Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker’s (D) budget plans unveiled on Wednesday proposed to sell $2 billion of bonds to inject cash into the state’s retirement system, a tactic tried in 2003 that failed to stop the swelling pension-fund debt that’s pushed Illinois’s credit-rating to the cusp of junk, Bloomberg News reported. But his deputy governor, Dan Hynes, said that it won’t be a way for the government to shirk its annual contributions to the funds, as happened after Governor Rod Blagojevich’s record $10 billion debt sale sixteen years ago. "This time you have people who understand the devastating effects of doing what he did," said Robert Martwick, a state representative who chairs the House’s pension committee. The potential borrowing is part of a broader plan by the new governor to tackle Illinois’s $134 billion debt to its pension funds, one that also includes raising taxes and potentially handing government assets like office buildings over to the retirement system. Hynes said last week that the $2 billion would supplement Illinois’s annual contribution — not be used to cover it — in a wager that the investment earnings will reduce what the state owes.
