SPRINGFIELD  —  When environmental activists half-heartedly chanted “shame” as an Illinois legislative panel gave the first approval to high-volume hydraulic fracturing regulations, they were speaking as much to other green groups as they were to lawmakers.

NO, NO, NO: Anti-fracking green groups want no drilling in Ilinois.

State lawmakers are ready to fast track legislation that would regulate, and welcome, oil and gas drilling companies in Illinois.

It seems the only fight surrounding fracking in Illinois now is between environmental groups that have turned on each other.

Jen Walling, executive director of the Illinois Environmental Council, told lawmakers the state’s mainstream green groups signed on to the proposed regulations to make sure Illinois had something on the books when oil and gas drillers came to southern Illinois.

This plan “is a bill that can be fairly characterized as the most comprehensive fracturing legislation in the nation,” Walling said Tuesday.

Walling was quick to add that Illinois allows hydraulic fracturing in the state, but there few, if any, regulations for drilling companies.

“While we speak in support of (this legislation), the environmental community is not endorsing high volume, horizontal hydraulic fracturing nor are we encouraging it,” Walling said. “This legislation does not open the gates to hydraulic fracturing in Illinois, the gates are already open.”

But it’s thoughts like that which have other environmental activists accusing Walling and the Environmental Council of selling out.

SELL OUTS: Steingrabber has few good words for Illinois’ mainstream green groups.

Sandra Steingraber, an environmentalist from New York, said Illinois’ mainstream green groups were co-opted by lawmakers and the oil and gas industry.

Steingraber accused Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan of ramming through “a deal to bring complicit environmental groups into a closed room” and force a compromise.

Madigan’s office told lawmakers the agreement on fracking regulations came after months of talks between oil and gas drillers, green groups, labor unions and southern Illinois lawmakers.

Out of state, small and unorganized environmental groups were left out of the discussions. Those groups still want a ban, or at least a moratorium, on drilling in southern Illinois.

Tabitha Tripp is one of the activists who made the trip from her home in southern Illinois to protest the legislative movement on fracking.

“My 7-year-old daughter came up to me and she said ‘Mommy, what are we going to do. If our well goes bad how am I going to shower? How are we going to water our garden? How am I going to take a bath?‘,” Tripp told lawmakers.

Southern Illinois state Rep. John Bradley, D-Marion, let his frustration show when he countered that there is no way he would lead the negotiations to bring an industry to Illinois that could threaten anyone’s children.

“I live in southern Illinois. I drink the water in southern Illinois. My children drink the water in southern Illinois. … Our first and foremost effort in every negotiation was … we are going to protect the ground water in southern Illinois,” Bradley said.

The second benefit, Bradley added, is as many as 50,000 jobs that could come to southern Illinois where unemployment is among the highest in the state.

“We are going to give this industry an opportunity to develop in a responsible manner, and create jobs and economic development for our area,” Bradley said.

Illinois’ statewide unemployment rate is 9.5 percent, 2 percentage points higher than the national rate.

“Finally, we are seeing some progress on this important issue,” said Vic Ritter, mayor of Herrin. “This legislation will go a long way toward helping putting people to work in a part of the state that badly needs jobs.”

Bradley led the fracking legislation to a unanimous vote in a House committee Tuesday, and he is expected to deliver the legislation to Gov. Pat Quinn before lawmakers wrap-up their work at the end of the month.

Contact Benjamin Yount at Ben@IllinoisWatchdog.org and find him on Twitter @ILWatchdog.

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SPRINGFIELD  —  Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn is either the king of coincidences, or likes to hire failed Democrats.

A handful of Illinois Republican state senators say it is obviously the latter.

CRONY OR QUALIFIED: GOP says Gill is latest crony hire for Quinn.

The latest case, the GOP group said, is Dr. David Gill, the newly appointed assistant director for the Illinois Department of Public Health.

