Most Republican Wards in Chicago*
Ward Percentage Democratic voters Percentage Republican voters
41 74.3% 25.7%
42 76.3% 23.7%
43 78.8% 21.2%
38 81.1% 18.9%
45 81.4% 18.6%
Most Democratic Wards in Chicago*
Ward Percentage Democratic voters Percentage Republican voters
34 99.3% 0.7%
8 99.2% 0.8%
6 99.2% 0.8%
17 99.2% 0.8%
21 99.1% 0.9%
* based off ballots pulled during February 2010 primary election
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Monday, March 21, 2011
Rahm Emanuel nearly swept black neighborhoods in mayoral victory
Rahm Emanuel’s big victory in last month’s mayoral election was so resounding that he carried more than four out of every five precincts, according to a Chicago Sun-Times analysis that offers the first neighborhood-level look at how the mayor’s race was won.
Emanuel came out on top in 2,106 of the city’s 2,570 precincts, the analysis found.
Beyond that, it found that despite the presence in the mayoral election of former U.S. Sen. Carol Moseley Braun, who emerged as the consensus African-American candidate, nearly every majority-black precinct went for Emanuel, whose campaign got a show of support from his former boss, President Obama. That helped Emanuel win 55 percent of the votes — enough to win the mayor’s race outright and avoid a runoff.
Second-place finisher Gery Chico carried 411 precincts, while Miguel del Valle won in 52, and Braun came out on top in only one precinct.
Chico — whose paternal grandparents came from Mexico — carried heavily Mexican-American neighborhoods on the city’s Southwest Side and Southeast Side.
And Chico’s campaign promise to try to avoid cutting pension benefits for city workers in the face of severe budget problems appears to have helped deliver Beverly, Edgewater and Edison Park — each home to many police officers, firefighters and other city workers. Emanuel did not make that same campaign promise.
A cluster of largely Puerto Rican precincts helped del Valle, who was born in Puerto Rico, carry his political base of Humboldt Park. It wasn’t quite enough to win him an entire ward in the mayoral voting — but he came close.
Some nearby precincts in which Mexican Americans now outnumber Puerto Ricans went for Chico, the analysis found.
“Other than political party identification, race is the most important clue to voting,” says Dick Simpson, the former alderman who is now a political science professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Of Braun’s fourth-place showing, Simpson says that despite the common view that “people think it’s mostly because Carol Moseley Braun ran a bad campaign, it’s not clear [U.S. Rep.] Danny Davis or [state Sen. James] Meeks” — who dropped out of the campaign and supported Braun — “would have done much better.”
Simpson says of Emanuel’s ability to carry heavily black neighborhboods, “It is progress to the extent that it is not an automatic race vote. Voters are taking into account who will best take care of their needs.”
The lone precinct carried by Braun was in the Fuller Park neighborhood around 43rd Street and Wentworth Avenue on the South Side. Most of its voters live in the Minnie Riperton apartments, a Chicago Housing Authority senior citizens mid-rise complex.
Among them: David Whitehead, 71, a retiree who was a frequent — and unsuccessful — candidate for alderman and other public offices in the1980s and 1990s, including a loss in a 1996 Illinois Senate race to Obama.
Whitehead says he worked to get out the vote for Braun at the Riperton complex.
“I told people that, with my experience and what I know about these candidates . . . that Carol would be a better person,” says Whitehead.
Braun carried the precinct with 83 votes, to Emanuel’s 59.
Whitehead figures Braun would have done even better there if his old opponent hadn’t backed Emanuel.
“The president came on the TV and WVON radio saying, ‘I support Rahm Emanuel, he’s a good guy, he’s qualified,’ ” Whitehead says.
http://www.suntimes.com/4244583-417/rahm-emanuel-nearly-swept-black-neighborhoods-in-mayoral-victory.html
Emanuel came out on top in 2,106 of the city’s 2,570 precincts, the analysis found.
Beyond that, it found that despite the presence in the mayoral election of former U.S. Sen. Carol Moseley Braun, who emerged as the consensus African-American candidate, nearly every majority-black precinct went for Emanuel, whose campaign got a show of support from his former boss, President Obama. That helped Emanuel win 55 percent of the votes — enough to win the mayor’s race outright and avoid a runoff.
Second-place finisher Gery Chico carried 411 precincts, while Miguel del Valle won in 52, and Braun came out on top in only one precinct.
Chico — whose paternal grandparents came from Mexico — carried heavily Mexican-American neighborhoods on the city’s Southwest Side and Southeast Side.
And Chico’s campaign promise to try to avoid cutting pension benefits for city workers in the face of severe budget problems appears to have helped deliver Beverly, Edgewater and Edison Park — each home to many police officers, firefighters and other city workers. Emanuel did not make that same campaign promise.
A cluster of largely Puerto Rican precincts helped del Valle, who was born in Puerto Rico, carry his political base of Humboldt Park. It wasn’t quite enough to win him an entire ward in the mayoral voting — but he came close.
Some nearby precincts in which Mexican Americans now outnumber Puerto Ricans went for Chico, the analysis found.
“Other than political party identification, race is the most important clue to voting,” says Dick Simpson, the former alderman who is now a political science professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Of Braun’s fourth-place showing, Simpson says that despite the common view that “people think it’s mostly because Carol Moseley Braun ran a bad campaign, it’s not clear [U.S. Rep.] Danny Davis or [state Sen. James] Meeks” — who dropped out of the campaign and supported Braun — “would have done much better.”
Simpson says of Emanuel’s ability to carry heavily black neighborhboods, “It is progress to the extent that it is not an automatic race vote. Voters are taking into account who will best take care of their needs.”
The lone precinct carried by Braun was in the Fuller Park neighborhood around 43rd Street and Wentworth Avenue on the South Side. Most of its voters live in the Minnie Riperton apartments, a Chicago Housing Authority senior citizens mid-rise complex.
Among them: David Whitehead, 71, a retiree who was a frequent — and unsuccessful — candidate for alderman and other public offices in the1980s and 1990s, including a loss in a 1996 Illinois Senate race to Obama.
Whitehead says he worked to get out the vote for Braun at the Riperton complex.
“I told people that, with my experience and what I know about these candidates . . . that Carol would be a better person,” says Whitehead.
Braun carried the precinct with 83 votes, to Emanuel’s 59.
Whitehead figures Braun would have done even better there if his old opponent hadn’t backed Emanuel.
“The president came on the TV and WVON radio saying, ‘I support Rahm Emanuel, he’s a good guy, he’s qualified,’ ” Whitehead says.
http://www.suntimes.com/4244583-417/rahm-emanuel-nearly-swept-black-neighborhoods-in-mayoral-victory.html
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Revive Yucca Storage Facility
Before the nuclear disaster in Japan, most people probably didn't know that there is something potentially worse than a nuclear reactor core meltdown. That's the breach and exposure of containers holding hundreds of radioactive rods of spent nuclear fuel.
That's what crews are battling at the crippled Fukushima nuclear facility.
Here's why that is potentially a bigger problem than a meltdown: In the Japanese reactors — as in many U.S. reactors — the spent fuel is housed in large water-filled pools in the reactor building but outside the concrete-and-steel fortress that surrounds the reactor core.
If the core melts down, any radiation released is likely to be partly bottled up by the containment vessel.
Not so for the spent fuel pools, which often contain far more radioactive material than in the reactor. If the water that keeps those rods cool drains or boils away, the used fuel can catch fire. Result: A dangerous plume of extremely high radioactivity spewed into the air.
Obvious question: Why do nuclear plants store spent fuel that way?
Obvious answer in the U.S.: Yucca Mountain isn't open. In the 1980s, the federal government launched plans to ship nuclear waste to a storage lair carved into the mountain in Nevada and let it slowly and harmlessly decay.
