Final thoughts from pension panel

Posted 4:05 PM, July 30, 2012, by , Updated at 04:07PM, December 24, 2012
This is an archived article and the information in the article may be outdated. Please look at the time stamp on the story to see when it was last updated.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out / Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out / Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out / Change )

Google+ photo

You are commenting using your Google+ account. ( Log Out / Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s

1 Comment

  • MikeIsD1

    Great contribution by WGN to the debate!
    Disturbing for anyone in the state including state workers.

    The overall series reinforced my belief that the only real solution is to convert the pensions to a 401K system. I believe that this can only be done by involving the unions. The big mistake was made in the 1970 constitution and that needs to be amended.
    Almost every abuse in the system would disappear under a 401K plan.

    But big incentives need to be given to the rank and file to convert. A 25% of income funding plan with 8% from the employee and 17% from the state would assure a substantial retirement for the individual employees. Because it is a stated contribution, it cannot be deferred by the state. An $80K year employee could walk away with $2.75 million in their fund after 30 years instead of $60K year pension that may fail.

    Finally, maybe the most haunting question was from a senior who asked the rhetorical question "whether the state will start shifting costs to the local school districts and will that cause a mass exodus of people with the most to lose from the state – homeowners and retirees to more tax friendly states…!"

    The retirees and rank & file union need to ask themselves what good is their present plan if it destroys the state and forces people to flee, further jeopardizing whatever benefit they have?

    Reply