“This is a person, Dr. David Gill, who has run for Congress four times, and was talking about running for a fifth time,” said state Sen. Darin LaHood, R-Peoria. “Then about a week later, Dr. Gill was named by Gov. Quinn to this position.”

That appointment came, perhaps too coincidentally, the same day that Metro East Democratic judge Anne Callis quit her job to run for congressional seat Gill had failed to win.

“On the one hand you have the appointment. The same day, we have an announcement (in which someone who) would have been a primary opponent…is now a candidate,” added state Sen. Jason Barickman, R-Champaign.

Barickman said Quinn and Gill need to appear before the Illinois Senate and answer some questions.

“I’d like to know whether the governor and Dr. Gill had any conversations about his interest in running for Congress,” Barickman asked. “And whether the governor had any opinion on that.”

Quinn’s spokesman, Grant Klinzman, did not answer any of Barickman’s questions or provide insight into how Gill landed his appointment.

“Dr. Gill is an emergency room doctor with strong background in public health,” Klinzman wrote in response to Illinois Watchdog’s questions. “He is well-versed in the Affordable Care Act and he understands the challenges of our health care system.”

The Illinois Department of Public Health also brushed off questions about Gill and the governor.

But Gill is certainly not the first Democrat to find a new job with the Quinn administration in strange circumstances.

The governor appointed former state lawmakers Julie Hamos to the top job at Illinois’ health care department. Former state Rep. Careen Gordon wound up with a state job after she voted for the governor’s income tax increase in 2011, as did former lawmaker Mike Smith, who also voted with the governor.

“This is just another (example) of folks who have failed politically and got an appointment by this governor,” said Sen. Sam McCann, R-Carlinville.

McCann said Gill’s appointment is particularly galling because Democratic lawmakers will not schedule a confirmation hearing before the end of the spring session.

Gill can serve in his $127,000 a year job until the Senate confirms him, which has to happen within 60 legislative days. But since Illinois has a part-time legislature those 60 days are not up until next spring.

“Essentially he will be sitting there for a year,” Sen. Darin LaHood said. “It will be late March or early April before we ever get to question Dr. Gill.”

LaHood is quick to point out that by April of next year Gill will have missed his chance to be a candidate. Illinois voters will go to the polls during a March primary.

LaHood is also worried about the political message that sends to other Democrats, including some still in the state legislature.

“It’s a case of ‘if you are a good solider for the Democrats, there is going to be a landing for you somewhere in state government,’” LaHood added.

Contact Benjamin Yount at Ben@IllinoisWatchdog.org and find him on Twitter @ILWatchdog.

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SPRINGFIELD  —  When Illinois’ top public universities say they will gladly pay more of the pension costs for their employees, what they really is mean is that students are going to pay millions of dollars more in tuition and fees.

University of Illinois President James Easter and Southern Illinois University President Glenn Poshard told state lawmakers Thursday their schools would rather assume part of the pension costs than lose more state and federal funding.

STUDENTS WILL PAY: SIU’s Poshard says students will foot the bill for pension reform.

“We’re willing to do whatever it takes,” Poshard told lawmakers. “This issue is the single greatest issue threatening our people over the long haul.”

Notice he said “our people”, not “our students.”

Poshard, and the U of I’s Easter, have made it clear — the universities will charge students for any new pension costs the schools inherit from the state.

“We have a category, that’s quite large, of individuals who are supported through ancillary functions like dormitories, athletic programs and so forth. We expect that those payments would be covered by fees, rent to dormitory rooms, etc.,”Easter said, adding that tuition would be increased to cover the pension costs for university professors.

Tuition at the University of Illinois costs nearly $12,000 a year. Fees, room and board, and other expenses push the annual total to more than $24,000. Tuition, fees, room and board at SIU costs nearly $17,000 a year, according to Poshard.

Both of those totals will rise.

Easter told lawmakers the U of I will have to raise $5 million a year from tuition hikes to cover the .5-percent the schools will have to pay each year in additional pension costs. Poshard said SIU’s pension payment will jump $3 million a year.

