Since we started this blog way back in 2004, we have assiduously focused our attention on those units of local government serving the Park Ridge community.  Frankly, that has been more than enough of a challenge for our modest abilities and limited time.

But we are making a notable exception today, in advance of what we expect will be the Illinois General Assembly’s passage of a 327-page pension “reform” bill, the final text of which was circulated less than 24 hours ago to the state senators and representatives who will be voting on it later today.

Having read about, observed and even met a number of the current seat-fillers down in Springfield over the past several years, we suspect most of them would be challenged simply to read that bill in its entirety before today’s vote is held.  But to understand it well enough to meaningfully vote on it?  At least another week, but only if they had the assistance of competent legal counsel.

This being Illinois, however, we fully expect the bill to pass before sunset.

The last time Illinois public pension policy was “reformed” was forty-plus years ago, when a majority of the Illinois Constitutional Convention (“Con Con”) delegates included a provision in the state’s new constitution that guaranteed the promise of public pensions as creating “an enforceable contractual relationship” that “shall not be diminished or impaired.”

Whether and to what extent this new 327-page “reform” bill can pass that 1970 constitutional guarantee, in whole or in part, is anybody’s guess.  So is whether it will come anywhere close to saving all the $160 billion its proponents are wildly claiming it will, even over the 30 years it’s supposed to take for those savings to accrue.

Frankly, we don’t have the time or the inclination to address everything that’s wrong with just the light-speed process by which this particular piece of legislation has advanced from its skeletal form the afternoon before a four-day Thanksgiving holiday weekend to its full 327-page text less than 24 hours before the expected vote.  That process alone should be viewed by the taxpayers of this state as nothing short of the insulting slap in the face its proponents intended it to be.

But that assumes a fact not yet in evidence: that it’s still possible for Illinois taxpayers to perceive insults after three decades of living in serfdom under the thumb of Darth Madigan, dark lord of the Sith.

Those encouraging this legislative rush to judgment point to its “bi-partisan” support by Madigan, his Dark Side senate ally John Cullerton and fuzzy-thinking Ewoks like Christine Radogno and Jim Durkin – four of the five “leaders” who, along with former House Minority “leader” and fellow Ewok Tom Cross, have been at the legislative helm of our listing ship of state while two of our last three governors (one from each party, furthering the “bi-partisan” theme) have been imprisoned and Illinois’ finances have sunk to a notch or so above insolvency.

Trusting such an inept crowd to successfully reform our state’s absurd pension system is like trusting a cardiac surgical team with a history of chronic malpractice to get its next quadruple bypass right.  It’s as if “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results” were Einstein’s definition of sanity.

Given how crucial true pension reform is to Illinois’ future, and how complex the problems presented by it are, serious debate and deliberation on a legitimate reform bill should easily take at least a few weeks, not merely a few hours.  But with the editorial boards of both Chicago daily newspapers and a host of other cheerleaders wildly clapping and stamping their feet for speedy passage, “serious” anything is too much to ask.

To paraphrase “Senator Padme Amidala” in “Star Wars Episode II – Attack of the Clones”: “So this is how pension reform dies… with thunderous applause.”

But on the bright side, the Illinois General Assembly makes the workings of the Park Ridge City Council, even on its worst days (and nights), seem like a beacon of light in the abyss of Illinois government.

UPDATE (12.04.13)  We wish we could claim a special gift for correctly predicting that the 327-page pension “reform” bill would pass by sunset yesterday, less than 24 hours after its final language was first circulated.  Shooting fish in a barrel with a 12 gauge, however, would have been more challenging.

Not that conclusive proof will ever be available, but we suspect that 90% or more of the public officials in Springfield who voted for the bill yesterday hadn’t even read it.  Sadly, that makes them no different from our legislators in Washington, most of whom appear to rely on staffers – or, more likely, highly-paid special interest lobbyists – to tell them what a bill says and why they should, or should not, vote for it.

That’s what we now have in this country: a government of the politicians, by the bureaucrats, for the special interests.  Or is it a government of the bureaucrats, by the politicians, for the special interests?

All we know is that the taxpayers are never one of those special interests.

Will this pension “reform” bill really save the taxpayers of this state $160 billion by 2044?  Of course not.  Only small children and idiots would believe projections like that – which are almost always wrong, and usually very wrong.  Plus, there are so many variables involved that ascertaining and analyzing cause and effect (or finding fault and placing blame) becomes exponentially more difficult with every passing year.

That’s not even taking into consideration the strong possibility that certain portions of the bill – the ones that might actually be good for Illinois taxpayers, naturally – could be declared unconstitutional by the Illinois Supreme Court, yet “severable” from the rest of the bill rather than invalidating the whole bill.  So taxpayers could end up being stuck with all the costly “bad” parts of the bill and none of the really cost-saving “good” ones.

That’s what we assume the public employee unions are counting on, and their friends in the General Assembly (including Madigan, Cullerton and other union tools) are hoping for.  Given the way this bill was handled and the fly-speck level of integrity possessed by its major proponents down in Springfield, we wouldn’t be surprised if some of those “anti”-employee provisions were actually drafted to make them easier for the Supreme Court to pitch.

Not surprisingly, not one of the officials who voted for this bill yesterday can be expected to still be holding a seat in the General Assembly when the final results of this bill are tallied up 30 years from now.  And a substantial portion of today’s voters will be worm food by then, too – unable to say to Sen. Dan Kotowski or Rep. Marty Moylan: “You donkeys…we told you this wouldn’t work.”

Assuming Danny K and Marty M are still on the right side of the grass themselves by then.

It’s a lot like the Uptown TIF, for which proponents were projecting $20 million-plus of net revenue by the end of its 23-year term.  Now, only 10 years after it was passed and the City locked itself into tens of millions of dollars of bonded debt, not one of the elected officials responsible for passing it remains in City Hall and accountable to the taxpayers for the major economic drain it has become, or for the $20 million-plus of net deficits now being projected for it. 

Meanwhile, former mayor and TIF architect Ron Wietecha resigned his office and moved to Barrington before the TIF was even passed.  And former mayors Mike Marous and Howard Frimark, along with all those City Council members who supported the TIF project’s multi-millions of dollars of debt and subsidies to the developers, remain out of sight anytime their red-haired stepchild is publicly discussed.

That’s the inherent problem with plans based on multi-decade projections of dubious merit, using assumptions that no sane individuals would make, even when blind drunk and playing Mississippi Stud at Rivers Casino on a Tuesday night.  That’s also why even a corrupt, communistic, economically doomed governmental system like the one employed by the former Soviet Union rarely extended its projections beyond five years, thereby giving it a constant series of “five-year plans.”

But our geniuses in Springfield used a 30-year projection for this pension “reform” bill because they needed a 30-year timeline to make the math work for all their made-up numbers.

Already the “victorious” legislators, their sycophants, apologists, and what masquerades as a keen-eyed, vigorous press are proclaiming pension peace for our time.  If you could dress them all in dark Chesterfield overcoats, umbrellas in one hand and waving copies of the bill over their heads with their other hand, you might think Neville Chamberlain had risen from the dead and been multiply cloned – and totally clowned.

But at least Great Britain had a Winston Churchill standing in the wings to salvage Chamberlain’s folly.

All we’ve got are the likes of Sen. Kwame Raoul (D. Chicago) who, when urging a “Yes” vote, limply warned: “We cannot continue to be the embarrassment of the nation.”

Way too late for that, Kwame.

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