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Pantagraph EditorialThursday, June 19, 2008 12:09 AM CDT
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Pension reform needed -- starting with legislators
By the Pantagraph Editorial Board
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For another example of politicians being out of touch with taxpayers, we give you former state Sen. Carol Ronen.

Ronen served in the Legislature from 1992 until January of this year — roughly half in the House and half in the Senate.

The staunch ally of Gov. Rod Blagojevich took a job as a senior adviser to the governor, but only worked a couple of months before leaving the job.

However, the Chicago Sun-Times reports that through that brief stint, the Chicago Democrat was able to bolster her state pension by almost an additional $38,000 per year.

Her total pension will be $102,000 annually — more as annual “cost of living” increases kick in.

She is not the first former lawmaker to take advantage of the pension “bump” that occurs when a former lawmaker takes a job in another part of state government that has a reciprocal arrangement with the General Assembly Retirement System.

And, unfortunately, she probably won’t be the last.

Although a law was enacted to limit the ability of retired lawmakers to increase their pensions by working at another, higher-paying state job for a short period, it doesn’t apply to those elected before Aug. 22, 1994. And there are still plenty of lawmakers in Springfield who fall into that category.

Ronen defended her lucrative pension, telling the Sun-Times that “My entire career has been devoted to public service” and insisting, “It’s not a scam.”

But, while it might not meet the legal definition of a “scam,” it certainly reflects poor public policy. Taxpayers are entitled to believe the whole system that allows such a practice is a “scam.”

The current pension mess facing the state, with a system that is woefully underfunded, can’t be blamed on former lawmakers such as Ronen who manage to boost their retirement pay to well beyond what they made while actually serving in the Legislature.

Lawmakers are too small a piece of the pie to shoulder that blame.

But they will never be able to bring meaningful reform to the pension program overall without setting a good example themselves.

There have been attempts to have lawmakers be part of the same retirement plan as other state workers.

State Sen. Bill Brady, R-Bloomington, proposed such a change more than five years ago, but it never made it out of committee.

But the more the public sees examples of legislative largesse, such as Ronen’s super-sized pension, the more voters will be motivated to send lawmakers into “early retirement.”

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Reader comments on this story - 3 total

Note: All views and opinions expressed in reader comments are solely those of the individual submitting the comment, and not those of the Pantagraph or its staff.

pseudo-intellectual wrote on Jun 19, 2008 11:44 PM:

" This is nothing less than looting. Wouldn't you love to know how many people you've never heard of who will be making a pension of over $100,000 as long as they live? What was so important about Carol Ronen that she should be entitled to do so well at our expense? Have these people no shame? Is there no limit to what they would take for so little in return? "

LexiLee wrote on Jun 19, 2008 11:38 PM:

" Ah, to be able to pass laws to help boost our own income and pension package. If we all had that luxury, wouldn't that be grand? "

Jarhead71 wrote on Jun 19, 2008 11:28 PM:

" One problem with your premise, Pantagraph: the voters that need to do exactly what you propose live north of I-80 and east of I-39. They did not even read your OP-ED, nor will they. Even if they did, they are "represented" by the biggest problems in the IL Legislature and have little incentive to change the Legislators that conduct business as usual for Chicago area Legislators beholding to Daley and his Democrat machine. "
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