Illinois Unfunded Liabilities Mess

Just in way of a not so sublte reminder, we present these numbers for your perusal:

Teacher's Retirement System $21,989,800,000
State Employees System $8,810,500,000
State Universities Retirement System $6,999,700,000
Judges Retirement System $671,600,000
General Assembly Retirement System $129,600,000
Total Unfunded Liability $38,601,200,000

Media attention has been focused upon these underfunded systems for which the State is responsible for making contributions. However, there are several other publicly funded systems not accounted for in the above which municipalities and counties fund. Here are their unfunded amounts:

Chicago Police $3,101,300,000
Chicago Fire $1,610,900,000
Cook County Employees $2,750,000,000
Chicago Municipal Employees $2,465,400,000
Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund $2,154,200,000
Downstate Police $1,921,800,000
Downstate Fire $1,114,900,000
Metropolitan Water Reclamation District $416,600,000
Cook County Forest Preserve District $158,800,000
Chicago Park District $128,300,000
Chicago Laborers $24,600,000
Chicago Teachers $1,713,500,000
Total Unfunded Liability $17,560,300,000

We've highlighted those applicable to Woodford County. All of these pension systems together carry a cumulative cost of $56,161,500,000 in unfunded liability. In other words, these public pension systems have over 56 billion dollars in obligations for which no money has yet been set aside. To put this into perspective, the Governor's proposed FY 2007 budget calls for 45.4 billion dollars in spending; total!