What kind of justice system would reward a thief and punish the thief’s victim? None, you say? Not so fast. It is happening! Let me explain.
I am not a disinterested person in this crime. In fact, I’m a participant. I worked for the State of Illinois for four years. I taught as Assistant Professor of English at Western Illinois University for four years. I purchased two years that I was allowed for military service and spent 25 years as a teacher and administrator in Illinois public schools. By the time I was 55 years of age, I had 35 years of service and was entitled to take regular retirement. So, I have a big interest in what the Illinois legislature does in the way of “pension reform.” By now you are wondering, “What does this have to do with thieves?”
Actually, more than you might suspect. In 1968 I chaired a sub-committee on pensions that was a part of the Illinois Federation of Teachers’ State Legislative Committee. At the time, Aubrey J. Holmes was the Chief Executive of the Teachers’ Retirement System of Illinois. I made many trips to his office in Springfield, IL. To my consternation, I discovered that the State of Illinois was taking the money that our pension system was earning from investments and subtracting it from the amount the State was required to contribute to our pensions.
I argued with Holmes that this was wrong. The money our investments earned belonged to us and not the State of Illinois. Naturally, he argued otherwise. I told him it is like him loaning me a hundred thousand dollars at 6% interest and then, every year, instead of paying him the interest, I would subtract it from what I owed him. He didn’t buy my analogy. I insisted that the State was in fact stealing our interest earnings. It seemed that neither Holmes nor the State cared. However, the law firm of Cornfield and Feldman made a winning argument in Federal Court. The judge ruled that our retirement checks were “deferred compensation.” The State owed us and the State needed to pay up.
Well, the State didn’t have the money–surprise, surprise! By this time a State Constitutional Convention was going on. Our negotiator was Oscar Weil, Executive Director of the IFT. We were caught between the proverbial sledge hammer and the anvil.
If the State paid up, the money would come out of school funding. If the State didn’t, our retirement would be in jeopardy.
The leaders of the Constitutional Convention were willing to guarantee our pensions by putting in a provision to protect them and, in turn, we would agree to a program of amortizing the short-changed system over a period of 25 years. We realized at the time that inflation would dissolve the value of our pensions; so we wanted paid in inflation-free dollars, which is another way of asking for a cost-of-living adjustment annually. At that time inflation was running about 6%.
The leaders of the convention did not want to tie pensions to the CPI (Consumer Price Index), so they offered an annual 3% increase: take it or leave it. We accepted. Yes, it was less than what we wanted, but better than nothing.
So, the thieves who stole our money had to pay it back 4% at a time, so that n 25 years our system would be fully funded. In fact, they passed a law saying the State Treasures would automatically pay what the State owed–unless the General Assembly voted not to do it!
Obviously Michael Madigan knew what he was doing when, year after year, instead of the State paying its share, it chose to not raise taxes and spend the money elsewhere.
So what is his solution? The Chief Thief proposes making the victims, the teachers and retired teachers, pay for what the General Assembly stole, year after year. Yes, make the victims pay! That is Michael Madigan justice.
That is like an employer stealing from his employees’ pension fund and then telling them they have to make up what is missing out of their own pockets. In short, it rewards the thieves and punishes their victims.