Re: : Illinois Supreme Court rules landmark pension law unconstitutional

The following points are very significant to counter the oft-repeated arguments of the LIC/UOI on the unaffordability: • The Pension protection clause says public employee pensions are a contractual relationship with government and benefits cannot be diminished or impaired. • The December 2013 law( now struck down) called for curbing automatic and compounded annual cost-of-living increases for retirees, extending retirement ages for current state workers and limiting the amount of salary used to figure pension benefits. • The court rejected arguments by the state that economic necessity forced curbing retirement benefits despite the constitution's pension protections. "Our economy is and has always been subject to fluctuations, sometimes very extreme fluctuations" said the judge. • But, he noted, "The law was clear that the promised benefits would therefore have to be paid and that the responsibility for providing the state's share of the necessary funding fell squarely on the legislature's shoulders. • "The General Assembly may find itself in crisis, but it is a crisis which other public pension systems managed to avoid and… it is a crisis for which the General Assembly itself is largely responsible," Karmeier( the judge) wrote. • The state Supreme Court's ruling upheld a November decision by Sangamon County Circuit Judge John Belz to strike down the law, ruling that state constitutional protections to pension benefits were "absolute and without exception," prompting the state to appeal to the high court. With greetings, C H Mahadevan >