday, Dec 10, 14 @ 5:46 pm: I think a commenter or two said that in the retiree healthcare case, the state argued that healthcare benefits are not the same as pensions, which can’t be diminished. Does this not completely undermine the state’s pension defense? - Arthur Andersen - Wednesday, Dec 10, 14 @ 5:57 pm: Parnell, since about never. - Dupage moderate - Wednesday, Dec 10, 14 @ 10:05 pm: Constitutional Amendment - PolPal56 - Wednesday, Dec 10, 14 @ 10:12 pm: Dupage moderate, you’re correct, eliminating the flat tax amendment and allowing a proper progressive tax is a start. - RNUG - Wednesday, Dec 10, 14 @ 11:58 pm: I mostly agree with — SkeptiCal –. I expect it will be a short affirmation of what Belz wrote with, maybe, a bit of a nod to the fact that either / and (a) the State failed to demonstrate any emergency existed and (b) even if said emergency existed, the State has not exhausted all the acceptable available alternatives (without spelling them out). Or to put it in other words, the decision will say to the GA: “Not even close. The balls back in your court.” - facts are stubborn things - Thursday, Dec 11, 14 @ 7:25 am: I believe it will be a 7-0 decision that is powerful, and clearly rebukes the states attempts to renege on a constitutional promise by claiming a crisis of their own making. - Jack Handy - Thursday, Dec 11, 14 @ 7:42 am: What happens to the effective date of the bill if by chance the lower court is overturned and the bill is declared constitutional? - VanillaMan - Thursday, Dec 11, 14 @ 7:45 am: It is so pathetic that we are seeing our legislative branch practically begging our judicial branch on advice on how they need to do their legislative jobs on this issue. If I recall correctly, John Cullerton accurately predicted the outcome of this legislation. So it isn’t like there are no leaders in the GA that knows what is wrong with this bill and why it has failed to pass constitutional muster. What we have here is a legislature that desperately wishes that their unconstitutional approach to this issue be acceptable before returning to work to really address and fix this problem within the conditions of the current constitution. Remember how many of these same people seem to have had no foresight on this? Is there anything new here that wasn’t seen by anyone with any working knowledge of our pension system and constitution that prevented these people from supporting a constitutional convention just a few years ago? These same people fought against the constitutional means allotted them to fix this, and they spent a lot of money defeating it. So what gives? They don’t want to fix the constitution preventing their solution from working. They don’t want to find a solution within the very constitution they fought for us to prevent fixing. Instead they are doing this. Really. Truly. Pathetic. We have a lot of people under the dome unwilling to make hard decisions, under what seems to be fear that they won’t get reelected. Some profiles in courage, eh? - the Cardinal - Thursday, Dec 11, 14 @ 8:10 am: Tankr I believe the ruling is you may not record private conversations videoing an action may be different the ruling was vague can’t say for sure though …luckily i am not an atty. - Stones - Thursday, Dec 11, 14 @ 9:02 am: I agree with prior comments regarding the ultimate outcome of this decision. Thinking that this is going to be found anything but unconstitutional or that the S. Ct. will provide some sort of “guidance” is just plain unrealistic. The incoming Governor and leaders should direct their efforts to some other initiatives to fix this issue going forward. What’s done to this point is done and nothing is going to change that. - Anonymous - Thursday, Dec 11, 14 @ 9:14 am: Why did the legislature and Gov. Quinn think it was even remotely logical to force governmental employees and retirees to give back promised pension rights when they had no direct complicity in the creation of the state’s public employee pension problems? I may be misquoting a bit here, but I’ve seen a statistic that suggests that something like only 20% of the most recent state appropriation for its annual funding contributions for its public employee pension funds was for its current retiree annuity benefits. The other 80% of that appropriation was to meet the interest and loan-amortization requirements for not having adequately funding its pension systems in prior years. So, for the last appropriation at least it seems we can assign 80% of the pension systems’ underfunding to the IL state government. Yet, the problem is continually publicized by the media as belonging primarily the greedy public employees and retirees, something that apparently continues to unfairly gain wide public support at the expense of the innocents I’ve named here. - John Parnell - Thursday, Dec 11, 14 @ 9:20 am: Arthur Anderson “Parnell, since about never.” My point exactly. Someone should tell Rauner so he can quit bringing it up. - walker - Thursday, Dec 11, 14 @ 9:35 am: The court does not disappoint. Timing is certainly not “unfair.” It is not unrealistic to think that the proponents of future changes to the pension systems could gain some better understanding from a court’s written opinion. The court virtually laid out for the remapping petition movement how best to proceed if they want to go that route again. Even if it’s “no way, no how, not ever” on this or that element of it, that is worth knowing. - John Parnell - Thursday, Dec 11, 14 @ 9:40 am: Vanilla Man before you start praising John Cullerton for saying the pension bill before the Court was unconstitutional look at the idea he proposed. His idea of unilateral consideration to effect his bill would also have been declared unconstitutional. The pensioners weren’t at the negotiating table agreeing to Cullerton”s consideration proposal. So it was an idea that was one sided when you need two sides to effect an agrement. - John Parnell - Thursday, Dec 11, 14 @ 9:43 am: Walker the Court doesn’t give out free advice. That is not their job. - anon - Thursday, Dec 11, 14 @ 11:34 am: Article III of the federal constitution limits the jurisdiction of the courts to actual “cases and controversies.” The Illinois Supreme Court has similarly held that advisory opinions are not a justiciable matter. Methinks the justices were not amused by Madigan’s statement that he had a number of them in his pocket. It’ll be a swift and decisive smack-down to squelch the idea that the fix is in and the Court won’t follow the law. Sorry, comments for this post are now closed.