•July 20, 2016•

By Jim Nowlan
NP Guest Columnist

A thoughtful friend of mine has an idea that would fully fund Illinois pension obligations—and save more than $2 billion a year in annual state spending.

The State of Illinois will appropriate $9 billion this year, and each year far into the future, for pension funding. This is fully 28 percent of all state general funds revenue of about $32 billion!

Much of this $9 billion is an attempt to “catch up” in pension reserves.

My friend David Eisenman would spend just $6.74 billion.

Policy analyst Eisenman of Champaign has degrees in physics from Harvard and the University of Illinois. As a young man, he served in the initial, and highly respected, Illinois Bureau of the Budget, created by Gov. Richard B. Ogilvie (1969-72).

Background: Over the years, our state has faithfully paid the pensions promised to its retirees.

Illinois has been faulted, however, for failing to set aside an investment nest egg (pension reserve) that would by itself be large enough to fund all future pension promises made to current and past employees.     Login or Subscribe to read the rest of this story.