{"id":472421,"date":"2010-03-25T18:18:36","date_gmt":"2010-03-25T22:18:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/illinoiseducationassociation.org\/?p=6838"},"modified":"2010-03-25T18:18:36","modified_gmt":"2010-03-25T22:18:36","slug":"press-release-no-excuse-now-against-tax-boost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/472421","title":{"rendered":"Press release: No excuse now against tax boost"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-6841\" title=\"SOSLogo2112011small\" src=\"http:\/\/illinoiseducationassociation.org\/media\/SOSLogo2112011small2-300x275.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"275\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Contact:\u00a0 Charlie McBarron<\/p>\n<p>Phone:\u00a0 217\/544-0706<\/p>\n<p><strong>Educators say General Assembly out of excuses for revenue boost<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong> <\/strong><strong>March 25, 2010 \u2013 Springfield, IL \u2013 <\/strong>When the Illinois General Assembly on Wednesday passed legislation that unfairly and unnecessarily slashes pension benefits for future participants in the state pension systems, lawmakers ran out of excuses for avoiding fiscal reality.\u00a0 That\u2019s according to the leader of the state\u2019s largest education employee organization.<\/p>\n<p>Ken Swanson, president of the 133,000-member Illinois Education Association (IEA), today said the lawmakers who long insisted \u201csomething has to be done about pensions\u201d now have no excuse for opposing the tax increase needed to pay for education and state services.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEducation employees are the victims of the General Assembly and past governors, whose fiscal irresponsibility caused the state\u2019s pension and financial crises.\u00a0 That\u2019s not just my opinion; it\u2019s the opinion of Senate President John Cullerton and other legislators who admitted as much just before they voted to punish teachers and state employees for legislators\u2019 own sins,\u201d Swanson said.<\/p>\n<p>According to the IEA president, with the pension vote went the last argument against lawmakers addressing the revenue needs of the state.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo more excuses, the people of this state are demanding responsible action from the legislature and the Governor,\u201d Swanson said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe will not emerge from this recession if we lay off as many as 20,000 education employees in the next school year.\u00a0 The state needs to invest to get back on track and that means passing a meaningful revenue bill, such as HB 174, during this session.\u00a0 No more excuses,\u201d Swanson said.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"># # #<\/p>\n<p>The Illinois Education Association is a state affiliate of the 3.2-million member National Education Association.\u00a0 IEA represents more than 133,000 education employees in Illinois, including teachers, education support professionals, higher education faculty and staff, retired education employees, and students planning to become teachers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact:\u00a0 Charlie McBarron Phone:\u00a0 217\/544-0706 Educators say General Assembly out of excuses for revenue boost March 25, 2010 \u2013 Springfield, IL \u2013 When the Illinois General Assembly on Wednesday passed legislation that unfairly and unnecessarily slashes pension benefits for future participants in the state pension systems, lawmakers ran out of excuses for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4159,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-472421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4159"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=472421"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472421\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=472421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=472421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=472421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}