Call 888-412-6570 or CLICK HERE to be connected to your legislators' offices. This only takes minutes to do.
Tell them to oppose the Leaders’ Pension Plan and any other plan not supported by the IEA and the We Are One Illinois union coalition.
After calling, you can also click here to send an e-mail to your state senator and state representative to urge them to oppose this extreme plan.
Please read the following fact sheet for more information: We Are One IL - Fact Sheet on Leaders' Plan
2014 NUEA Scholarship Application
Cutting Benefits Won't Fix State's Pension Crisis
If you want to believe that "unaffordable" pension benefits promised to public-sector workers in Illinois like teachers and social workers caused the state's outsized, $83 billion unfunded pension liability, stop reading now. This column will only make your head hurt by disproving that canard with facts. If instead you'd rather understand both the true cause of that underfunding and how it actually strains the state's budget, then by all means continue reading.
How does the state's COLA proposal affect you?
COLA stands for Cost of Living Adjustment, and it is generally awarded to those earning pensions, including Social Security, every year, in parallel with increases in the CPI (Consumer Price Index). This allows retirees to hold the same relative purchasing power throughout their retirement. The graph below shows the state's current proposal. Notice how a typical retiree stands to lose over $700,000 cumulatively if the COLA is reduced to 1.5% and NOT compounded. Not to mention that any reduction in state worker benefits is a clear violation of the Illinois constitution.
For comparison, this chart represents the COLA percentages awarded to Social Security recipients over the last 35 years. Note that the average COLA is 4.17% per year (not 1.5%).
Justice DiVito's letter to Quinn - Read Illinois Appellate Justice Gino DiVito's letter to Gov. Quinn. In his letter, DiVito analyzes the law, including the Pension Protection Clause in the constitution, past cases that have attempted to circumnavigate the law, and the possibility of Quinn's proposal actually succeeding if challenged in court. Spoiler alert: His findings are wonderfully refreshing.
We are IEA (Commercial):
About TRS Pensions: Please inform yourself, your friends, and your legislators about the truth about teacher's pensions in Illinois.
Did you know that TRS pensions are only 4.2% of the FY2012 state budget? Did you know that TRS paid $4.5 billion in benefits this year, but revenue totaled $10.5 billion? Clearly, TRS is sustainable! If you only download one fact sheet, this is the one! Send this fact sheet to everyone you know, and tell the state to stop using TRS as the state's credit card and start paying their obligation to Illinois teachers!