Illinois financial troubles started far earlier than 1998.....

Illinois financial troubles started far earlier than 1998.....

Four crucial decisions were made during Gov. Jim Thompson’s tenure (1977-1991) that we’re still feeling today: 1) 3 percent compounded pension COLA; 2) Exemption of retirement income from the state income tax; 3) Exemption of food and medicine from the state sales tax; 4) Reduced overall state support for K-12.


Gov. Jim Edgar (tenure 1991-1999) passed a bill to make the pension payments, but he backloaded the schedule until after he was safely out of office. Edgar famously left George Ryan with a billion-dollar surplus instead of putting that into the pension funds. Ryan spent that billion dollars almost before he finished taking the oath of office.

BTW, Thompson and Edgar were Republican governors. The decisions made 40 years ago have had devastating impact on Illinois. Combined with cowardly politicians democrats and republicans alike who are afraid to make the hard decisions and we have what we have. Can the system be fixed? Sure. Will it be pain-free? Not a chance.

First step is to have people in Springfield that care more for their state than for politics.The nature of government in Illinois must change.

We must begin by ridding our state of 10's of thousands of taxing districts by elimination of "townships" for starters, consolidating services to a county level for schools and law enforcement, place pension obligation of educator/teachers retirement on the specific schools districts to fund, not all Illinois taxpayers, term limit all state elected offices, have a progressive state income tax system, have legislation that requires all businesses to payback (previous 20 years) public investments, tax abatements, etc if they choose to leave Illinois or close down.....