But lawsuits, politics and environmental challenges stalled the project for decades.
Last year — 12 years after it was supposed to open — the Obama administration declared Yucca dead and created a panel to study "alternatives."
"We're done with Yucca," White House energy adviser Carol Browner said at the time. "We need to be looking at other alternatives."
Alternatives that, presumably, weren't in Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's backyard.
The decision to mothball Yucca was a huge mistake, and the Obama administration should recognize that in the wake of the nuclear disaster unfolding in Japan.
The storage caverns at Yucca would be 1,000 feet below the surface and 1,000 feet above the water table in the Nevada desert. They would be geologically stable. Water seepage from the surface is minimal.
Wake-up call: Illinois is home to more spent fuel rods than any other state in the nation.
The U.S. doesn't have another three decades to dither about where to store nuclear waste. Those spent fuel rods are piling up in reactors near major cities — including at the scuttled Zion nuclear power plant here. About 1,100 tons of highly radioactive spent fuel rods stand about a football field away from Lake Michigan. Another 6,100 tons are stored at other Illinois plants.
A breach of those fuel pools and a release of huge radioactive plumes could create a disaster as bad as, or worse than, Chernobyl.
In 1997, the Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island studied the worst-case toll of a spent fuel conflagration. The scary results: 101 immediate deaths in a 500-mile range, 138,000 eventual deaths, 2,170 miles of land contaminated. Estimated economic damages: $546 billion.
Until the Japanese earthquake and tsunami ruined the Fukushima reactors, the likelihood of a spent-fuel cataclysm seemed remote. No, we're not going to have a 9.0 earthquake in Zion or tsunami on Lake Michigan. But let's not mask that there is substantial risk to stalling on a central, secure storage location for the nation's spent nuclear fuel.
In the short term, America's nuclear industry can reduce risks by moving more spent fuel from reactor buildings into dry casks — sturdy concrete and steel containers nearly the size of a truck trailer — elsewhere on site.
In the long run, however, nuclear waste shouldn't be scattered near population centers across the country. It should be entombed in Yucca Mountain.
Copyright © 2011, Chicago Tribune
That's what crews are battling at the crippled Fukushima nuclear facility.
Here's why that is potentially a bigger problem than a meltdown: In the Japanese reactors — as in many U.S. reactors — the spent fuel is housed in large water-filled pools in the reactor building but outside the concrete-and-steel fortress that surrounds the reactor core.
If the core melts down, any radiation released is likely to be partly bottled up by the containment vessel.
Not so for the spent fuel pools, which often contain far more radioactive material than in the reactor. If the water that keeps those rods cool drains or boils away, the used fuel can catch fire. Result: A dangerous plume of extremely high radioactivity spewed into the air.
Obvious question: Why do nuclear plants store spent fuel that way?
Obvious answer in the U.S.: Yucca Mountain isn't open. In the 1980s, the federal government launched plans to ship nuclear waste to a storage lair carved into the mountain in Nevada and let it slowly and harmlessly decay.
But lawsuits, politics and environmental challenges stalled the project for decades.
Last year — 12 years after it was supposed to open — the Obama administration declared Yucca dead and created a panel to study "alternatives."
"We're done with Yucca," White House energy adviser Carol Browner said at the time. "We need to be looking at other alternatives."
Alternatives that, presumably, weren't in Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's backyard.
The decision to mothball Yucca was a huge mistake, and the Obama administration should recognize that in the wake of the nuclear disaster unfolding in Japan.
The storage caverns at Yucca would be 1,000 feet below the surface and 1,000 feet above the water table in the Nevada desert. They would be geologically stable. Water seepage from the surface is minimal.
Wake-up call: Illinois is home to more spent fuel rods than any other state in the nation.
The U.S. doesn't have another three decades to dither about where to store nuclear waste. Those spent fuel rods are piling up in reactors near major cities — including at the scuttled Zion nuclear power plant here. About 1,100 tons of highly radioactive spent fuel rods stand about a football field away from Lake Michigan. Another 6,100 tons are stored at other Illinois plants.
A breach of those fuel pools and a release of huge radioactive plumes could create a disaster as bad as, or worse than, Chernobyl.
In 1997, the Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island studied the worst-case toll of a spent fuel conflagration. The scary results: 101 immediate deaths in a 500-mile range, 138,000 eventual deaths, 2,170 miles of land contaminated. Estimated economic damages: $546 billion.
Until the Japanese earthquake and tsunami ruined the Fukushima reactors, the likelihood of a spent-fuel cataclysm seemed remote. No, we're not going to have a 9.0 earthquake in Zion or tsunami on Lake Michigan. But let's not mask that there is substantial risk to stalling on a central, secure storage location for the nation's spent nuclear fuel.
In the short term, America's nuclear industry can reduce risks by moving more spent fuel from reactor buildings into dry casks — sturdy concrete and steel containers nearly the size of a truck trailer — elsewhere on site.
In the long run, however, nuclear waste shouldn't be scattered near population centers across the country. It should be entombed in Yucca Mountain.
Copyright © 2011, Chicago Tribune
Friday, March 18, 2011
Blacks and Republicans
Thomas Sowell
San Francisco's irrepressible former mayor, Willie Brown, was walking along one of the city's streets when he happened to run into another former city official that he knew, James McCray.
McCray's greeting to him was "You're 10."
"What are you talking about?" Willie Brown asked.
McCray replied: "I just walked from Civic Center to Third Street and you're only the 10th black person I've seen."
That is hardly surprising. The black population of San Francisco is less than half of what it was in 1970, and it fell another 19 percent in the past decade.
A few years ago, I had a similar experience in one of the other communities further down the San Francisco peninsula. As I was bicycling down the street, I saw a black man waiting at a bus stop. As I approached him, he said, "You're the first black man I have seen around here in months!"
"It will be months more before you see another one," I replied, and we both laughed.
Actually, it was no laughing matter. Blacks are being forced out of San Francisco, and out of other communities on the San Francisco peninsula, by high housing prices.
At one time, housing prices in San Francisco were much like housing prices elsewhere in the country. But the building restrictions-- and outright bans-- resulting from the political crusades of environmentalist zealots sent housing prices skyrocketing in San Francisco, San Jose and most of the communities in between. Housing prices in these communities soared to about three times the national average.
The black population in three adjacent counties on the San Francisco peninsula is just under 3 percent of the total population in the 39 communities in those counties.
It so happens that these are counties where the voters and the officials they elect are virtually all liberal Democrats. You might be hard pressed to find similarly one-sided conservative Republican communities where blacks are such small percentages of the population.
Certainly that would be hard to find in states with a substantial total population of blacks. In California, a substantial black population has simply been forced by economics to vacate many communities near the coast and move farther inland, where the environmental zealots are not yet as strong politically, and where housing prices are therefore not yet as unaffordable.
With all the Republican politicians' laments about how overwhelmingly blacks vote for Democrats, I have yet to hear a Republican politician publicly point out the harm to blacks from such policies of the Democrats as severe housing restrictions, resulting from catering to environmental extremists.
If the Republicans did point out such things as building restrictions that make it hard for most blacks to afford housing, even in places where they once lived, they would have the Democrats at a complete disadvantage.
It would be impossible for the Democrats to deny the facts, not only in coastal California but in similar affluent strongholds of liberal Democrats around the country. Moreover, environmental zealots are such an important part of the Democrats' constituencies that Democratic politicians could not change their policies.
Although Republicans would have a strong case, none of that matters when they don't make the case in the first place. The same is true of the effects of minimum wage laws on the high rate of unemployment among black youths. Again, the facts are undeniable, and the Democrats cannot change their policy, because they are beholden to labor unions that advocate higher minimum wages.
Yet another area in which Democrats are boxed in politically is their making job protection for members of teachers' unions more important than improving education for students in the public schools. No one loses more from this policy than blacks, for many of whom education is their only chance for economic advancement.
