Through the years I was state representative I was often asked about the underfunding of the Teachers Retirement System.  Most, but not all the time, it came from retired teacher.

I had two answers.

The teacher salary hikes in Huntley's School District 158 have come home to roost in this year's failure of revenue to match desired spending.

The first was that the Illinois State Constitution required that pensions be paid first, that the pension was a contractual agreement and, as long as the Illinois Supreme Court members were in a similar pension system, they retired teachers should not fear that they pension should not be paid.

But, there was a second answer that involved the politics of State Aid to Education.

Perhaps because teacher union officials believed what I have written above, they always were willing to sacrifice pension funding for high State Aid to Education.

So, when the end of session negotiations occurred, the Illinois Education Association and the Chicago Teachers Union always were willing to shortchange pension funding in order to increase State Aid to Education in order to fund higher teacher salaries.

Hiking salaries of those still working (and paying dues) always trumped paying for the pensions of those not still working.

So, when passing out the blame for the pension funding mess, remember how the Democratic Party legislators–in charge of the appropriations process for 12 of my 16 years in the Illinois House of Representatives–yielded to the “higher salaries next year, we’ll worry about paying for the pension later” logic of the teachers unions.