Editorial: Two jobs left after Springfield circus

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Updated: July 8, 2011 1:58PM

The circus under the dome in the State Capitol has folded its tent, but much work remains undone.

Despite completing a state budget and making progress in key areas, most notably education and workers compensation reform, two efforts vital to the state’s long-term health demand immediate attention: public employee pension reform and a careful look by both Gov. Pat Quinn and the public at new state legislative and congressional maps.

Pension reform: With House Speaker Mike Madigan and House Republican Leader Tom Cross united this spring in a bid to rein in crippling pension costs, the odds looked good for dramatic action.

It was not to be. The public unions fought back and a proposal to reduce benefits for current employees — benefits they have not yet earned — died on Monday.

We support reducing those benefits for the good of this state and its workers. Not because employees don’t deserve them. And not because state workers and teachers haven’t faithfully contributed their share. But because the state cannot afford them.

The unfunded pension liability is now at an eye-popping $84 billion, threatening the pensions systems’ ability to pay out promised benefits and the state’s ability to pay for the most basic of services for Illinois citizens.

The proposal that died Monday, which would have dramatically reduced pension benefits and was backed by the influential Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago, went too far.

But it was on the right track.

Cross, Madigan and the Civic Committee have pledged to address some of the issues raised this spring, with a goal of moving a bill in the fall. The challenge, then, is for the unions to offer up an alternative — and it has to be more than just saying no and insisting any change to benefits would violate the State Constitution. With valid arguments on either side, the courts will ultimately decide that constitutional question.

Illinois Education Association President Ken Swanson told us this week that he’s willing to look at “increasing the [employee] contribution in some reasonable way,” but he also said any discussion must start with financial data on the pension systems that is produced by an independent source — and not the Civic Committee.

That sounds reasonable to us, and we trust the Civic Committee and state leaders will take that opening.

Redistricting: After a brief public viewing — a peek, really — the Legislature approved new boundaries for state legislative and congressional districts.

Despite changes this year that made the once-in-a-decade-remapping more open to the public, this was still a mostly partisan and closed process.

The congressional remap, for example, was released by Democrats last Friday. The public had three days to “study” the map before the House approved it on Monday.

From the get-go, Quinn has said he would only sign these maps into law if they were fair.

It’s time for him to honor that promise.

Quinn should take these maps on the road, giving the public a long and sustained chance to have their say. The Illinois Campaign for Political Reform made this suggestion to Quinn in January, and we urge him to take it.

We’ve long argued that the current mapmaking process is designed to produce highly partisan and unfair maps. The only real solution is to toss out the current system, where legislators draw the maps, and instead leave the mapmaking up to an independent commission.

The next remap is a mere 10 years away. Let’s get started now for a shot at reform by 2020.