But none of this matters so long as Republicans who want the black vote think they have to devise earmarked benefits for blacks, instead of explaining how Republicans' general principles, applied to all Americans, can do more for blacks than the Democrats' welfare state approach.
San Francisco's irrepressible former mayor, Willie Brown, was walking along one of the city's streets when he happened to run into another former city official that he knew, James McCray.
McCray's greeting to him was "You're 10."
"What are you talking about?" Willie Brown asked.
McCray replied: "I just walked from Civic Center to Third Street and you're only the 10th black person I've seen."
That is hardly surprising. The black population of San Francisco is less than half of what it was in 1970, and it fell another 19 percent in the past decade.
A few years ago, I had a similar experience in one of the other communities further down the San Francisco peninsula. As I was bicycling down the street, I saw a black man waiting at a bus stop. As I approached him, he said, "You're the first black man I have seen around here in months!"
"It will be months more before you see another one," I replied, and we both laughed.
Actually, it was no laughing matter. Blacks are being forced out of San Francisco, and out of other communities on the San Francisco peninsula, by high housing prices.
At one time, housing prices in San Francisco were much like housing prices elsewhere in the country. But the building restrictions-- and outright bans-- resulting from the political crusades of environmentalist zealots sent housing prices skyrocketing in San Francisco, San Jose and most of the communities in between. Housing prices in these communities soared to about three times the national average.
The black population in three adjacent counties on the San Francisco peninsula is just under 3 percent of the total population in the 39 communities in those counties.
It so happens that these are counties where the voters and the officials they elect are virtually all liberal Democrats. You might be hard pressed to find similarly one-sided conservative Republican communities where blacks are such small percentages of the population.
Certainly that would be hard to find in states with a substantial total population of blacks. In California, a substantial black population has simply been forced by economics to vacate many communities near the coast and move farther inland, where the environmental zealots are not yet as strong politically, and where housing prices are therefore not yet as unaffordable.
With all the Republican politicians' laments about how overwhelmingly blacks vote for Democrats, I have yet to hear a Republican politician publicly point out the harm to blacks from such policies of the Democrats as severe housing restrictions, resulting from catering to environmental extremists.
If the Republicans did point out such things as building restrictions that make it hard for most blacks to afford housing, even in places where they once lived, they would have the Democrats at a complete disadvantage.
It would be impossible for the Democrats to deny the facts, not only in coastal California but in similar affluent strongholds of liberal Democrats around the country. Moreover, environmental zealots are such an important part of the Democrats' constituencies that Democratic politicians could not change their policies.
Although Republicans would have a strong case, none of that matters when they don't make the case in the first place. The same is true of the effects of minimum wage laws on the high rate of unemployment among black youths. Again, the facts are undeniable, and the Democrats cannot change their policy, because they are beholden to labor unions that advocate higher minimum wages.
Yet another area in which Democrats are boxed in politically is their making job protection for members of teachers' unions more important than improving education for students in the public schools. No one loses more from this policy than blacks, for many of whom education is their only chance for economic advancement.
But none of this matters so long as Republicans who want the black vote think they have to devise earmarked benefits for blacks, instead of explaining how Republicans' general principles, applied to all Americans, can do more for blacks than the Democrats' welfare state approach.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
College Illinois managers say prepaid tuition fund is stable
Plan projected to have 31 percent shortfall, according to news report
By Jodi S. Cohen, Tribune reporter
Officials who manage the state's prepaid tuition program assured lawmakers Wednesday that the fund is stable despite past market losses and tuition increases that have been higher than anticipated.
The $1.12 billion fund is "healthy and in good shape," Andrew Davis, executive director of the Illinois Student Assistance Commission, said in a presentation to the House Higher Education Committee. The commission manages the College Illinois program.
About 33,000 families hold a total of 54,900 tuition contracts through the prepaid tuition program, which is advertised as a "worry-free way to pay for college." About 7,750 students this year are cashing in on their prepaid tuition benefits, with the fund paying out $47.7 million.
College Illinois officials were summoned to Springfield after a Crain's Chicago Business report that the plan is currently projected to have a 31 percent shortfall, and critics are questioning the agency's strategy to shift to more alternative, arguably riskier investments in hedge funds, real estate and private equity.
Davis was grilled at length Wednesday by Rep. Jim Durkin, R-Western Springs, who has submitted a bill calling for an audit of the fund. Durkin said he has a College Illinois contract.
"Last week I received a few phone calls from friends and an inquiry from my wife of whether we should pull the money out of the fund," Durkin said.
He told Davis he had "grave concerns" about the portfolio's increase in alternative investments and worried that families would pull their money out of the program.
Davis countered that the investments are not risky because more than 85 percent of the assets are liquid and can be turned into cash in less than one week.
But Davis acknowledged in an earlier Tribune interview that the plan's investment assumptions — based on a predicted rate of return and tuition increases — show that it could run out of cash a decade from now. If that should occur, the agency would have to ask the governor and General Assembly for a bailout, he said.
Like other investments, the plan's health can change quickly. The fund is dependent not only on market fluctuations, but also on how much Illinois' public universities raise tuition and therefore how much the fund will have to pay out as its beneficiaries attend college. The program currently predicts that University of Illinois tuition will go up 8.5 percent indefinitely — if it goes up less, the fund does better; if it goes up more, it does worse.
"We have come through a decade where tuition has gone up a lot, three times the rate of inflation," Davis said. "I don't think they can do that for another decade."
The plan was strong in 2007, when it was only 7 percent underfunded. Since then, the fund suffered market losses during the recession and as tuition went up more than predicted.
The fund's managers have changed their investment strategy, moving from having less than 2 percent in so-called alternative investments such as hedge funds to about 40 percent currently. The target is 47 percent.
Brian Battle, a director at Performance Trust Capital Partners, told the Tribune he questioned the investment strategy and doubted that the agency can get the long-term rate of return of 8.75 percent that it's predicting. The fund this fiscal year has a 14.1 percent return.
"They are underfunded and need to make up for it, so they are going to swing for the fence," Battle said. "It looks like Illinois is taking a lot of risk, and their assumptions are very aggressive."
Battle also has a personal stake, as he has a prepaid tuition contract for one of his children.
"I am concerned that the money won't be there when I need it," he said. "The other part is that I have the presumption that the state of Illinois will feel some moral obligation" to pay.
In addition to changing its investment strategy, the agency also has worked on other ways to strengthen the fund's solvency.
Families now pay significantly more for a contract, for example. An eight-semester contract for the U. of I. purchased today for a newborn costs $95,521. Five years ago, it was $41,493. Families pay different amounts depending on the age of their child and whether the contract is for the U. of I., another state four-year university or a community college.
If a student decides to attend a private university or go out of state, the plan pays a portion of the tuition based on the current mean-weighted average tuition at all Illinois public universities. Families can get their money back at any time, minus fees.
Davis said families shouldn't worry.
"In the context of what other solutions are available to people to pay for higher education … this is a safe and secure one," Davis said.
Tribune reporter Todd Wilson contributed.
jscohen@tribune.com
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/education/ct-met-college-illinois-0317-20110316,0,1639505,print.story
By Jodi S. Cohen, Tribune reporter
Officials who manage the state's prepaid tuition program assured lawmakers Wednesday that the fund is stable despite past market losses and tuition increases that have been higher than anticipated.
The $1.12 billion fund is "healthy and in good shape," Andrew Davis, executive director of the Illinois Student Assistance Commission, said in a presentation to the House Higher Education Committee. The commission manages the College Illinois program.
About 33,000 families hold a total of 54,900 tuition contracts through the prepaid tuition program, which is advertised as a "worry-free way to pay for college." About 7,750 students this year are cashing in on their prepaid tuition benefits, with the fund paying out $47.7 million.
