Last week, the Illinois General Assembly passed a bill to address pension reform.

If signed by Gov. Pat Quinn, the bill will raise the retirement age for the state and local government workers and incoming teachers to 67 and put a restriction on the amount of an individuals salary that goes toward pensions.

The bill was presented, debated and voted on in fewer than 11 hours Wednesday, with a vote of 92-17 in the House and 48-6 in the Senate.

While the overall consensus of the General Assembly seemed to be in favor of the reform, members from the University Professionals of Illinois thought the decision was reached within a hasty timetable.

“I think it was an undemocratic railroad job of the worst sort,” said John Allison, president of the Eastern chapter of the UPI. “Rep. Michael Madigan provided no opportunity for members of the public to weed out the serious draw backs of this legislation. But even the members who voted no, barely had time to read the complete legislation before the vote.”

Ellie Sullivan, the president of UPI, Local 4100, said more people should have been involved to produce a better result.

“I think there are cost savings that could have been done, working with the legislature we could have arrived at them, but unfortunately that is not how it ended up,” Sullivan said.

Within the bill, in order for any incoming teacher after Jan. 1 to reap full retirement benefits, he or she would have to work until age 67 and until age 62 to receive partial benefits.

This will raise the required retirement age higher than any other in the Midwest, Sullivan said.

“We will be down on the list of pensions as far as benefits for possible employees, people look at that when they are looking for a job, so it is something we need to be concerned about,” Sullivan said.

President Bill Perry said the adjustments to state pension will help reduce the future obligation of the state, but in the short term the university could see consequences.

“It will make us less competitive with other states, and we do recruit nationally for faculty, staff and administration,” Perry said.

Allison also said Eastern will have difficulty attracting and retaining high quality staff and faculty.

“If you know that you are coming to teach at a public state school that has the highest age requirement for retirement in the U.S., that could influence a person not to come,” Allison said.

Overall, Perry said any action the state takes to reduce their deficit is a step in the right direction, but Sullivan and Allison said this is not the appropriate reform the pension system needed.

In addition to the retirement requirement, any amount made over $106,800 cannot be put toward an individual’s pension.

Currently, after retirement, pension cost-of-living is 3 percent. If this goes into effect this would be capped at half the inflation rate, or 3 percent, whichever is less, based on the starting pension amount. This would not be compounded after every year.

“As one of my colleagues put it, upon retirement, you are invited to disappear from the planet because over time you simply won’t have enough money to live on because you will be losing constantly to inflation,” Allison said.

Now the employees would be losing buying power every year from the moment they retire, Sullivan said.

“I think a more measured and inclusive review of pensions would have been infinitely better and everybody needed to be talking about it, I think this was a very hasty decision,” Sullivan said.

While retirement and pension seems like a theme too far in the future for most college students, Sullivan and Allison agreed it is something students should pay attention to.

“Any person who is intending to enter the profession of teaching, particularly in public education, will have to live under the terms of this legislation if this legislation isn’t overturned or improved in some way,” Allison said. “What it means is that a person who, after all, is not making a whole lot of money over a career, will look forward to a very stingy retirement package, and that retirement package, itself, will become worse over time because of this reduction in the cost of living.”

Sullivan said the quality of teachers within education will fuel the state’s economic growth, but cutting in this area will not allow this to happen.

“I feel we cannot afford to lose quality education in the state of Illinois and in order to maintain the quality within our programs they need to be properly funded, and I’m not just talking about pensions here,” Sullivan said. “Unless we find a way to do that, programs will suffer and the pension is just a part of that. We need to properly fund education in Illinois and that has to be a high priority.”

Kayleigh Zyskowski can be reached at 581-7942 or kzyskowski@eiu.edu.