Retired citizens of
Illinois who dedicated their lives by working for the state are
disappointed. The State made a promise
to those people who began their career back in the 1960's and 70's. That promise stated if you agree to work at a
lower salary than most of the other states in comparable jobs, to work in the
positions that take care of people with developmental disabilities, guard
prisoners, administer countless programs built to improve the lives of those in
poverty, make sure the court system in Illinois administers justice for each
citizen, lead orphaned children through the maze of foster care, looking after
the requirements of service providers to furnish the highest quality of
services to Elder adults, build and repair highways, implement policies
generated by the administrations, and obey the laws established by the
lawmakers, then the lower salaries paid will be compensated by the state
providing the cost of insurance during your retirement.
The Illinois Speaker of the
House who put forth the Bill said, "We have no contract" with those
people. I believe that says it all. We didn't have a contract; what we had was a
promise. What we had was a promise with
politicians.
This article is not meant
to decry the loss of the retiree benefit of state-paid health insurance. Most reasonably prudent people realize the
state is hopelessly in debt and will need to do something to right the ship
before it sinks entirely. The current
group of retirees are those people who were born in the 1940s and 1950s who were
born to a generation of parents who were called the "Greatest
Generation." We have been labeled
as "War Babies" or the "Baby Boomer" generations. We learned from our parents not only that we
should love God and country, but we learned our responsibilities for family,
neighbor and our community exceptionalism that drives us to dependence on God
and each other as well as our own self-reliance. By-and-large the majority of current state
Retirees will grumble, but move on, pick themselves up and make the best of it
just like our parents taught us to do.
So, again, this article is not meant to complain about the loss of the
insurance specifically.
It is meant to sound a
warning. A warning that something far
more important has been lost along the way...integrity "the quality of
possessing and steadfastly adhering to high moral principles or professional
standards." We are in this
financial mess because of past plundering of taxpayer resources and actions of
those few, or more than a few, who have seen the open troughs of public monies
and have apparently engaged in a feeding frenzy for themselves and their
friends. "Earmarks" they have
called them, "pork-barrel" is another name we have heard over the
years. Programs, tax-breaks, incentives,
lavish life-styles; all at the public expense.
People who have won elective offices, some of whom, over the years who
have been granted that voter-public trust and given fair salaries for their
service, have somehow found ways to leave their office as millionaires. We have shaken our heads and wondered how
that had happened. For evidence of
misuse we need not look any further than two federal prisons where former State
of Illinois governors sit incarcerated for trashing the public trust.
Now, although this is a
problem we face in Illinois, we can see it is a problem throughout the nation
as well. So for everyone in America I
say, "Take heed"!
This warning is meant for
the ears of the generations who belong to our posterity: take heed what politician's promises mean as
you look at the final outcomes of those promises made in the past. Examine closely not only the promises, but
the integrity of the person who makes that promise. Today's politicians, as aptly pointed out by
the Illinois Speaker of the House, work only from "contracts" because
the promises made are readily broken.
Jim Killebrew
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