Kendall County Times

Congressional candidate James Marter (R-Oswego) sees one of the provisions in Gov. J.B. Pritzker's recently passed budget impacting teacher pensions as emblematic of the problems in Springfield.

“I’m thoroughly disgusted with what’s going on,” Marter, past chairman of the Kendall County Republicans and current candidate for Congress in Illinois’ 14th District, told the Kendall County Times. “We have a completely unbalanced budget; there was no attempt at all to address the pension crisis, unfunded billions. We can’t continue the madness in Illinois.”

Marter views a provision in Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s recently passed state budget aimed at taking the teeth out of a law that curbs end-of-career salary spikes for retiring Teachers’ Retiring System (TRS) employees as more of the same stifling dysfunction. The law was enacted under former Gov. Bruce Rauner and the about-face under Pritzker comes at a time when TRS is reported to be at least $75 billion short of what it needs to make good on pension payouts already owed.

Former Kendall County Republican Central Committee Chairman James Marter

“You’ve got workmen’s comp driving business and jobs and people out of Illinois, and we raise taxes on the working people,” Marter said. “It’s crazy. It’s outrageous what they’re doing and they’re doing it for what I would call their 'friends-and-family program.' This is about keeping their special-interests people happy at the expense of the rest of the people of Illinois.”

The Illinois Federation of Teachers branded the reversal as “a huge win for members” on its website. Marter laments that it all comes on the backs of those who can least afford it.

“I think the people that have jobs working locally in our stores, working in small business and not getting big raises, they’re the ones that are being asked to pay for it all,” he said.

Under the new law, the last three years of a teacher’s career can once more mean raises of as much as 6 percent, paving the way for accumulated pension increases to skyrocket by as much as 24 percent over that time.

“You have to stop spending on things in Springfield that Springfield has no business spending on,” Marter said. “We have so many programs and things that the state has decided to spend money on. Then they come up and give us a line and song and dance that we’re going to get a gas tax to finally pay for roads. I want to know where the 150-percent tax increase on income went two years ago. We’re spending money all over the place and most of it is on payouts to special interests and people in the 7,000 units of government we have in Illinois.”