CHICAGO – It’s hard to morally dismiss a lawsuit filed Friday by a group of retired teachers and school administrators, seeking to block Illinois’ new pension reform law.

The state employee pension system is currently about $100 million short of meeting its future obligations to employees and retirees. The long-debated reform law, approved by the legislature and signed by Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn, is expected to result in a fully funded system by 2044 and save the state $165 billion over the next 30 years, according to TheSouthern.com.

Those are the positive aspects of the plan.

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But it will also reduce scheduled cost-of-living increases for current retirees, which is hardly fair.

A woman named Doris Heaton, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, points to a clause in the state constitution that guarantees that pension benefits will not be cut. She also notes that a lot of retirees were led to believe that it was safe to plan their golden years around the promised income, and many have done just that.

As Heaton put it, “We paid our share and so did the school board. The state is the only one that didn’t pay.” She was also correct in saying “a promise made should be a promise kept.”

Indeed, “the state’s pension crisis is the result of decades of lawmakers skipping or shorting payments. As the unfunded liability grew, so did the state’s annual payment. In 2013, that reached about $6 billion – about one-fifth of the general fund budget – and siphoned money away from schools, social services and other areas. The shortfall also caused major credit rating agencies to downgrade Illinois to the lowest credit rating of any state,” according TheSouthern.com.

So on one hand, it seems necessary to cut future benefits to maintain the financial stability of the pension system. But on the other, lots of working people thought they had good reason to count on the amount of money they were promised.

The bottom line is that the state screwed this thing up from beginning to end, by promising workers such a nice pension to start with, then failing to properly fund it.

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In all fairness, the state should find a way to make sure these people eventually receive every penny coming to them, even if some of the payments must be deferred for a time.  As the same time they should constantly remind themselves how unwise it was to promise such a lucrative pension in the first place, and how they should avoid making similar promises in the future.