Standard and Poor's has downgraded the credit rating for Illinois
from "A" to "A-," and with the negative outlook, the state now has the dubious distinction of having the worst credit rating in the nation. (California also has a rating of A- but is taking some steps to fix the budget, giving it a "neutral to positive" outlook.)
What I find interesting, though, is that people are finallystarting to recognize the core problem:
“Our problem in Illinois is that we have not substantively and fairly addressed the state public pension issue.”
Rutherford points to Governor Quinn and the democratically controlled general assembly for making matters worse in the last two years– raising taxes but not acting on pension reform.
“This problem didn’t come along just now it’s been accumulating for actually decades. Each time the governor set a deadline and didn’t meet it there was some negative reaction,” he said.
“It’s become quite evident to me that the general assembly has not registered what these negative impacts are to be enough to cause a change in the public pensions.”
Rutherford says reform should come in the form of new cost of living adjustments and sliding healthcare costs based on pension income, all of which is a hard sell in Springfield– but would put the state back on better financial ground.
Yep. "Entitlements."
Forget Social security, Medicaid, and even health care. The next bomb that is going to drop is public pensions. Few states are doing anything at all about it, and none are doing enough.
Onward and upward,
airforce
