Lake County Gazette

Illinois was already on shaky financial ground before the COVID-19 pandemic and its consequential economic recession. While the over $20 billion in federal aid disbursed to the state and local governments has propped the Prairie State up during the public health crisis, policy experts say that a deeper dive into Illinois' policy structure is needed to truly solve the problem. 

Pension reform is one of the leading issues Illinois faces, which is why Wirepoint's Ted Dabrowski wondered why more gubernatorial candidates aren't talking about it. 

Three GOP hopefuls have thrown their hats in the ring so far: Sen. Darren Bailey (Louisville), former Sen. Paul Schimpf (Murphysboro) and businessman Gary Rabine. 

"You can't fix Illinois without pension reform," Dabrowski said, noting that the candidates very rarely mention pensions in their speeches if at all. "And I understand why, there's a lot of politics involved in that, but at this point if you can't honestly mention pensions as a problem and run on pension reform then you're just more of the same old, same old."

Dabrowski did give props to Bailey, the Republican senator from Xenia, who Dabrowski said is talking about pension "in the right way."

"He's talking about how it's hurting everybody and everybody's losing," Dabrowksi said, "He's actually leading on that effort where I think the other two have yet to figure it out."

According to Dabrowski, Schimpf, a former state senator, has said he doesn't want to reform the pension system. 

Population decline and the budget spiral will continue until pension reform is seriously addressed, Dabrowski said. 

"[Pensions] are destroying every city budget, every taxpayer wallet and the core services people need," Dabrowski said. 

Illinois Policy echoed the urgency for pension reform. The policy organization introduced Illinois Forward 2022, a five-year fiscal plan that includes an effort to chip away at the state's debt through pension reform.

The plan would spend more money on K-12 education and uses a more conservative revenue estimate that Pritzker's budget. 

The policy organization cautions that it's only downhill from here if reform isn't taken seriously. 

"Illinois Forward 2022 offers a five-year plan to structurally balance the budget, pay down debt and preserve funding for the most vital and impactful budget items in the long term," Illinois Policy wrote. "It would eliminate the unpaid bill backlog and create structural surpluses by fiscal year 2025."