The state of Illinois pays 11 percent of the pension costs for colleges and universities. The proposed cost shift would have schools pick-up those costs over 22 years, starting next summer.

GOTTA PAY: The U of I’s Easter says universities have to offer public pensions.

The schools don’t seem likely to trim pension benefits. Easter said the University of Illinois has to continue offering generous publicly funded pensions in order to keep its professors.

“Last week, one of our key faculty members … sent us notice that he was leaving to go to another state,” Easter told lawmakers. “I asked him why … his comment was ‘I have 10 years left in my career, I have to get to a place where I have a stable pension.”

But it is not just professors who are in line for taxpayer-supported retirements. Earlier this year, the U of I gave support workers a pay increase that puts janitors and cooks in line for a $34,000 a year salary and guaranteed pension.

SIU’s Poshard said his school has let hundreds of jobs go unfilled rather than trim the pension benefits of university workers.

Illinois wants to stop paying future pension costs for non-state employees. But the universities are just a small portion of the state’s nearly $8 billion annual pension payment.

Democratic Speaker of the House Mike Madigan has told local elementary and high schools that they, also, are going to have to pay their own pension costs. That plan, however, has run into significant opposition.

Madigan said he will host one more pension cost shift hearing, next week, then expects a vote on legislation before the General Assembly wraps up its spring session May 31.

Contact Benjamin Yount at Ben@IllinoisWatchdog.org and find him on Twitter @ILWatchdog.

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SPRINGFIELD — Illinois’ largest public employee union is no longer excited about the future of Obamacare.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Wednesday let it slip that he plans to move retired city of Chicago workers from a city-funded

FOR YOU, NOT US: AFSCME loved Obamacare when they didn’t have to enroll.

health care system to President Obama’s national health-care system.

“This uncertainty will cause anxiety and fear for tens of thousands of seniors who gave their working lives to public service,” Henry Bayer, American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees Council 31 executive director, told the Chicago Tribune on Wednesday.

“Our union will be working to get answers to our many questions … and to protect access to affordable health care for city retirees now and in the future,” Bayer added.

Uncertainty and anxiety. Not exactly the words national AFSCME President Lee Saunders used to describe Obamacare last year.

“We will work at the state level to ensure that as many Americans as possible will receive the coverage they deserve,” Saunders said in June. “States should take advantage of the incentives in Obamacare and move forward to implement this far-reaching reform.”

AFSCME spokesman Anders Lindall said the union is concerned about how Emamnuel is using Obamacare.

“The Affordable Care Act is meant to make health care more affordable and more accessible. It is not intended to relieve employers— the city of Chicago or anyone else — of their responsibility to their employees or retirees,” Lindall said.

Ben Domenech, a research fellow at the Heartland Institute, said Emanuel is simply following the union’s advice, and taking advantage of Obamacare.

“Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s decision to shift retirees from their existing systems and onto Obamacare is a perfectly rational move, and an illustration of the decisions employers across the country will face in the coming years,” Domech said. “When it comes to employer dumping, Rahm Emanuel is just ahead of the curve.”

NO SALE: Chicago FOP’s Dougherty can’t sell Obamcare to police union.

But Chicago’s Fraternal Order of Police did speak about its new concerns.

“There have been some positive things that have come out of Obamacare,” FOP vice president Bill Dougherty said as he pointed to expanded coverage for veterans. “But I don’t know what (the impact on police officers) will be.”

Dougherty said he won’t recommend Obamacare to rank-and-file officers in Chicago because no one knows whether Congress will tweak or repeal the new national health-care system.

“You can’t sell something to your members that you don’t even know about yourself,” Dougherty added.

The Emanuel administration said the city needs to move retired city workers to Obamacare to save money.

The Chicago Tribune reports Chicago spent $109 million on retiree health care for nearly 37,000 retired workers. By 2023, those numbers are expected to skyrocket to $541 million to provide care for 47,000 retirees and their families.

