I found these two pieces provided an interesting counterpoint. In the Wall Street Journal James Freeman reads the description of one of the posts incoming Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson just created via executive order:
The Deputy Mayor for Labor Relations is responsible for working with all City agencies and departments to foster, promote, and develop the welfare of the wage earners, job seekers, and retirees of Chicago; improve working conditions; advance opportunities for profitable employment; and assure work-related benefits and rights, including working with relevant authorities to help enforce workers’ statutory rights.
and, quoting from the Trib:
That’s a gift-wrapped present for the [Chicago Teachers Union], which probably had a big hand in its composition. It says nothing whatsoever about any obligation to protect taxpayers, homeowners, businesses or, frankly, even the democratic process. It basically says: Do what unionized workers want, find more ways to give them more of what they want, and your annual review will be just dandy. Any private sector manager, or even a private sector union leader, closely reading that language, would be shaking their head in amazement.
In fact, if you take that job description at face value, any deputy mayor pushing back on any union demand whatsoever would, in fact, be contravening what their boss says is the requirement of the job. If a union asks for something that it says “advances opportunities for profitable employment,†then the deputy mayor’s job is to immediately give it to them and think up more stuff, too. If the deputy mayor were to say, for example, we can handle a 5% raise but not 25%, such a statement would contravene their very job description.
declaims:
This gift to the Chicago Teachers Union is appalling but perhaps not surprising to Journal readers.
The other piece is a post by Bryce Hill at RealClearPolicy:
The new poll from Echelon Insights in partnership with the Illinois Policy Institute shows Illinoisans prefer pension reform 3-to-1 over tax hikes and service cuts.
Here’s the exact wording of the question: “When it comes to public-sector pensions for government workers, which of these statements do you agree with more, even if neither is exactly right? Illinois should …â€
- Amend the State Constitution to preserve retirement benefits already earned by public employees and retirees, but also allow a reduction in the benefits earned in the future by employees and allow for slower growth in retirees’ future benefits.
- Raise taxes or reduce state spending on higher education, public safety, and social services to fully fund the state’s pension obligations to government workers.
Fifty-six percent of respondents supported the pension reform position, compared with just 18% of respondents who supported tax hikes and service cuts.
With respect to Mr. Freeman’s point I believe that any thinking person knew that before Mayor Johnson was elected. It was obvious. No executive order was needed to make the determination.
With respect to the second although I think the poll’s question is a little cooked (for one thing they should have separated raising taxes from cutting services), I completely agree that public pension reform in Illinois is a dire necessity made all the more urgent by higher inflation than has been seen in decades—cost of living increments are baked into public pensions and have the force of law. It certainly isn’t surprising: Illinois voters already rejected a graduated state income tax. And we already pay among the highest taxes in the country. The reforms that should be implemented are legion including:
- We should transition from a guaranteed benefits plan to a guaranteed contribution plan. We should have done that a decade ago.
- School districts should be required for pay a larger proportion of retired teachers’ pensions. Ideally, all of it.
- The practice of “goosing” teacher pay for the last couple of years before retirement should be forbidden by law
- Either Chicago teachers should be rolled into the same plan as other Illinois school districts’ retirees or Chicago citizens should be exempted from the part of state taxes used to pay the retirements of non-Chicago retired teachers or the city should be reimbursed by the amount that Chicago overpays. The present situation is unjust.
I also think that the wages of public employees must be kept in line with the incomes of the communities they serve but that’s a slightly different subject.
But my main point is that I don’t see any straightforward way of reconciling Mayor Johnson’s goals. We’ll have an interesting test case soon. Although the Chicago Teachers Union just negotiated its contract the Chicago Federation of Police has not. The FOP didn’t support Johnson’s mayoral campaign and, as I have reported here, public safety is a key concern of Chicagoans. Although I’m not naive enough to believe there’s a straight line connection between the FOP and public safety, they’re not completely unrelated either. I think there’s a straight line relationship between the uptick in crime and decreasing number of arrests.
There’s a conflict among public safety, defunding the police, and the limits how much revenue can be extracted. I’m reminded of the faux Chinese curse: may you live in interesting times.