College Illinois officials were summoned to Springfield after a Crain's Chicago Business report that the plan is currently projected to have a 31 percent shortfall, and critics are questioning the agency's strategy to shift to more alternative, arguably riskier investments in hedge funds, real estate and private equity.
Davis was grilled at length Wednesday by Rep. Jim Durkin, R-Western Springs, who has submitted a bill calling for an audit of the fund. Durkin said he has a College Illinois contract.
"Last week I received a few phone calls from friends and an inquiry from my wife of whether we should pull the money out of the fund," Durkin said.
He told Davis he had "grave concerns" about the portfolio's increase in alternative investments and worried that families would pull their money out of the program.
Davis countered that the investments are not risky because more than 85 percent of the assets are liquid and can be turned into cash in less than one week.
But Davis acknowledged in an earlier Tribune interview that the plan's investment assumptions — based on a predicted rate of return and tuition increases — show that it could run out of cash a decade from now. If that should occur, the agency would have to ask the governor and General Assembly for a bailout, he said.
Like other investments, the plan's health can change quickly. The fund is dependent not only on market fluctuations, but also on how much Illinois' public universities raise tuition and therefore how much the fund will have to pay out as its beneficiaries attend college. The program currently predicts that University of Illinois tuition will go up 8.5 percent indefinitely — if it goes up less, the fund does better; if it goes up more, it does worse.
"We have come through a decade where tuition has gone up a lot, three times the rate of inflation," Davis said. "I don't think they can do that for another decade."
The plan was strong in 2007, when it was only 7 percent underfunded. Since then, the fund suffered market losses during the recession and as tuition went up more than predicted.
The fund's managers have changed their investment strategy, moving from having less than 2 percent in so-called alternative investments such as hedge funds to about 40 percent currently. The target is 47 percent.
Brian Battle, a director at Performance Trust Capital Partners, told the Tribune he questioned the investment strategy and doubted that the agency can get the long-term rate of return of 8.75 percent that it's predicting. The fund this fiscal year has a 14.1 percent return.
"They are underfunded and need to make up for it, so they are going to swing for the fence," Battle said. "It looks like Illinois is taking a lot of risk, and their assumptions are very aggressive."
Battle also has a personal stake, as he has a prepaid tuition contract for one of his children.
"I am concerned that the money won't be there when I need it," he said. "The other part is that I have the presumption that the state of Illinois will feel some moral obligation" to pay.
In addition to changing its investment strategy, the agency also has worked on other ways to strengthen the fund's solvency.
Families now pay significantly more for a contract, for example. An eight-semester contract for the U. of I. purchased today for a newborn costs $95,521. Five years ago, it was $41,493. Families pay different amounts depending on the age of their child and whether the contract is for the U. of I., another state four-year university or a community college.
If a student decides to attend a private university or go out of state, the plan pays a portion of the tuition based on the current mean-weighted average tuition at all Illinois public universities. Families can get their money back at any time, minus fees.
Davis said families shouldn't worry.
"In the context of what other solutions are available to people to pay for higher education … this is a safe and secure one," Davis said.
Tribune reporter Todd Wilson contributed.
jscohen@tribune.com
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/education/ct-met-college-illinois-0317-20110316,0,1639505,print.story
2012 will be about Obama
By David Hill
The greatest political deception of the month must be that PowerPoint presentation — the 10-slide deck that shows the president matched against various Republicans — that is being trundled around the country for showings to audiences of Democrat fat-cats. Naturally, I haven’t been invited to view it, but I am betting that the data shared with big donors does not show the “deserves reelection” percentage earned by the president. That would scare off the faint-hearted. So, instead, the deceivers show the head-to-head results of Obama versus Michele Bachmann. I can’t believe sophisticated contributors are falling for this.
Not only is this “data-based” sleight of hand misleading about the president’s empirical prospects — the larger strategic premise is flawed. Advisers to the president’s nascent reelection campaign keep talking about where they are today versus four years ago. Worse off, they acknowledge. But then they start criticizing the Republicans for not being where the Democrats were four years ago. It’s as if they think they (and even Republicans) are going to succeed by going back to the future.
All this logic is terribly flawed. Here’s why. The contest four years ago was for an open seat. Open-seat races are about all comers and both parties. The 2012 election will be a reelection contest. It will focus narrowly on the incumbent. Has Barack Obama handled the presidency well enough to deserve reelection? Virtually all incumbents, and even a few challengers, appear to resent this one-sided nature of reelection contests. But resentment doesn’t alter the reality.
Incumbents, including Obama, react to this certainty by doubling down on opposition research. They figure they can “make it all about the challenger” with enough dirt to induce people to forget about the incumbent’s failures. Sure, if you have pictures of the challenger committing an ax murder, you might turn the tables, but the standard oppo file doesn’t hold enough garbage to transform a reelection campaign into a referendum on the challenger. Like it or not, Jim Messina and David Axelrod, this is going to be a referendum on your administration. Get used to it. Don’t take it personally, either, like some sort of martyr. All incumbents face this judgment. If Obama had only had the wisdom to get seasoned by a Senate reelection campaign before running for the White House, he would have had some experience with this truth.
The takeaway from this for Republicans presidential aspirants is not to get sucked into the Obama alternate-reality scenario. Don’t start too early. That only helps the Democrat snipers sighting their targets. Republicans also should drop delusions that this is about their own biographies, accomplishments and policies. They must keep the judgment focused on the incumbent. Sure, Republicans can do some touting of their pasts, but always highlighting how their own deeds compare and contrast with the failures of the incumbent. Keep the heat on. It’s how incumbents are toppled.
There’s an even more practical reason that Republicans cannot be goaded onto the playing field too early: money. To run a proper presidential campaign, even with a skeletal, pared-down organization, will cost at least $50,000 a day. I didn’t say a week. I said 50 grand every day, seven days a week. Multiply that goal times eight or nine candidates and you are chewing through more than $50 million just in the next six months. There’s simply not enough in the pockets of the Republican faithful to bankroll that kind of spending. Hold off.
The question about deserving reelection is not asked often enough by the public pollsters. The last time The Hill reported Obama’s results, in December, only 42 percent said he’s worth another term. That’s far more telling than Obama’s double-digit lead over Newt Gingrich or Sarah Palin in someone’s PowerPoint presentation.
David Hill is a pollster that has worked for Republican candidates and causes since 1984.
http://thehill.com/opinion/columnists/david-hill/149759-2012-will-be-about-obama
The greatest political deception of the month must be that PowerPoint presentation — the 10-slide deck that shows the president matched against various Republicans — that is being trundled around the country for showings to audiences of Democrat fat-cats. Naturally, I haven’t been invited to view it, but I am betting that the data shared with big donors does not show the “deserves reelection” percentage earned by the president. That would scare off the faint-hearted. So, instead, the deceivers show the head-to-head results of Obama versus Michele Bachmann. I can’t believe sophisticated contributors are falling for this.
Not only is this “data-based” sleight of hand misleading about the president’s empirical prospects — the larger strategic premise is flawed. Advisers to the president’s nascent reelection campaign keep talking about where they are today versus four years ago. Worse off, they acknowledge. But then they start criticizing the Republicans for not being where the Democrats were four years ago. It’s as if they think they (and even Republicans) are going to succeed by going back to the future.
All this logic is terribly flawed. Here’s why. The contest four years ago was for an open seat. Open-seat races are about all comers and both parties. The 2012 election will be a reelection contest. It will focus narrowly on the incumbent. Has Barack Obama handled the presidency well enough to deserve reelection? Virtually all incumbents, and even a few challengers, appear to resent this one-sided nature of reelection contests. But resentment doesn’t alter the reality.