Emanuel has been quiet about a health-care plan, but his spokeswoman, Kathleen Strand, said in a statement that Chicago must act to control costs.

“The retirement healthcare system as it stands today is fiscally unsustainable, and we have a responsibility to ensure a secure financial

GOTTA CHANGE: Chicago’s mayor looks to Obamacare to save money.

path for Chicago taxpayers,” Strand told the Tribune.

Police officers and firefighters who retire at 55 but are not yet eligible for Medicare would not be forced to move to Obamacare because of union contracts.

Workers who retired from the city of Chicago before 1989 would also be exempt from the move to Obamacare because of a legal settlement.

Dougherty expects the courts to weigh-in on Emanuel’s move, as well. Chicago and its retirees have been battling over the cost of retiree health-care since the 1980s.

Contact Benjamin Yount at Ben@IllinoisWatchdog.org and find him on Twitter @ILWatchdog.

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SPRINGFIELD —  Illinois is going to use the carrot and not the stick to get oil and gas companies to hire local, union workers if and when the drillers come to the state.

TALKING POINTS: A poster projecting job and economic growth related to “fracking” is used by lawmakers while answering questions from reporters recently in Illinois,

A new agreement reached Wednesday at the statehouse that sets rules for high-volume hydraulic fracturing has the backing of organized labor, including the Operating Engineers Local 150, which had been holding up Illinois’ proposed fracking regulations.

Ed Maher, communications director for the Operating Engineers Local 150, did not offer any specifics or explanation about the agreement that brought the union on-board.

“Local 150 has been among the parties involved in negotiations toward providing incentives for hydraulic fracturing firms to utilize Illinois’ skilled workforce,” was all Maher would say in an email.

Maher did say the local union is satisfied with the new deal.

Mark Denzeler, vice president for the Illinois Manufacturers Association, said the deal will offer “incentives” to oil and gas drillers to hire “local” workers.

“We finally reached this agreement whereby companies can get a small tax incentive for hiring a certain percentage of Illinois workers,” Denzler explained.

Almost every other major union in the state was on board with Illinois’ original fracking legislation months ago.

Hydraulic fracturing is a process that uses water or other liquid to fracture underground rock formations to tap oil and natural gas that previously was too expensive, or too difficult, to access.

Denzler said the new agreement also wipes away some lingering doubts from Illinois’ most prominent environmental groups.

“It got down to how do you define high-volume,hydraulic fracturing?” Denzler said. “So went spent a couple of weeks ironing out a compromise.”

FRACK ZONE: Southern IL could see boom from fracking.

The new definition zeroes-in on the amount of water or fluid a drilling company can use to be considered high-volume hydraulic fracturers. Environmental groups wanted to ensure e that smaller fracking operations were held to the same reporting requirements as larger operators.

Denzler said the environmental protections in Illinois’ fracking regulations are “the most comprehensive hydraulic fracturing practices in the country.”

Brad Richards, president of the Illinois Oil and Gas Association, said he hopes Illinois now can move quickly to approve the fracking legislation.

“The industry is ready and willing to explore and produce in Illinois under the negotiated agreement,” Richard added.

The Illinois House could vote as early as this week on the proposal to regulate and tax the emerging industry.

Illinois lawmakers have just three weeks left in their spring legislative session.

FINALLY ON-BOARD: Operating engineers got what they wanted from fracking deal.

Gov. Pat Quinn has not weighed in on the new fracking agreement, but in the past has said fracking could bring many badly needed jobs to Illinois.

Fracking supporters say as many 50,000 jobs could be created in the state.

Listen to the full interview with the IMA’s Mark Denzler: Denzler on Fracking

Contact Benjamin Yount at Ben@IllinoisWatchdog.org and find him on Twitter @ILWatchdog.

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JUST $6 BILLION: IDOT says only 25 percent of road money went to state government.

