Emanuel bracing for state Supreme Court to rule against pension law

The Chicago Tribune reports:

City Hall officials are bracing for an Illinois Supreme Court ruling on Thursday that could spell the end for Mayor Rahm Emanuel's attempt to restore financial health to woefully underfunded pension systems covering city workers and laborers.

At issue is a state law the mayor pushed through the General Assembly in 2014 that would require city workers and laborers to increase their retirement contributions by 2.5 percentage points — to 11 percent of their wages — in phases over five years. The law also would lower the annual cost-of-living increases for retired workers.

In exchange, the city agreed to increase its annual contributions to the pension funds by hundreds of millions of dollars a year. To come up with some of that money, Emanuel and aldermen increased fees on telephone and cellphone bills for emergency dispatch services by $1.40 a month, to $3.90, on every line billed to a city address.

Although a majority of the unions affected by the changes agreed to them, some did not, and both the opposing unions and a group of retired workers challenged the new law in court.

The math problem in Blue America. No word yet on this story from Barack Obama.