Will County Gazette

Illinois Republican House Floor Leader Mark Batinick (R-Plainfield) feels the state is moving backward in its fight to gain control of the debilitating pension crisis.

“You’ve seen a significant increase in spending, but we're not spending any of that money on paying down our pensions,” Batinick told the Will County Gazette. “Unless we start taking the problem seriously, it’s just going to continue to grow.”

Illinois residents are now indebted for almost $250 billion in unfunded public pension liabilities, or about $18,000 per resident, easily making the state home to the highest rates in the country, according to Moody’s Investor Services. Even California, home to more than 26 million more people and a much larger local economy, owes less than Illinois at around $230 billion.

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker

“Taxes and property taxes, those are the issues I’ve been screaming about the entire time I’ve been in office,” Batinick said. “If [the Democratic supermajority] were taking this seriously enough, they would have done something about it years ago.”

The end result is that critics of the system are now sounding the alarm when it comes to the state’s mounting pension debt and asking the burning question of how much longer Illinois can meet its contribution requirements, particularly should the economy take a turn for the worse, as many have forecast.

“Without making changes, we’re just going to continue on this same path, and liability scares residents and it scares businesses,” Batinick said. “When businesses are afraid to come to a state because they’re afraid of what’s going to happen with their taxes in the future, that’s bad for residents. If we had a plan everyone could believe in, I think it would make a big difference.”