SPRINGFIELD — The Illinois Department of Transportation is disputing an audit report that says less than half of state road money is being used as intended.

The department disputes the percentage, saying 25 percent of the state’s road fund was spent on other parts of state government.

Paris Ervin, IDOT spokeswoman, said a calculation that “less than half” of the road money went to building roads fails to tell the entire story.

“Approximately 75 percent of the road fund is spent on IDOT expenses, which includes safety, snow plowing, road safety programs, such as seat belt enforcement, construction maintenance,” Ervin said in an email.

llinois Auditor General William Holland released the report Tuesday.

Over the past decade, it says, Illinois used the road fund to pay for pensions, employee health care, workers compensation claims and salaries of state troopers and bureaucrats in other parts of state government.

“In eight of the last ten fiscal years, less than half of road fund expenditures went for direct road construction costs,” the report says.

Ervin did say 25 percent of the road fund’s $25 billion, about $6.2 billion, was spent on other parts of Illinois’ sprawling state government.

Since Gov. Pat Quinn took office in 2011, she said, state government has limited its extra-curricular use of road fund money.

But the AG’s report shows less than half the dollars from the road fund went to building roads in 2011 and 2012.

If the cash was not going toward new roads, then where was it going?

CREDIT CARD: IL’s road money went to pay for employee health care.

The audit says millions of dollars went to prop-up Illinois’ employee health care system and the state’s workers’ compensation fund.

“Auditors estimated that the total overpayment by the road fund for group health insurance in FY10 and FY11 was approximately $156.6 million,” the report states.

Illinois’ employee health care system is deeply in debt; the state owes nearly $1 billion for past due bills and has struggled to pay the cost for covering nearly 30,000 state workers.

The road fund was also used for Illinois’ much maligned workers’ compensation system.

The state took $54 million more than it should have from the road fund from 2010 to 2012 and sent it to the workers’ comp system, the audit says, and in 2011 the fund paid nearly $51 million of the total $87 million in Illinois’ workers’ compensation system.

State Sen. Bill Brady, R-Bloomington, said the audit makes it clear Illinois has used the road fund like a credit card.

WHAT I THOUGHT: Brady feared road money was being taken, now it must stop.

“The audit has confirmed my suspicions that the majority of revenue in the Road Fund has been used for purposes other than road construction,” Brady said.

IDOT has not said how — or if — it would stop state government from raiding the road fund.

Brady said Illinois has to live within its means.

“Ensuring a strong physical infrastructure is an integral part of putting Illinois back on track,” Brady added. “And the only way we can do that is to make sure that these funds are actually being used for their intended purpose.”

Contact Benjamin Yount at Ben@IllinoisWatchdog.org and find him on Twitter @BenYount.

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SPRINGFIELD — Illinois has a little less than a year to figure out how not to lose $1 billion.

The state is in the midst of a massive Medicaid shift, moving people from hospital emergency rooms to doctor’s offices as part of

CAN’T LOSE: IL cannot afford to lose $1 billion for Medicaid.

managed care.

Half of Illinois’ 2.7 million Medicaid patients must be enrolled in some kind of managed care plan — an HMO or the like — by Jan 1, 2015. Some 18,000 people are now enrolled in a trial program.

But as Illinois moves millions of people into managed care, the state could lose $1 billion in federal money.

“Because of the way we pay hospitals in Illinois … more and more payments (that now go to) to hospitals will be paid to managed-care companies,” said Kelly Jakubek, a spokeswoman for Illinois’ Department of Health Care and Family Services.

As hospitals are paid less, she said, less money is available from the federal government through the Medicaid match.

So, as Illinois looks to save money my moving patients out of hospitals, the state could, in turn, lose money from Washington D.C.

Maryjane Wurth, president of Illinois Hospital Association, said hospitals in Illinois support Medicaid reform, but she is wary of moving too quickly.

“Let’s make sure we know what (the) appropriate approach is, before we jeopardize $1 billion in federal savings,” Wurth told state lawmakers last week.

