It’s the final, final, final deadline. Really.

Monday, June 24, 2013

Why does Gov. Pat Quinn keep doing this?
The General Assembly finally hands him a victory of sorts when it agreed to create a conference committee to try and draft a pension reform compromise. It was Quinn’s latest backup plan when it became obvious his Plan A — getting the Senate to approve the House reform plan — was going nowhere.
But even before the Capitol cleared out Wednesday, Quinn held a news conference setting a firm July 9 deadline for lawmakers to act. Some people are gluttons for punishment.
Quinn’s set several deadlines for lawmakers to enact pension reform, and they’ve blown through them without a second thought. Having lawmakers meet his deadlines doesn’t appear to be one of Quinn’s strong points.
Besides, in this case, it’s almost certain to fail just because of the logistics of the problem. The whole idea of the committee is to reach a compromise, which presumably means taking a piece of this plan and a piece of that plan and come up with something that can pass the General Assembly. But before any compromise gets a vote, you can be sure that lawmakers will want some proof that the changes being proposed will actually save some serious money. It can literally take weeks for numbers crunchers to run the figures on something as complex as pension reform.
News outlets can probably safely prepare their stories now about another missed Quinn pension deadline, just so they’ll be ready to go on July 9.