Incumbents, including Obama, react to this certainty by doubling down on opposition research. They figure they can “make it all about the challenger” with enough dirt to induce people to forget about the incumbent’s failures. Sure, if you have pictures of the challenger committing an ax murder, you might turn the tables, but the standard oppo file doesn’t hold enough garbage to transform a reelection campaign into a referendum on the challenger. Like it or not, Jim Messina and David Axelrod, this is going to be a referendum on your administration. Get used to it. Don’t take it personally, either, like some sort of martyr. All incumbents face this judgment. If Obama had only had the wisdom to get seasoned by a Senate reelection campaign before running for the White House, he would have had some experience with this truth.
The takeaway from this for Republicans presidential aspirants is not to get sucked into the Obama alternate-reality scenario. Don’t start too early. That only helps the Democrat snipers sighting their targets. Republicans also should drop delusions that this is about their own biographies, accomplishments and policies. They must keep the judgment focused on the incumbent. Sure, Republicans can do some touting of their pasts, but always highlighting how their own deeds compare and contrast with the failures of the incumbent. Keep the heat on. It’s how incumbents are toppled.
There’s an even more practical reason that Republicans cannot be goaded onto the playing field too early: money. To run a proper presidential campaign, even with a skeletal, pared-down organization, will cost at least $50,000 a day. I didn’t say a week. I said 50 grand every day, seven days a week. Multiply that goal times eight or nine candidates and you are chewing through more than $50 million just in the next six months. There’s simply not enough in the pockets of the Republican faithful to bankroll that kind of spending. Hold off.
The question about deserving reelection is not asked often enough by the public pollsters. The last time The Hill reported Obama’s results, in December, only 42 percent said he’s worth another term. That’s far more telling than Obama’s double-digit lead over Newt Gingrich or Sarah Palin in someone’s PowerPoint presentation.
David Hill is a pollster that has worked for Republican candidates and causes since 1984.
http://thehill.com/opinion/columnists/david-hill/149759-2012-will-be-about-obama
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Mandatory Spending to Exceed all Federal Revenues — 50 Years Ahead of Schedule
Jeffrey H. Anderson
We have now gotten to the point — as I noted yesterday — where if national defense, interstate highways, national parks, homeland security, and all other discretionary programs somehow became absolutely free, we’d still have a budget deficit. The White House Office of Management and Budget projects that in the current fiscal year (2011), mandatory spending alone will exceed all federal receipts. So even if we didn’t spend a single cent on discretionary programs, we still wouldn’t be able to balance our budget this year — let alone pay off any of the $14 trillion in debt that we have already accumulated.
Just an Olympiad ago, in 2007, the picture was quite different. In fact, in that year, federal revenues not only exceeded mandatory spending, but they exceeded it by more than $1 trillion ($1.117 trillion, to be more exact). The next year, 2008, during which the gap fell to a still-huge $914 billion, the Bush administration released a report issuing a rather dire warning (p. 25). The report said that, “if left unchanged, mandatory spending alone is projected to exceed total projected Government receipts in approximately 50 years.” That dire prediction has now come true — about 50 years earlier than projected.
Through the years, mandatory spending has steadily increased (with some fluctuation from year to year) in relation to revenues. Here is mandatory spending as a percentage of total federal receipts, by year, according to published White House figures:
1970: roughly 33 percent
2000: 47 percent
2005: 61 percent
2010: 90 percent
2011: 101 percent
The trajectory seems clear. Meanwhile, President Obama has not proposed entitlement reform. He has, however, proposed adding a massive new entitlement: Obamacare. At the same time, the baby boomers’ retirements are looming, which means higher entitlement expenditures and a smaller proportion of the population available to finance them. In light of all of this, what do the Obama administration’s projections for mandatory spending as a percentage of total federal receipts look like, going forward? Here they are:
2012: 81 percent
2013: 73 percent
2014: 7o percent
2015: 69 percent
Seriously?
These estimates are made possible because (among other things) the Obama administration is projecting a 21 percent increase in federal receipts from 2011 to 2012. Never mind that we haven’t seen an increase like that in 40 years. In fact, the largest increase in the past 40 years has been 16 percent.
How is the Obama administration’s track record in forecasting such increases? For 2010, it projected a 9 percent increase in receipts. The actual tally was 3 percent. For 2011, it projected a 19 percent increase in receipts. Just one year later (in this year's budget), it has now modified that projection to less than 1 percent (actually, to 0.5 percent). So that’s a swing from projecting the highest increase in the past 40 years, to projecting essentially no increase at all — in just 12 months.
To tackle our very real fiscal crisis, we need serious numbers and serious leadership, not just blind hope that things will (somehow) change. Now that we are at the point where our total receipts cannot even cover our mandatory spending, entitlement reform would seem to be an obvious necessity. Yet only one house of one branch of the federal government has thus far shown any real signs of being able to see the obvious.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/print/blogs/mandatory-spending-exceed-all-federal-revenues-fiscal-year-2011_554659.html
We have now gotten to the point — as I noted yesterday — where if national defense, interstate highways, national parks, homeland security, and all other discretionary programs somehow became absolutely free, we’d still have a budget deficit. The White House Office of Management and Budget projects that in the current fiscal year (2011), mandatory spending alone will exceed all federal receipts. So even if we didn’t spend a single cent on discretionary programs, we still wouldn’t be able to balance our budget this year — let alone pay off any of the $14 trillion in debt that we have already accumulated.
Just an Olympiad ago, in 2007, the picture was quite different. In fact, in that year, federal revenues not only exceeded mandatory spending, but they exceeded it by more than $1 trillion ($1.117 trillion, to be more exact). The next year, 2008, during which the gap fell to a still-huge $914 billion, the Bush administration released a report issuing a rather dire warning (p. 25). The report said that, “if left unchanged, mandatory spending alone is projected to exceed total projected Government receipts in approximately 50 years.” That dire prediction has now come true — about 50 years earlier than projected.
Through the years, mandatory spending has steadily increased (with some fluctuation from year to year) in relation to revenues. Here is mandatory spending as a percentage of total federal receipts, by year, according to published White House figures:
1970: roughly 33 percent
2000: 47 percent
2005: 61 percent
2010: 90 percent
2011: 101 percent
The trajectory seems clear. Meanwhile, President Obama has not proposed entitlement reform. He has, however, proposed adding a massive new entitlement: Obamacare. At the same time, the baby boomers’ retirements are looming, which means higher entitlement expenditures and a smaller proportion of the population available to finance them. In light of all of this, what do the Obama administration’s projections for mandatory spending as a percentage of total federal receipts look like, going forward? Here they are:
2012: 81 percent
2013: 73 percent
2014: 7o percent
2015: 69 percent
Seriously?
These estimates are made possible because (among other things) the Obama administration is projecting a 21 percent increase in federal receipts from 2011 to 2012. Never mind that we haven’t seen an increase like that in 40 years. In fact, the largest increase in the past 40 years has been 16 percent.
How is the Obama administration’s track record in forecasting such increases? For 2010, it projected a 9 percent increase in receipts. The actual tally was 3 percent. For 2011, it projected a 19 percent increase in receipts. Just one year later (in this year's budget), it has now modified that projection to less than 1 percent (actually, to 0.5 percent). So that’s a swing from projecting the highest increase in the past 40 years, to projecting essentially no increase at all — in just 12 months.
To tackle our very real fiscal crisis, we need serious numbers and serious leadership, not just blind hope that things will (somehow) change. Now that we are at the point where our total receipts cannot even cover our mandatory spending, entitlement reform would seem to be an obvious necessity. Yet only one house of one branch of the federal government has thus far shown any real signs of being able to see the obvious.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/print/blogs/mandatory-spending-exceed-all-federal-revenues-fiscal-year-2011_554659.html
Obama the invisible
Anti-leadership amid world crises
John Podhoretz
Where is the president? The world is beset. Moammar Khadafy is moving relentlessly to crush the Libyan revolt that once promised the overthrow of one of the world's most despicable regimes.
