Cross touts pension change for lawmakers

Gov. Pat Quinn and other key lawmakers are talking about saving money -- possibly lots of money -- by putting all new state employees in a different retirement system than current employees. Possible options would be to up the retirement age and end free health care in retirement.

But if it's good enough for state workers, House Republican leader Tom Cross of Oswego says it should be good enough for lawmakers too.

Cross wants to see something similar happen with lawmakers. In his plan, all the current lawmakers would stay in their current plan, arguably the most individually lucrative of all the pension plans in terms of how fast members rack up a pension and the added perks.

But freshmen lawmakers and first-time statewide office holders (who are also in the General Assembly pension plan) taking office in 2011 would instead go into the state employees plan.

Cross and I talked about this recently. Here's the Q-N-A:

Cross: What we're saying is starting in the 97th General Assembly, that we're going to eliminate the General Assembly Retirement System and they would be allowed, if they wanted, to be in the state employees system, which significantly cuts down on their ... you'd have to work 20 years to get health insurance as opposed to now you get it at four or eight years depending on your age of retirement.
So the main point is to eliminate the General Assembly pension.

Q: Why do this? What's the message you're trying to send?
Cross: Number one is the abuse needs to stop. Two, I think we as members of the General Assembly need to send a message that we should not be in the business of public service just to end up with a fancy pension when the rest of the world's not and we're supposed to be part-time employees.
Third, I think members of the General Assembly stay around a lot longer than they want to because I think they see kind of a pot at the end of the rainbow and I think this in a way is kind of an accident term limit. You shouldn't be down here saying, 'Oh I've got 10 years in, if a serve another five or another 10 I'll have a fully vested pension and allow myself to retire at age 55.' I think that may aid a little bit in this breakup of the ... longevity issues here. I may be wrong. But I think it's a component of it.

Q: Now I could see 118 reasons in the House to vote against this and 59 in the Senate. Do you seriously think that this will happen?
Cross: Here's why I think it will happen. I make it effective in the next General Assembly. Some might say if you're really serious you should eliminate them all. One, I don't think you can. I don't think you can constitutionally and legally and I think to change the rules on somebody midstream is not right. I acknowledge that I'm inline, just like everyone else, to get a pension. But I think from here on out we need to be cognizant and acknowledge this is a perk that I think is frankly a bit offensive for elected officials and I think people are a little frustrated and angry about it. If you're a sitting member of the General Assembly, I'm not so sure you have a reason to be opposed to this, it doesn't effect you.
If you didn't do it this way, it would have no chance.