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Committee Chair: There Is No Pension Deadline

Illinois State Capitol
Illinois Public Radio

The leader of the conference committee on Illinois pensions - which meets for the first time today (Thursday) - is already saying there's no deadline.

State Sen. Kwame Raoul (D-Chicago), chairman of a pension conference committee, says the governor has no business setting a July 9 deadline for final action if he is not going to be part of the solution.

"If the Governor has a solution that he believes absolutely can get done in two weeks, we have a hearing. The Governor is welcome to come and suggest exactly what he thinks he can get the requisite votes for."
 
The year is almost half over, and no solution has come. The House and Senate have passed contrasting bills, with the Senate flunking the House version and the House not even considering the Senate one.

The group's first meeting is today in Chicago. It includes five members of each chamber, with three of each five being Democrats.
 

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Gov. Pat Quinn has words of encouragement for the conference committee that will meet for the first time on Thursday.

The 10-member committee was Quinn's idea to break the stalemate over competing pension restructuring proposals in the General Assembly, and the governor is giving the committee a rhetorical shoe in the backside in advance of its first meeting.
 
"It's very, very important that the 10 people who've been selected by legislature come together in a conference, as is set up by law, and come up with a bill that puts it on my desk that erases the pension liability and gets full funding for our pensions. That's required, and that's what has to be done, and I expect them to do it."
 
Quinn wants the conference committee to complete its work and recommend a solution by July 9th.

The governor says the result must be a plan that wipes out an unfunded pension liability of $100 billion, probably over a period of about 30 years.

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