You don’t expect significant news to come out over the long Memorial Day weekend but that’s just what has happened in Illinois. The Illinois legislature has voted to override Gov. Rauner’s veto of a bill allowing Chicago to defer payments into and, indeed, borrow from a fund used to pay the pensions of Chicago police officers and firefighters. The Sun-Times reports:
SPRINGFIELD — Just days after Mayor Rahm Emanuel said Gov. Bruce Rauner told Chicago taxpayers to “take a hike,†Democrats delivered the same message to the governor.
In a stunning move, the Illinois House on Monday voted 72-43 to override Rauner’s veto of the Chicago police and fire pension bill that had sparked a war of words between the Republican governor and Emanuel. The action came just hours after the Illinois Senate voted 39-19 to override the bill. It will now become law.
The votes mark a significant defeat for Rauner and a big win for Emanuel, whose own top aides had acknowledged last week that overriding the veto in the House was going to be a tough battle. When it first passed, the pension bill received 66 votes in the House, five short needed for an override.
Rauner blasted the bill, which defers city payments to the pension funds, as financially irresponsible by merely kicking the can down the road. Emanuel said Rauner’s veto, if sustained, would have meant a $300 million property tax hike for city property owners, which Emanuel quickly dubbed the “Rauner Tax.â€
I’m of decidedly mixed minds on this action by the Illinois legislature. I think it was necessary but not sufficient.
Gov. Rauner is right. It is just kicking the can down the road. And in Illinois with its stagnant or shrinking tax base that alone is not a good strategy.
On the other hand burning the village (or in this case the City of Chicago) in order to save it isn’t much of a strategy, either. Chicago does need a reprieve but it needs a solution, too, and this ain’t it.
Wow.