So where is the president?
Japan may be on the verge of a disaster that dwarfs any we have yet seen. A self-governing nation like the United States needs its leader to take full measure of his position at times of crises when the path forward is no longer clear.
This is not a time for leadership; this is the time for leadership.
So where is Barack Obama?
The moment demands that he rise to the challenge of showing America and the world that he is taking the reins. How leaders act in times of unanticipated crisis, in which they do not have a formulated game plan and must instead navigate in treacherous waters, defines them.
Obama is defining himself in a way that will destroy him.
It is not merely that he isn't rising to the challenge. He is avoiding the challenge. He is Bartleby the President. He would prefer not to.
He has access to a microphone 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If he tells the broadcast networks in the middle of the day that he has a major address to deliver on an unprecedented world situation, they will cancel their programming for him.
And yet, since Friday and a press conference in which he managed to leave the American position on Libya more muddled than it was before, we have not heard his voice. Except in a radio address -- he talked about education legislation.
And he appeared at a fund-raiser in DC. And sat down with ESPN to reveal his NCAA picks.
He cannot go on like this. Niall Ferguson, the very pessimis tic economic his torian, wrote the other day that the best we can now hope for is that Obama leaves the country in the same kind of shape that Jimmy Carter left it in.
That doesn't do Obama justice. Despite how disastrously he has handled the crises of the past two months, he can still turn his presidency around on a dime.
For Obama to save himself, he should be thinking about the example of an unlikely Republican predecessor: Richard Nixon.
The multifarious crises the president now faces are eerily similar to the kinds of calamities that greeted Richard Nixon in his first term from 1969-1972. Then, as now, the world was on fire. Wars erupted between China and the Soviet Union, India and Pakistan, even El Salvador and Honduras.
Jordan was nearly taken over from within by the Palestine Liberation Organization. There were humanitarian disasters in Biafra (the result of civil war), Bangladesh (due to flooding) and Nicaragua (deadly earthquake).
There was more, much more -- including a war he inherited in Vietnam, just as Obama has the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. You get the point.
Nixon in 1968, unlike Obama 2008, was elected as a minority president with only 43 percent of the vote. Yet, in 1972, he won what, in some measures, was the most lopsided election in American history with 61 percent.
Nixon achieved it, in large measure, because he appeared to be a serious man grappling in deadly earnest with the serious problems presented to him by a world careening out of control.
He demonstrated high competency when it came to matters on the world stage. He and his team (primarily Henry Kissinger) developed coherent policies and strategies for coping with the world. There was no question, to friend or foe, that he was fully engaged, paying attention, deeply involved.
Nixon was an awful president in many ways, including in some of his foreign-policy choices. But he left no doubt that foreign policy and America's leadership in the world outside its borders was of paramount importance to him.
All this had the effect of elevating Nixon during his time in office, so that when it came to running against George McGovern in 1972, Nixon seemed like a Titan and McGovern a pipsqueak.
How Nixon conducted himself in office in times of crises made possible his triumphant re-election. Right now, how Obama is conducting himself in a time of crisis is having the opposite effect.
He began his presidency as a potential colossus -- but if he doesn't change, he will finish it as a pipsqueak. Pipsqueaks don't win second terms.
johnpodhoretz@gmail.com
Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/obama_the_invisible_Ass40MBstf15MAr9DYAORK#ixzz1GmPZCNbv
John Podhoretz
Where is the president? The world is beset. Moammar Khadafy is moving relentlessly to crush the Libyan revolt that once promised the overthrow of one of the world's most despicable regimes.
So where is the president?
Japan may be on the verge of a disaster that dwarfs any we have yet seen. A self-governing nation like the United States needs its leader to take full measure of his position at times of crises when the path forward is no longer clear.
This is not a time for leadership; this is the time for leadership.
So where is Barack Obama?
The moment demands that he rise to the challenge of showing America and the world that he is taking the reins. How leaders act in times of unanticipated crisis, in which they do not have a formulated game plan and must instead navigate in treacherous waters, defines them.
Obama is defining himself in a way that will destroy him.
It is not merely that he isn't rising to the challenge. He is avoiding the challenge. He is Bartleby the President. He would prefer not to.
He has access to a microphone 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If he tells the broadcast networks in the middle of the day that he has a major address to deliver on an unprecedented world situation, they will cancel their programming for him.
And yet, since Friday and a press conference in which he managed to leave the American position on Libya more muddled than it was before, we have not heard his voice. Except in a radio address -- he talked about education legislation.
And he appeared at a fund-raiser in DC. And sat down with ESPN to reveal his NCAA picks.
He cannot go on like this. Niall Ferguson, the very pessimis tic economic his torian, wrote the other day that the best we can now hope for is that Obama leaves the country in the same kind of shape that Jimmy Carter left it in.
That doesn't do Obama justice. Despite how disastrously he has handled the crises of the past two months, he can still turn his presidency around on a dime.
For Obama to save himself, he should be thinking about the example of an unlikely Republican predecessor: Richard Nixon.
The multifarious crises the president now faces are eerily similar to the kinds of calamities that greeted Richard Nixon in his first term from 1969-1972. Then, as now, the world was on fire. Wars erupted between China and the Soviet Union, India and Pakistan, even El Salvador and Honduras.
Jordan was nearly taken over from within by the Palestine Liberation Organization. There were humanitarian disasters in Biafra (the result of civil war), Bangladesh (due to flooding) and Nicaragua (deadly earthquake).
There was more, much more -- including a war he inherited in Vietnam, just as Obama has the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. You get the point.
Nixon in 1968, unlike Obama 2008, was elected as a minority president with only 43 percent of the vote. Yet, in 1972, he won what, in some measures, was the most lopsided election in American history with 61 percent.
Nixon achieved it, in large measure, because he appeared to be a serious man grappling in deadly earnest with the serious problems presented to him by a world careening out of control.
He demonstrated high competency when it came to matters on the world stage. He and his team (primarily Henry Kissinger) developed coherent policies and strategies for coping with the world. There was no question, to friend or foe, that he was fully engaged, paying attention, deeply involved.
Nixon was an awful president in many ways, including in some of his foreign-policy choices. But he left no doubt that foreign policy and America's leadership in the world outside its borders was of paramount importance to him.
All this had the effect of elevating Nixon during his time in office, so that when it came to running against George McGovern in 1972, Nixon seemed like a Titan and McGovern a pipsqueak.
How Nixon conducted himself in office in times of crises made possible his triumphant re-election. Right now, how Obama is conducting himself in a time of crisis is having the opposite effect.
He began his presidency as a potential colossus -- but if he doesn't change, he will finish it as a pipsqueak. Pipsqueaks don't win second terms.
johnpodhoretz@gmail.com
Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/obama_the_invisible_Ass40MBstf15MAr9DYAORK#ixzz1GmPZCNbv
Illinois Pension Crisis Eludes Easy Solutions .
By MICHAEL CORKERY
Lawmakers in Illinois say they may try to fix the state's ailing pension system by asking current workers to pay more into the plan, though the approach faces substantial legal and political obstacles.
The lawmakers are also entertaining the politically difficult idea of applying broader pension changes made this year for newly hired employees to current workers. Those include raising the retirement age and scaling back on annual cost-of-living raises.
Whatever approach is embraced, it remains unclear whether such strategies would fix the Illinois system, which is 45% funded. That makes it the most under-funded state plan in the U.S., according to Moody's Investor's Service.
The proposals come as Illinois focuses on home-grown solutions to its pension difficulties after Gov. Pat Quinn created a stir when he said in his budget proposal last month that the state may need a "federal guarantee" of its pension funds—a reference his office now says was a mistake.
