Preckwinkle: Property Tax Hike On The Table For County Pension Reform
By Chuck Sudo in News on Apr 10, 2014 9:00PM
Pension reform is on the minds of Illinois politicians and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle is no exception. Preckwinkle, mindful of dire warnings from rating agencies whose credit assessments of local governments can make it easier or harder to borrow money, said she’s making progress on a pension reform plan and hopes to introduce it to the Illinois General Assembly by the end of April.
In a sign of the times even the normally pragmatic Preckwinkle’s pension reform plan will require more payments into pensions by county employees, raise the retirement age for workers and cut cost-of-living adjustments for retirees. Sources told the Tribune the county would pay an additional $144 million annually into the underfunded pensions starting in 2016. Preckwinkle, however, isn’t certain where the revenue streams will come from. Although the final plan that will be sent to Springfield will not have a property tax hike written into it, Preckwinkle said the possibility of one is still on the table.
“We’ve been fairly creative over the last three years in finding revenue sources and in looking at ways we can run the government more efficiently, and we’ve done that keeping our commitment to eliminate the rest of the sales tax.”
Preckwinkle told the Sun-Times her administration will need to get creative if they hope to come up with a pension reform plan that appeases unions, lawmakers and the credit agencies that keep a watchful eye on Cook County and Chicago.
“We’ve escaped the draconian downgrades the city has suffered. But we . . . were told by the rating agencies that if we don’t get some pension reform done this session, we’ll be facing additional downgrades,” Preckwinkle said.
Preckwinkle has also avoided, thus far, criticism from labor groups regarding her plan, as opposed to Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s plan which recently passed the state Legislature and is awaiting action from Gov. Pat Quinn to become law.
“Some (unions) were positive. I think more were toward the neutral end,” she said. “But we’ll see what happens. We have two weeks to put our plan together and get it down to Springfield to have a reasonable chance of passing it this session.”