IL Public Pension Debt at $133 Billion

Ten U.S. states have public pension liabilities that are at least as big as their annual revenues, according to a Moody’s Investors Service report released on Thursday that found the Illinois pension bill was equal to 241 percent of its revenues.  …...

Quinn Spends Another $1.5 Billion We Don’t Have

Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn on Thursday signed into law an extra $1.5 billion in spending for road construction and child welfare investigations, even as Republicans decried the measure as including ill-timed, pork barrel money. via Chicago Tribune. What is wrong with...

Illinois Need to Cut COLAs

The head of Illinois’ largest pension plan strongly suggested that cuts in cost-of-living benefits are inevitable for more than 360,000 teachers and retirees outside of Chicago. In an interview with Crain’s editors and reporters, Richard Ingram, executive...

Quick Pension Analysis

Ok, so I was getting asked about this the other day both in person and in the comments about why the pensions are really in such bad shape and what the latest GASB positions mean to the funds.  GASB first. GASB Changes I did some poking around and the recent GASB...

IL Pension Hole Analysis

I wrote this a few weeks ago as a comment on a retired teacher’s blog.  The post there was about how we need to “tax the rich” in order to fund the teachers’ pensions.  I was asked to comment on the post by a retired teacher I know.  Analysis...