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1 • Thursday, January 19, 2017 - The Independent
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VOL. 14 • NO. 39
WWW.THEINDEPENDENTNEWSPAPERS.COM
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lle Park District
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TAKE ONE
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2018
Taxpayers wrongly blamed for state pension crisis, report says ILLINOIS NEWS NETWORK Illinois has a massive pension problem. A new report maintains that the biggest contributor to the shortage isn’t that state taxpayers have underpaid public retirements, but politicians overpromised. In the last three decades, the five state-offered public pension systems’ benefits have increased by 1,000 percent. That’s eight times more than the income growth of the Illinoisans who are expected to pay for it. The report was released Tuesday by financial watchdog Wirepoints. President Ted Dabrowski said politicians are wrongly placing the blame on taxpayers for not paying enough. “Every time you hear the word ‘underfunding,’ there’s always the implication that taxpayers didn’t do their part and that’s the problem,” Dabrowski said. Taxpayers, the report said, have paid $24 billion more than was required by the “Edgar ramp” pension restructuring plan passed in 1996 by then Gov. Jim Edgar. If pension benefits were kept to
even double the rate of inflation over the past 30 years, state pensions would now be fully funded instead of at least $130 billion short, the Wirepoints report said. “We would not have the crisis we’re in,” Dabrowski said. “Because we’ve handed out benefits at a far faster rate, like three to four times the rate of inflation, that’s why we have the problem we have today.”
The report, authored by Dabrowski along with analyst John Klingner, profiled some of the benefits received in the negotiations with lawmakers since 1987: • Added compounding to a retiree’s 3 percent cost-of-living adjustment. That doubles a retiree’s annual pension benefits after 25 years. • Significantly increased the pension benefit formulas for the Teach-
Man, 26, dies after apparent overdose on grandmother’s floor
• Allowed spiking of end-of-career salaries. Some have insisted that Illinois isn’t taxing enough to generate the revenue to fully fund pensions. “Simply put, the Illinois tax system consistently fails to generate enough revenue to maintain the same level of public services from year to
See TAXPAYERS, Page 5
Telling stories through dance
By Dee Longfellow FOR THE BENSENVILLE INDEPENDENT
SUBMITTED PHOTO Bensenville Independent
When Salt Creek Ballet recently visited a local grade school, the students learned how to portray storybook characters through dance. Here, a group of second graders perform as ostriches from the African folk tale, The Lonely Lioness. Their dance serves to plead with the lions not to take their baby chicks.
Inside:
Police Reports......5, 6 Sports �������������������� 14 Travel...........9 and 19 Classifieds..........17-18
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According to the Bensenville Police Reports, on Tuesday, Feb. 13 at about 11:30 a.m., officers were called to an apartment located on the 300 block of York Road. Upon arrival, police said a 26-year-old male was observed lying unconscious on the floor of his grandmother’s apartment from an apparent heroin overdose. Narcan® was administrated and the subject was transported to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
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