Illinois has worried for months about a collision involving managed care and hospitals.

NEXT YEAR: Steans says IL has a little time to figure out how to keep $1 billion for Medicaid.

Earlier this spring, Illinois HFS chief Julie Hamos told lawmakers the funding questions surrounding the shift to managed care are a “train wreck” Illinois must avoid.

State Sen. Heather Steans, D-Chicago, said Illinois probably won’t deal with that metaphorical crash this year.

“I don’t think it’s something legislators need to do right now, with just three weeks of session left,” Stean said. “This is nothing that is urgent right now.”

Steans said the Medicaid funding questions will become urgent in 2014, but she hopes to have a solution by then.

Wurth’s solution would have local hospitals transition to some type of managed-care service.

“Instead of being the caboose, that’s trying to jump on the train of traditional (managed care), we actually move to the front of the train,” Wurth said.

Steans said that could happen, and points to other states that approach their own Medicaid funding formula differently.

With $1 billion on the line, Stearns said, hospitals are not as quick to embrace managed care as are lawmakers and Illinois’ health-care managers.

“A lot of providers get worried about managed care,” Steans said.

Need proof? Just look back a few years to see how hospitals fought to stop Illinois’ first attempt at managed care.

“Moving from fee-for-service to managed care is how we’ll stabilize our budget,” Jakubek said. “Illinois is one of the last states to use fee-for-service, and we believe that’s what is driving up our costs and drying up the budget.”

Illinois spends $17 billion on Medicaid every year, and Washington, D.C. returns $10 billion of that, including the $1 billion the hospitals are worried about losing.

Contact Benjamin Yount at Ben@IllinoisWatchdog.org and find him on Twitter @IlWatchdog.

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ST. LOUIS — The tea party is gaining some unlikely allies in its clash with the Internal Revenue Service.

Two U.S. senators, Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Dick Durbin of Illinois, both Democrats, had harsh words Monday over the agency’s special tax scrutiny of conservative groups.

IRS: High-ranking officials likely knew more about scrutiny of conservative groups than they admit.

The IRS admitted last week that some employees unfairly targeted about two dozen tea party groups across the United States, requiring those applying for 501(c)(3) or 501 (c)(4) tax-exempt status to disclose membership lists, associations, videos of rallies and more.

Following a ceremony Monday honoring federal law enforcement officials at the Eagleton Federal Courthouse in St. Louis, McCaskill told the media that high-level IRS employees should be canned.

“Anyone who was in a position of responsibility that knew this very un-American activity was going on should be fired,” said McCaskill, a target of the tea party during the 2012 elections.

The IRS blamed low-level employees in its Cincinnati office for the malfeasance, but documents that surfaced Monday reveal knowledge of the targeting went much higher.

U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, provided information based on discussions with the inspector general’s office investigating the case showing that acting IRS chief Steven Miller was briefed on the practice on May 3, 2012, when he was deputy commissioner.

That sparked a sharp-tongued response from Rep. Dave Camp, R-Michigan, who chairs the House Ways and Means Committee.

“It is almost inconceivable to imagine that top officials at the IRS knew conservative groups were being targeted but chose to willfully mislead the Committee’s investigation into this practice,” he said in a statement.

That committee will hold a hearing on the issue Friday, and Miller is expected to testify.

Documents from the House Ways and Means Committee that surfaced Monday indicate the scrutiny goes back at least two years and that the head of the IRS Exempt Organizations division, Lois Lerner, knew her agents were targeting tea party groups and did not disclose that fact to the committee during two meetings. That committee was investigating the issue after receiving complaints from tea party groups.

“It is absolutely unacceptable to single out any political group — right, left or center,” Durbin said. “It goes back to the worst days of the Richard Nixon administration.”

McCaskill said she hopes Democrats and Republicans in Congress will come together to hold those people responsible for the targeting accountable.

