Shrinking Checks

Anyone noticed the direction gas prices are going? How about food prices? Headed north in a hurry. Now this:

• Mayor Richard Daley's administration today unveiled a plan for police and fire pension reform that would increase employee contributions as part of a package it hopes would save Chicago property taxpayers $240 million per year compared to a bill Gov. Pat Quinn signed into law earlier this month.
  
  Gene Saffold, the city's chief financial officer, said the Daley administration has not spoken to state lawmakers or labor leaders about supporting the city's alternate plan. But Saffold hopes the new General Assembly will address Daley's concerns that the new pension reform law will place an onerous burden on taxpayers with a $550 million property-tax hike beginning in 2015.
  
  The administration's proposal would raise police officers' contribution to their pension plan from 9 percent to 12 percent between 2015 and 2018, and raise firefighters' share from 9.1 percent to 12.1 percent.

And of course, more "conditions" to avoid paying the freight they should have been paying for years ago:

• The city's proposal also would require that the public safety pension systems be funded only to 80 percent rather than 90 percent of their total obligations, and extend the timeline to reach that benchmark from 30 years to 50 years.

This hole that Shortshanks has dug for Chicago just gets deeper every time you turn around. If he had been putting money where it belonged instead of using it to buy votes via shoddy construction, connected contracts, questionable grants and outright theft, the pensions would be in better shape and the taxpayers (which we all are) wouldn't be on the hook for billions.

That's the truly sick part - we're going to be bailing ourselves out via increased pension contributions from our checks along with property tax increases, raised fees and reduced services, which come out of our checks, too.