Now, the mayor has no choice but to face the music.



Cook County Court Judge Rita Novak on Friday overturned the city reforms to the cheers of retired city employees who’ve been paying more and receiving less since Jan. 1.

Novak cited the “crystal-clear direction” provided by the Illinois Supreme Court and the high court’s reading of the Illinois Constitution: Membership in a government employee pension system “shall be an enforceable contractual relationship, the benefits of which shall not be diminished or impaired.”

“Here, as in the case before the Supreme Court, ‘There is simply no way that the annuity reduction provisions…can be reconciled with the rights and protections established by the people of Illinois when they ratified the Illinois Constitution of 1970 and its pension protection clause,’ ” Novak wrote.


The deal that Emanuel painstakingly negotiated with scores of union leaders raised employee contributions by 29 percent — from 8.5 percent currently to 11 percent by 2019 — and ended compounded cost-of-living adjustments for retirees ineligible for Social Security that have been a driving force behind the city’s pension crisis.
The city started collecting the higher payments on Jan. 1.

Emanuel had argued that the Chicago pension reforms were fundamentally different than the state reforms imposed “arbitrarily.”

His corporation counsel Stephen Patton further claimed that the city’s commitment to “preserve and protect” the two funds amounted to a “massive net benefit.”
But, Novak concluded that the “net benefit” theory “does not survive scrutiny” because it’s based on “several premises that are wholly inconsistent with constitutional teachings.”

“Pension benefits cannot be netted against funding schemes, regardless of any salutary outcomes they may have. To do so would render the rights guaranteed by the pension protection clause illusory. Such a result is contrary to the pension protection clause its purpose and the Supreme Court’s interpretations of it,” Novak wrote.

“It disregards the settled distinction between pension benefits, which are constitutionally protected, and funding choices, which are not . . . It fails to account for the fact that each of the ‘benefits’ that are ‘netted’ against the constitutionally protected right to pension benefits are subject to change at any time . . . The General Assembly is not free to diminish benefits even if offering increased financial stability.”