“You can’t pick out who you’re going to apply the law to based on who they are, who they know or what they believe,” she said. “Not in America.”

Jeannine Huskey, organizer of the Show-Me State-based Eureka Tea Party, said her group was not affected because it didn’t receive enough donations to apply for nonprofit status. The Eureka organization had about 500 members at its peak prior to the 2012 presidential election, but is now largely inactive.

She said the scrutiny may have dissuaded other tea party groups from applying with the IRS.

“It’s terrible,” Huskey told Missouri Watchdog. “I think it scared away a lot of groups from starting the process.”

There’s been no indication that top officials in the Obama administration knew about the IRS’ activities, and the president said Monday that the agency should be “held fully accountable.”

“If in fact IRS personnel engaged in the kind of practices that have been reported on and were intentionally targeting conservative groups, then that’s outrageous. And there’s no place for it,” Obama told reporters.

The Senate Finance Committee announced Monday it will join other congressional committees investigating the issue.

Contact Johnny Kampis at johnny@missouriwatchdog.org.  For more Missouri Watchdog updates, visit Facebook and Twitter, or sign up for our free newsletter with investigative reports and breaking news alerts.

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SPRINGFIELD — By now, parents and homeowners across Illinois have been told taxes would increase should lawmakers require local schools pay for teacher retirements.

The numbers tell a different story.

Taxpayers pay 90 percent of the retirement costs for local teachers, even though the teachers are considered

GET READY: Madigan says local schools will pay for local teacher retirements in IL.

local district employees.

Illinois’ teachers’ retirement tab next year will hit $2.7 billion. The teachers’ retirement costs are also the largest chunk of Illinois’ unfunded pension debt, nearly $52 billion of the $130 billion owed.

But House Speaker Mike Madigan, D-Chicago, made it clear during a hearing Thursday that local schools, as well as community colleges and universities, would not be held responsible for any of the $130 billion Illinois owes its five pension systems.

“We’ve always said that the state will remain liable for the unfunded liability,” Madigan told a group of local school officials at the statehouse hearing.

The speaker has not yet disclosed details of how a shift in pension costs would work. But if Madigan is assuming that the state will pay down the $130 billion in past costs, schools would pay only for future pension costs.

“That’s 3.7 percent of a school’s total spending,” Ted Dabrowski, vice president of Policy at the Illinois Policy Institute. “That’s not an overly burdensome number.”

NO TAX HIKE: Dabrowski says if schools look for savings, tax hikes aren’t needed.

Dabrowski said schools will be quick to threaten worst-case scenarios to avoid trimming spending.

“Whenever there is a problem it’s, ‘We’re going to cut art and music and raise class sizes,’” Dabrowski said. “It’s never, ‘We’re going to look to right-size spending.’”

Brent Clark, executive director of the Illinois Association of School Administrators, is, like many school leaders, wary of a cost shift.

If lawmakers would give local schools more local control over their budgets, Clark intimated, then schools could afford to pay for their own pensions costs.

“(If you would let districts) determine which mandates best serve that district, and which ones don’t, then you would give that district freedom to allocate resources toward programs or paying some pension obligation that they don’t have,” Clark said.

And Clark was quick to point out that if local schools are going to have to pay for local teacher retirements, the schools should also be able to set those retirement benefits.

“If the school district … becomes the employer, then they have a majority say in what that benefit package is going to be,” Clark told lawmakers.

Dabrowski said that’s fair.

“Small businesses have to compete on salary and benefits, school districts should have to compete as well,” Dabrowksi said. “As long as they are locally funded, why not?”

Dabrowksi said all of the talk of imminent tax hikes obscures one of the biggest benefits of a pension cost shift.

“Local taxpayers would care more if they know about, and have to pay, the true cost of pensions,” Dabrowksi said, “(particularly) if schools continue to do what they do and hit up local taxpayers for more money.”

Madigan has not said what the costs of a pension cost shift will be, only that local schools need to set money aside now.

