Working for Illinois Caucus

As Illinois lawmakers prepare for discussions on topics like energy and transit funding during the second week of the fall veto session, 84th District State Rep. Stephanie Kifowit says she wants to see effective discussion and hopefully action on the state’s tier 2 pension program.

Kifowit. who is on the House’s Pensions and Personnel Committee and chairs a pension appropriations committee, says lawmakers will need to address the tier 2 pension system after the topic was not finalized during the spring session.

"Our tier two pensions fail federal law, and so we need to fix it because our pensions is a Social Security replacement plan. So those that are in the pensions do not get Social Security, and thus is why we are subsequently failing the law with regards to the Social Security replacement plan. So we are working with regards to that."

Kifowit also says energy has been a major talking point for discussions during veto session, as one major sticking point is creating storage for renewable forms of energy like wind and solar.

"We have a lot of renewables, which is good, but we also don’t have quite the amount of storage to be able to store the energy that the renewables, the wind, and the solar produce. And so we definitely need to look at the storage bill. So we are looking at that in veto, potentially in veto session."…

Lawmakers are expected to begin the second week of veto session in Springfield on Tuesday.