CHICAGO | Politics and Current Events

[sukwoo]

Originally Posted by Emprise du Lion

The majority of pensioners in Illinois are on the municipal, not state, level. Those municipalities can be allowed to go bankrupt if necessary, but even then those pensioners are not likely to get "screwed." If large level municipal bankruptcies start occurring here in Illinois, we'll likely see something similar to the grand bargain that Detroit came up with. That came with a restructuring and haircuts, but the pensioners didn't get told to take a hike. Michigan also has a similar state level constitutional amendment as Illinois does, and they managed to come up with their bargain nonetheless.

Detroit's bankruptcy left plenty of unanswered questions though, and the district courts here and the 7th Circuit might handle things differently than what happened up in Michigan. Who knows.

A lot, if not most of those municipal pensioners have pensions paid for by the state (ie school teachers.)