“This is going to happen,” Madigan said. “There will be a new plan where employers and local school districts will pay the pension costs for the teachers.”

More details are expected at a second cost shift hearing next week in the Capitol.

Contact Benjamin Yount at Ben@IllinoisWatchdog.org and find him on Twitter @BenYount

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SPRINGFIELD — Who should pay the cost of retirement for public school teachers, the state or the district?

On Thursday, House Speaker Mike Madigan, D-Chicago, will host a meeting for Thursday at the Illinois Capitol here to begin discussions on shifting the costs of public pensions to local districts.

LET’S TALK: Madigan wants to discuss the possibility of having school districts pay teacher pension costs.

“It’s clear the free lunch enjoyed by suburban and downstate elementary and secondary school districts and state community colleges and universities has exacerbated the state’s pension crisis and is not sustainable,” Madigan said in a statement Tuesday. “The practice of state taxpayers paying the pensions of non-state workers should come to an end as soon as possible.”

The state of Illinois pays close to 90 percent of the tab for local teachers’ pensions. In the previous budget that came to $2.7 billion. The Teachers’ Retirement System is the largest of Illinois’ five pensions systems and has the largest unfunded gap, nearly $50 billion.

But moving the burden to local districts could be crushing, one state advocacy group says. But there could be a solution, they say.

Jessica Handy, policy director for the education advocacy group Stand for Children, said if the state would pay for everything that it owes for public education, then it would be not be a problem for some schools to pay for their teachers’ pensions.

“We have incredible disparities within our school systems, and general state aid is the one funding mechanism that is fighting that,” Handy said.

Illinois’ general state aid is a per-pupil formula that is supposed to guarantee some state help for all schools. The plan also works to ensure that schools with smaller tax bases are not left behind.

ANOTHER SOLUTION: Handy’s Stand for Children Illinois is looking for other solutions.

Illinois’ fiscal crisis, perpetuated by the sky-rocketing costs of public pensions, has forced the state to slash education funding. Schools receive about 80 percent of the general state aid promised by lawmakers.

But education cuts go deeper than just per-pupil money. Illinois has taken a hatchet to funding for school buses, special education and many special project grants.

Gov. Pat Quinn’s proposed budget would cut another $400 million from public schools next year.

Illinois’ pension payment will increase $1 billion next year, to a total annual payment of nearly $8 billion.

Handy said Illinois cannot shift the cost of pensions and walk away. She said the state must reinvest money that would have gone to pensions back into the classroom.

Handy’s group is pushing a map that she says shows 26 of Illinois’ 102 counties would lose under a cost shift. But that means the majority of Illinois counties could see their schools helped if the state paid for classroom education and not teacher retirement.

“The districts with high property wealth and low poverty counts would prefer to have money (go to pensions),” Handy said. “The districts with high poverty counts and low levels of property wealth would be better if they took that money in general state aid.”

Chicago, where local taxpayers pick-up the costs for teacher retirement, and a huge swaths of southern, eastern and western Illinois, would benefit from a cost shift according to Stand for Children’s map. The Chicago suburbs and many mid-sized downstate counties look like losers on the map.

Senate Republican Leader Christine Radogno, from suburban Lemont, is quick to say that pension costs and even general state aid are just part of the education funding picture in Illinois.

“The argument is also made that downstate and suburban communities are getting a free lunch when the state makes its pension payments, while Chicago pays its own,” Radogno added. “However, with data provided by the State Board of Education, we came to the unavoidable conclusion that it is Chicago Public Schools that receive a disproportionate share of state school funding.”

Chicago receives millions of dollars in poverty grants and that other schools do not.

Radogno said a cost shift “would add insult to injury to downstate and suburban school districts and their property taxpayers.”

Many school groups in Illinois have fought the notion of a cost shift, but none returned calls for comment.

Contact Benjamin Yount at Ben@IllinoisWatchdog.org and find him on Twitter @ILWatchdog.

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