The recent pension overhaul passed by the Illinois General Assembly is receiving criticism from university employees and administration.

The bill was passed Tuesday and signed by Gov. Pat Quinn Thursday. It includes changes to Illinois’ worst-in-the-nation pension system such as reducing or eliminating the cost-of-living adjustment or COLA, increasing minimum retirement ages and placing a cap on pensionable salaries.

“This bill will ensure retirement security for those who have faithfully contributed to the pension systems, end the squeeze on critical education and healthcare services and support economic growth,” Quinn said in a Tuesday press release.

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However, some at SIU are critical of changes they consider too extreme.

Economics professor Richard Grabowski, said the plan was a roundabout way for the state to recoup funds.

“The way it tries to solve the pension problem is through inflation, basically by eliminating the COLA (cost of living adjustment) on most of the salaries that people get in retirement,” he said. “Then rising prices will rob the value from those incomes and pass it on to the State of Illinois. This is an old trick governments have used for years and years. It is a redistribution-by-stealth.”

Professors were not the only group critical of the bill. SIU President Glenn Poshard said he and other university presidents commissioned an analysis of the law and could not support the reform.

“We decided that the changes that had been made, none of us could support the legislation because it was made to be pretty onerous on state employees and particularly universities,” Poshard said.

Steven D. Cunningham, vice president for administration at Northern Illinois University, authored the analysis. It cites concerns with the COLA and the cap on pensionable salaries as its main concern.

The university presidents and chancellors authored a letter to Quinn Dec. 2 saying these two factors were too extreme for the group to support their legislation.

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“They will adversely affect our collective ability to recruit and retain the people we need to educate the next generation of workers and entrepreneurs, provide health care for the state’s neediest citizens, and build new startup companies and create jobs through university research,” the letter said. “The bill will be detrimental to higher education in Illinois and ultimately to the overall economy of the State of Illinois.”

Grabowski agreed and said the new system would likely put a large strain on a large number of people.

“I don’t know if it will be enough to solve the pension problem, but it will dramatically affect the people involved because they’ve been operating under the assumption that the cost of living adjustment is going to be a particular number,” he said. “So all their plans now are wrong. So all the people getting ready to retire or are already retired, it’s too late to alter their decision-making and puts them in a bind.”

The constitutionality of the law is also a concern. Under the state constitution, pension benefits are guaranteed and cannot be “diminished or impaired.”

“This is definitely going to the courts,” Poshard said. “I don’t know how quickly the suits will be filed, but it will definitely be settled by the time it is enacted.”

Poshard said he it was unclear how the courts would rule on the matter.

Grabowski said he also had an alternative view of how the bill will morph in the coming years.

“Ultimately, this is going to go to a system where everyone has a defined contribution into their pension, but not a defined pension, and it will be portable meaning you will put it in a portfolio and watch your own portfolio,” he said. “And then when you leave, you take the portfolio with you. That’s where it is going to end up, and I think this is a long way around that.”