D135 to Lawmakers: Don’t Slip Us Your Pension Bill

The Board of Education and staff are rallying opposition to possible state legislation that could add significant costs to local tax-paying property owners.

Murmurings are coming from Springfield about a yet-to-be created bill that would turn over teacher pensions back to local school districts to manage and pay out. But without any clear benefit for relieving the state government of its self-inflicted financial burden, district officials are preparing to push back.

“Everybody needs to speak to their local legislators to not approve this measure,” said board member Joe LaMargo at Monday night’s school board meeting. “This will impact not only the finances of the school district but our property taxes. Lord knows what will happen with them and they’re high enough as is.”

Speculation is swirling about how such a bill would impact District 135, though one potential gauge involves on-behalf payments, a line item in the district’s budget that the state is supposed to pay. D135’s on-behalf payment is about $8 million, said Asst. Supr. of Business Services John Reiniche.

“That could be our new obligation, but the hard thing about it is it’s all speculation right now,” Reiniche said. “When it comes out of committee as a bill, that’s when we’ll really be able to look at it and see how they’re going to structure it.”

If a bill turns on-behalf payments over to local school districts, the roughly $8 million in D135’s budget would only be the beginning of a new tax reality for Orland Park and Orland Hills property owners. They could also be on the hook for ’s on-behalf payments of $12 million, for a total of $20 million in new costs, Reiniche said.

“We pay 5.5 percent to the state in income taxes and part of that is to fund pensions and the commitments they made,” said board president John Carmody. “There has to be some benefit for absorbing that expense.”

Four legislators were picked to sit on Gov. Pat Quinn’s pension reform panel, according to the State Journal-Register. State representatives Darlene Senger, R-Naperville, and Elaine Nekritz, D-Des Plaines, as well as state senators Bill Brady, R-Bloomington, and Michael Noland, D-Elgin, are serving on the panel. Jerry Sterner, an aid to Quinn, will helm the panel.

D135 Interim Superintendent Dennis Soustek said administrative staff have talked about drafting a resolution opposing pensions being turned over to school districts, with the hope that the Illinois Association of School Boards will adopt it.

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