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Dan Sleezer's avatar

The Illinois Policy Institute has a useful site. "WirePoints" and Mike Glennon use them a lot. Here's more detail on Brandon Johnson. He is right now a 'double dipper' as he is a Cook County Board Commissioner and also draws a $100k salary from the Chicago Teacher's Union!!

https://www.illinoispolicy.org/chicago-teachers-union-affiliates-put-over-2-3m-in-brandon-johnson-campaign/

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Peter Burchard's avatar

Thank you, Mary Pat. I'm an advocate against full funding. Fair funding feels better - but I don't have a number for that. Like IMRF, political discretion should be taken out of the pension payment process - but not if the legislative demand is for full funding. Full funding is an attack on street level public services (even if we acknowledge that the cost of a pension is part of public services). IMRF (my pension) stands in contrast to your examples. IMRF loves to brag about its near perfect funding. IMRF is bloated. If we look at all pension funds in Illinois and add promises related to retiree healthcare, it puts a crisis-level strain on govt operating budgets. In Illinois, pension benefits are/were achieved through a political process that never stops and is beyond costly. Now we have rational people trying to help the govt pay for politically achieved benefits. The FOP is behind Vallas and CTU is behind Johnson. Some say the police support Vallas because he's a law-and-order person. Not so. We are seeing a war between pension funds and pensioners. Vallas v Johnson is a pension benefit and payment war. Public employees in each pension fund are ramping up the funding war against employees in other funds. There isn't enough money to go around; the losers are becoming evident. Hence, lowering crime and increasing student test scores are less important.

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