"It should have been edited out," David Vaught, the governor's budget director, said in an interview. "We don't think we need a bailout."
The warning contained in the 472-page budget document raised fears that the state could go hat in hand to Washington, a scenario that some U.S. lawmakers have feared could spur other states to do the same.
Now in Illinois, talk of state-centered pension fixes has drowned out any whispers of a federal bailout.
"There is growing momentum for additional pension reform and this is something that definitely should be looked at," said Mr. Vaught.
He added that if the legislature voted to increase employee contributions in the current legislative session, Mr. Quinn, a Democrat, "would not stand in its way."
Those comments come as Michael Madigan, a Democrat and speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives, has floated the idea of cutting pension benefits for current workers.
Several states including Illinois have already made the legally and politically expedient moves of changing new-worker benefits, such as upping the retirement age. The Illinois measure for new workers will bring some near-term savings, though much of the cost reductions don't kick in until the first wave of newly hired Illinois workers retires a few decades from now.
But rolling back benefits for current workers is likely to prove more difficult.
Illinois has stringent constitutional protections for pension benefits, according to several legal experts. A recently passed bill in nearby Wisconsin requiring employees to contribute to their pensions has already spurred talk of legal challenges there. Many employees in the Wisconsin retirement system contribute nothing to their pensions. Illinois teachers now contribute as much as 9.4%.
One proposal by Republican Illinois House Minority Leader Tom Cross, to increase contributions for some workers to as much as 20%, among other measures, would save an estimated $25 billion.
Critics say these proposals will go only part way in erasing the $82 billion unfunded pensions liability that is projected to grow to $139.8 billion in 2030
The recent stock rally has helped shore up many state pension funds. but Illinois's shortfall is growing. The problem is largely the result of the state's failure for years to make actuarially recommended contributions to the fund.
"Even if you pass aggressive reform, you still have to fund the current liabilities and that is a big number," said Daniel Hankiewicz, pension manager of the state Commission on Government Forecasting & Accountability.
In the past two years, Illinois has had to borrow several billion dollars to make its required contributions to the pension system. Critics say that indicates that the state's pension benefits are simply unaffordable.
Legislative leaders have asked the commission's actuaries to calculate the savings that could come from extending some of the changes the state applied to new workers in 2010 to current workers.
Others dispute a crisis exists. The Teachers Retirement System, one of five funds in the state's pension system and which has 372,000 members, is 48% funded (actuaries typically recommend that plans be at least 80% funded). Fund administrators are not concerned about meeting annual obligations to retirees, says spokesman Dave Urbanek.
"Don't confuse the mortgage with the mortgage payment," he says. "Can I make my entire mortgage payment today, no. But I can make my monthly payments. That is the same with us. We are deeply in debt, but our heads are above water."
The issue may end up being settled in the courts. The chief legal counsel to Illinois Senate President John Cullerton, a Democrat, released a long legal memo earlier this month arguing that retirement benefits cannot be altered unilaterally by the legislature.
The Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago, a group of business leaders, asked law firm Sidley Austin LLP to look into the issue.
In a memo last year, Sidley argued that the state constitution only protects benefits that have already been accrued.
That leaves open to change benefits that will be earned through future government service, Sidley argued. The law firm has also argued in a separate memo that if the pension funds run out of money, the state does not guarantee that it will pay out benefits.
The legal memo prepared for Mr. Cullerton says the state constitution ensures pension payments will be made, even if the funds run dry.
Write to Michael Corkery at michael.corkery@wsj.com
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703566504576202893269340046.html?mod=WSJ_WSJ_US_News_5
Lawmakers in Illinois say they may try to fix the state's ailing pension system by asking current workers to pay more into the plan, though the approach faces substantial legal and political obstacles.
The lawmakers are also entertaining the politically difficult idea of applying broader pension changes made this year for newly hired employees to current workers. Those include raising the retirement age and scaling back on annual cost-of-living raises.
Whatever approach is embraced, it remains unclear whether such strategies would fix the Illinois system, which is 45% funded. That makes it the most under-funded state plan in the U.S., according to Moody's Investor's Service.
The proposals come as Illinois focuses on home-grown solutions to its pension difficulties after Gov. Pat Quinn created a stir when he said in his budget proposal last month that the state may need a "federal guarantee" of its pension funds—a reference his office now says was a mistake.
"It should have been edited out," David Vaught, the governor's budget director, said in an interview. "We don't think we need a bailout."
The warning contained in the 472-page budget document raised fears that the state could go hat in hand to Washington, a scenario that some U.S. lawmakers have feared could spur other states to do the same.
Now in Illinois, talk of state-centered pension fixes has drowned out any whispers of a federal bailout.
"There is growing momentum for additional pension reform and this is something that definitely should be looked at," said Mr. Vaught.
He added that if the legislature voted to increase employee contributions in the current legislative session, Mr. Quinn, a Democrat, "would not stand in its way."
Those comments come as Michael Madigan, a Democrat and speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives, has floated the idea of cutting pension benefits for current workers.
Several states including Illinois have already made the legally and politically expedient moves of changing new-worker benefits, such as upping the retirement age. The Illinois measure for new workers will bring some near-term savings, though much of the cost reductions don't kick in until the first wave of newly hired Illinois workers retires a few decades from now.
But rolling back benefits for current workers is likely to prove more difficult.
Illinois has stringent constitutional protections for pension benefits, according to several legal experts. A recently passed bill in nearby Wisconsin requiring employees to contribute to their pensions has already spurred talk of legal challenges there. Many employees in the Wisconsin retirement system contribute nothing to their pensions. Illinois teachers now contribute as much as 9.4%.
One proposal by Republican Illinois House Minority Leader Tom Cross, to increase contributions for some workers to as much as 20%, among other measures, would save an estimated $25 billion.
Critics say these proposals will go only part way in erasing the $82 billion unfunded pensions liability that is projected to grow to $139.8 billion in 2030
The recent stock rally has helped shore up many state pension funds. but Illinois's shortfall is growing. The problem is largely the result of the state's failure for years to make actuarially recommended contributions to the fund.
"Even if you pass aggressive reform, you still have to fund the current liabilities and that is a big number," said Daniel Hankiewicz, pension manager of the state Commission on Government Forecasting & Accountability.
In the past two years, Illinois has had to borrow several billion dollars to make its required contributions to the pension system. Critics say that indicates that the state's pension benefits are simply unaffordable.
Legislative leaders have asked the commission's actuaries to calculate the savings that could come from extending some of the changes the state applied to new workers in 2010 to current workers.
Others dispute a crisis exists. The Teachers Retirement System, one of five funds in the state's pension system and which has 372,000 members, is 48% funded (actuaries typically recommend that plans be at least 80% funded). Fund administrators are not concerned about meeting annual obligations to retirees, says spokesman Dave Urbanek.
"Don't confuse the mortgage with the mortgage payment," he says. "Can I make my entire mortgage payment today, no. But I can make my monthly payments. That is the same with us. We are deeply in debt, but our heads are above water."
The issue may end up being settled in the courts. The chief legal counsel to Illinois Senate President John Cullerton, a Democrat, released a long legal memo earlier this month arguing that retirement benefits cannot be altered unilaterally by the legislature.
The Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago, a group of business leaders, asked law firm Sidley Austin LLP to look into the issue.
In a memo last year, Sidley argued that the state constitution only protects benefits that have already been accrued.
That leaves open to change benefits that will be earned through future government service, Sidley argued. The law firm has also argued in a separate memo that if the pension funds run out of money, the state does not guarantee that it will pay out benefits.
The legal memo prepared for Mr. Cullerton says the state constitution ensures pension payments will be made, even if the funds run dry.
