(Photo courtesy www.ilga.gov)
By Eric Stock
MAHOMET – State lawmakers are hardly taking a victory lap over passing an 11th hour stop-gap budget just to get through the next six months, but a Central Illinois legislator said there’s one area where lawmakers can take pride.
State Sen. Chapin Rose, R-Mahomet, said lawmakers didn’t cave to the demands of Chicago Public Schools whose pleas for a bailout, he said, didn’t get in the way of an agreement.
“By holding firm, as painful as that’s been, we could finally get Chicago to a position where they realize they weren’t going to get bailed out yet again,” Rose said. “That’s a huge, huge cultural change.”
Chicago teachers would get $215 million in pension payments, but that’s only if lawmakers agree to pension reform.
“If there’s no pension reform, then there’s no pension parity,” Rose said. “This is like saying ‘Sure I’ll give you guys 20 cents if you’ll save me a dollar. It’s good for the taxpayers of the state of Illinois.”
Chicago will be allowed to raise property taxes to help cover teacher pensions, which could be tricky after the city raised property taxes close to $600 million last year.
Eric Stock can be reached at eric.stock@cumulus.com.
