Daily Herald April 9, 2008
Pat Devaney, a Champaign firefighter, is legislative representative for the Associated Fire Fighters of Illinois.
If you listen to the angst coming from the Northwest Municipal Conference, you'll be led to believe that Illinois firefighters are trying to gobble up the last taxpayer dime, like some Pac-Man gorging his way through a maze of electronic dots. You'd be right to listen, but you'd be incorrect to believe everything the municipal officials may say.
Recently the municipal conference, which is comprised of local government officials from northwest suburban Chicago, painted a grim financial picture for municipalities. At the core of this gloomy portrait, so say the mayors and village board presidents, is their inability to keep up with growing pension demands from their firefighters.
For the record, the Associated Fire Fighters of Illinois went into this year's legislative session in Springfield armed with a pension reform package. More importantly, the package we introduced in the General Assembly contains no requests for increases in benefits for our members. Rather, we have put forth legislation that addresses the financial concerns voiced by municipalities not just in the northwest suburbs, but statewide.
First, the AFFI seeks the approval to expand our pension fund investment opportunities so that our investments might realize greater financial returns. Our objective is to allow our pension contributions from firefighters to work harder for the pension funds. The more investment income we can generate for the pension funds, the less of a burden there will be on taxpayers.
Second -- and this is where it gets a little complicated --the AFFI is supporting legislation that would require municipal governments to utilize a standardized actuarial method to establish the local governments' share of the pension contribution.
One of the problems inherent in our current system is that local governments have the power to hire independent actuaries to determine the municipality's contribution to public safety employee pension funds. As a result, many local governments are responsible for the same irresponsible approach to funding public employee pensions as the federal government's approach to funding Social Security.
Simply put, they have been deferring pension contributions in the hope that new funding will someday allow them to play catch-up. Unfortunately, the game of catch-up gets more daunting each year.
It is interesting that the municipal officials' own pension system -- the Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund -- does not have the same funding shortfalls as the police and firefighter funds. The critical difference, and the reason the IMRF appears to be fully funded, is that municipal budgets rely on a single actuary statewide to determine the local government share of IMRF employee contributions.
The Associated Fire Fighters of Illinois have demonstrated a responsible and good faith effort to get to the root of our pension funding shortfalls. We have put forth sound and responsible solutions to complex and lingering problems. We have negotiated throughout this legislative session with the Illinois Municipal League in an effort to craft true pension reform.
Most importantly, we have done so without pointing fingers at anyone involved in the system.
We ask that members of the Northwest Municipal Conference approach this important issue in the same good faith and without an attempt to bend the issue to its own benefit.
Our job is to keep the taxpayers safe from harm.
And we intend to do that on as many levels as we deem necessary.