Write to Michael Corkery at michael.corkery@wsj.com
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703566504576202893269340046.html?mod=WSJ_WSJ_US_News_5
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Atty. general: Ill. must release FOID card list
By JOHN O'CONNOR
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — Illinois State Police stood their ground Tuesday after the state's attorney general determined the agency must disclose the names of people authorized to own guns in Illinois to comply with public records law.
Attorney General Lisa Madigan's public access counselor issued a letter Monday night rejecting state police arguments that releasing the information is an unwarranted invasion of privacy prohibited by the state public records law or that its disclosure would automatically endanger the lives of gun owners or those who don't have firearms.
State police determine who gets Firearm Owners Identification cards but have always kept the information confidential.
Despite the decree, the names likely won't be uncloaked soon. A state police lawyer indicated in a letter Tuesday the agency planned to ask a judge to decide the matter. And Republican lawmakers have filed legislation to make names permanently private.
Through the Freedom of Information Act, The Associated Press requested in September the names of each FOID cardholder in the state and the expiration date of each card. State police denied the request, prompting the public access counselor's intervention.
"The General Assembly has clearly determined that it is in the public interest to provide a system for identifying those who are qualified to acquire or possess firearms through the issuance of FOID cards," assistant public access counselor Matthew Rogina wrote. "The public, therefore, has a legitimate interest in ISP's enforcement of the FOID card act."
The attorney general indicated that addresses and telephone numbers of cardholders should remain private information.
There are more than 1.3 million Illinois FOID cardholders, state police spokesman Scott Compton said.
Media interest in the issue spurred lawmakers to action. There is Republican-sponsored legislation in both the House and Senate. Rep. Ron Stephens, R-Greenville, said his bill spells out that information about who is exercising his constitutional right to own a gun should not be made public.
"You can own a handgun, and information about whether you do or don't is private information," Stephens said. "There is no reason for anyone or any government agency to make available to you or anyone else whether I have a FOID card."
Most states, unlike Illinois, allow taxpayers to carry concealed weapons. Information was public when those laws took effect, but in the past decade, an increasing number of states -- as many as three dozen -- have put it under wraps, said Brian Malte of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.
"There should be public scrutiny on any licensing system, whether it's to own or to buy or to carry," Malte said. "The public has a right to know how well those systems are working, especially when it involves firearms."
Information about firearms -- and the state police enforcement of gun laws -- has been the subject of several AP requests during the past decade. In most cases, state police have denied disclosure.
In 2005, state police officials told the AP they were powerless to take action against a civilian ISP employee who had guns in his truck at the agency's training academy, where he threatened his estranged girlfriend, also an employee. He later shot her before turning the gun on himself.
A state police firearms official later testified in an unrelated court case that officials could have yanked the man's guns but chose not to.
Checking the administration and enforcement of gun laws by federal officials was the city of Chicago's intent when it sued in federal court in 2002. Because Illinois courts have not addressed the issue, Rogina crafted his decision by relying in part on the Chicago ruling, which found no privacy violation as the federal government had claimed.
The state police and gun-rights groups also argue that publicizing names of those with permission to own guns puts them and others at risk. Knowing who has guns means criminals know whom to burglarize, or worse, said Todd Vandermyde, Illinois lobbyist for the National Rifle Association.
"You potentially make us targets," Vandermyde said. "Or, on the inverse, you could say, 'These are the homes that don't have FOID cards so it's likely they don't have guns, so therefore they make better targets.'"
The state police made the same argument, but the attorney general dismissed it as "speculative and conclusory."
"ISP has offered no details to support its argument that disclosure of this information to the AP would result in a safety threat to any individual," Rogina wrote.
Sen. Kirk Dillard, a Hinsdale Republican sponsoring the Senate bill making FOID information private, called on state police interim director Patrick Keen not to release any information until the Legislature can act.
People who want guns but don't want their names publicized might choose not to comply at all with FOID laws, Dillard said.
"This is not about guns -- it's about privacy and public safety," Dillard said.
------
The bills are HB7 and SB27.
------
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-ap-il-gunowners-disclos,0,5686959.story
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — Illinois State Police stood their ground Tuesday after the state's attorney general determined the agency must disclose the names of people authorized to own guns in Illinois to comply with public records law.
Attorney General Lisa Madigan's public access counselor issued a letter Monday night rejecting state police arguments that releasing the information is an unwarranted invasion of privacy prohibited by the state public records law or that its disclosure would automatically endanger the lives of gun owners or those who don't have firearms.
State police determine who gets Firearm Owners Identification cards but have always kept the information confidential.
Despite the decree, the names likely won't be uncloaked soon. A state police lawyer indicated in a letter Tuesday the agency planned to ask a judge to decide the matter. And Republican lawmakers have filed legislation to make names permanently private.
Through the Freedom of Information Act, The Associated Press requested in September the names of each FOID cardholder in the state and the expiration date of each card. State police denied the request, prompting the public access counselor's intervention.
"The General Assembly has clearly determined that it is in the public interest to provide a system for identifying those who are qualified to acquire or possess firearms through the issuance of FOID cards," assistant public access counselor Matthew Rogina wrote. "The public, therefore, has a legitimate interest in ISP's enforcement of the FOID card act."
The attorney general indicated that addresses and telephone numbers of cardholders should remain private information.
There are more than 1.3 million Illinois FOID cardholders, state police spokesman Scott Compton said.
Media interest in the issue spurred lawmakers to action. There is Republican-sponsored legislation in both the House and Senate. Rep. Ron Stephens, R-Greenville, said his bill spells out that information about who is exercising his constitutional right to own a gun should not be made public.
"You can own a handgun, and information about whether you do or don't is private information," Stephens said. "There is no reason for anyone or any government agency to make available to you or anyone else whether I have a FOID card."
Most states, unlike Illinois, allow taxpayers to carry concealed weapons. Information was public when those laws took effect, but in the past decade, an increasing number of states -- as many as three dozen -- have put it under wraps, said Brian Malte of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.
"There should be public scrutiny on any licensing system, whether it's to own or to buy or to carry," Malte said. "The public has a right to know how well those systems are working, especially when it involves firearms."
Information about firearms -- and the state police enforcement of gun laws -- has been the subject of several AP requests during the past decade. In most cases, state police have denied disclosure.
In 2005, state police officials told the AP they were powerless to take action against a civilian ISP employee who had guns in his truck at the agency's training academy, where he threatened his estranged girlfriend, also an employee. He later shot her before turning the gun on himself.
A state police firearms official later testified in an unrelated court case that officials could have yanked the man's guns but chose not to.
Checking the administration and enforcement of gun laws by federal officials was the city of Chicago's intent when it sued in federal court in 2002. Because Illinois courts have not addressed the issue, Rogina crafted his decision by relying in part on the Chicago ruling, which found no privacy violation as the federal government had claimed.
The state police and gun-rights groups also argue that publicizing names of those with permission to own guns puts them and others at risk. Knowing who has guns means criminals know whom to burglarize, or worse, said Todd Vandermyde, Illinois lobbyist for the National Rifle Association.
"You potentially make us targets," Vandermyde said. "Or, on the inverse, you could say, 'These are the homes that don't have FOID cards so it's likely they don't have guns, so therefore they make better targets.'"
The state police made the same argument, but the attorney general dismissed it as "speculative and conclusory."
"ISP has offered no details to support its argument that disclosure of this information to the AP would result in a safety threat to any individual," Rogina wrote.
Sen. Kirk Dillard, a Hinsdale Republican sponsoring the Senate bill making FOID information private, called on state police interim director Patrick Keen not to release any information until the Legislature can act.
People who want guns but don't want their names publicized might choose not to comply at all with FOID laws, Dillard said.
"This is not about guns -- it's about privacy and public safety," Dillard said.
------
The bills are HB7 and SB27.
------
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-ap-il-gunowners-disclos,0,5686959.story
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)