Madigan is a moran. How dare he thought to add more burden to the tax payers. The teachers union needs to get with program. If any more hard working tax payers loose their homes there won't be any revenue for the schools. Pay your own pensions, try the 401 k plan. The union of IL are spoided brats and I am sick of them!!!!! Go Scott Walker of Wis. !!!!!!!

Well, "mom", the fact of the matter is that the problem with teachers' pensions is not the lack of teacher contribution to their pension fund. It is that our state government has borrowed from and mismanaged that fund for decades. Another point you might want to consider is that not only have the teacher pensions been compromised; teachers are also a large part of the taxpaying body of citizens. Your frustration as a taxpayer is understandable, however your anger may be misdirected.

Part of pension reform MUST be holding local districts accountable for their largess and requiring them to pay for bad decisions they've made that caused this mess.

For example, when a fully vested teacher making $100K per year applies for "early retirement" five years early, they can receive 6% raises per year raising their four year "average" on which their pension is based to about $116,000 with a pension of about $87,000 per year. The "cost" to the employee for this is 11.5% of salary for each early retirement year, and the cost to the children and taxpayers throught he district is 23.5% for each year for a total cost of about $220,868. It should be noted that it is not unusual in suburban HS districts for the school to ALSO pay the employees' share. The pension paid will be about $435,000, plus about an additional $40-$50K for health insurance entirely paid by the state. The 3% "COLA" is compounded retroactively when the "normal" retirement age is reached, so the state costs for this single "early retirement" is about $250,000 to pay a teacher NOT TO TEACH BEFORE THEIR NORMAL RETIREMENT AGE (60).

If the school board of a district decides that doing this is in the best interest of the community and state to take approximately $329,000 to pay a teacher to stop teaching early, I don't think it's unreasonable for the state taxpayers to expect that the district pay the FULL cost of this, and not stick the state taxpayers with the bill.

Ultimately, Springfield was responsible for creating this mess, though, and local districts compounded the problem by approving overly generous, or perhaps abuse, of this system.

This in not unlike the "subprime mortgage" problem created by Washington, DC, but implemented by local banks and mortgage brokers.

The Feds allowed "flipping" debt from unqualified borrowers onto Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and they irresponsibly abused this system to the point that it cerated the worst economy since the great depression.

Springfield passed the laws that allowed districts to "spike" end of career salaries for no reason other than to unfairly boost pensions, and created the "early retirement" programs that have been so damaging to the state. They allowed distircts to include "sick day" payoffs into pension contributions, and abuses like including paid use of a car by administrators.

What's fair? If district 230 can afford to pay teachers with an MS +30 and 20 years experience a minimum of $119,000 per nine months, perhaps it could afford to contribute more to the pension obligations these unjustifiable salaries create.

District 230 pays 93% of employee family health care premiums, which costs the district about $14,000 for each participating employee.

If they can afford this, they can afford to pay a fair share for pensions without raising taxes and fees.

There are districts such as Mokena 159 that are starved for resources and pay low salaries. Does anyone deny that asking members of that community and others like them to subsidize excessive North Shore and wealthy local HS pensions, over which they have no say, is unfair?

The fair solution may be this; districts wishing to engage in "spiking" to unfairly boost pensions and grant early retirement packages should pay for their full cost, not state taxpayers.

Districts that can afford to not only pay the districts share of pension contributions BUT ALSO EMPLOYEE SHARES(about 50% of school districts in Illinois pay the ENTIRE employee contributioin of 9.4%), should be able to pay their fair sharea fro their employees retirement.

Low to middle income staff shouldn't be forced to pay more in contributions, but if a district is wealthy enough to pay my than 20% above the current state average teacher salary (avg is about $64K) perhaps they should need to pay the full cost of teh pensions above that amount. If they can afford to pay that much above avearge, they can afford to contribute more to the TRS.

School Boards choose to sometimes make bad decisions on bloating pension benefits and then sticking state taxpayers with the bill. This is certainly unfair and legislation restarining school boards from this irrespoonsible behavior wiould certainly be welcome by the communities and taxpayers currently being gouged from this corruption.

Great idea to combine the elected folks pension with all the state workers & teachers. It should get fixed pronto.
But lets be serious...
They will never ever vote to change or possibly cut their own benefit..
They even have built in a provision for an automatic pay raise...
it goes through unless they vote to cancel it..

Many of these clowns in Springfield have been there 10-15-20 years!
They are part of the problem!

Amazing idea of transferring the financial burden back to the local towns...

Instead of solving the problem, our elected folks just vote to give the problem to somebody else. Nice..

I don't believe this is dead yet.. it will show up again either hidden in another bill, or used as leverage for something else..

The most important job in the world is that of our educators. The field attracts very bright, organized, fun loving, people who devote their lives toward giving to others. Police, nurses, firefighter/paramedics, doctors, etc..are also in this giving field. They need to be securely compensated to remain in this field. It's hard work and dedication and most dead beats don't fit the bill. I don't know of any millionaire police, firemen, or teachers. The filthy rich have won the persuasion game and managed to convince common republicans to turn on their own assets, their teachers. Republican fathers voting to hurt their children who are teachers and police, and firemen, as if they are the enemy. Brainwashed!

"The field attracts very bright, organized, fun loving, people who devote their lives toward giving to others."....at least until they reach age 55 and take "early retirement" pensions that are bankrupting the state!