can in two thousand and ten three years after you retire reduce the benefits that you had otherwise joy with the health insurance coverage we feel there's a tied to contract price in other words if you if you look at an equitable of stoppel theory of simply being one way to look at what is in essence a contract you end up with the same place with the same analysis and let me just tell you what i mean in a contract you basically have to have consideration flowing from one part of the other and back to the first in equitable stoppel you need an affirmative   compensation elements provided was this package involving retirement benefits it is deferred compensation no less thanks to any pension that he gets which by the way he does it because in accept by accepting the office he was actually there first appointed not elected so if you look at it that way i think you come up with basically the same end point that you do with the collective bargaining agreements that  that employees and there were not collective bargaining agreement always and former office holders that last two categories were the plaintiffs in this case and they're the ones that prevail there seemed to be some if you look at the city in joliet case the court there concluded because their record was incomplete they couldn't make a decision whether there was something in a collective bargaining agreement situation that would change what they concluded was otherwise the appropriate which is if you as a public servant have entered into an employment arrangement with a public entity and they paid you compensation and you've given them service and they made a promise as part of a compensation package to give you a retirement benefits and you've completed your service and you've now retired your  suggest suggest states and only said do we know for sure from this record enough to say that it applies here ensor no we send it back now i think the analysis on best thing here is the following first there's argument made in the graves that all the city of k c could have changed its compensation package for current members of the city council it could have changed it perhaps while mr hiro was on the city council but the point is it didn't is just like a collective bargaining agreement they typically have two or three or five year terms you might enter employment with the city in a in the contract aids term and it runs out in contract the three years later has different provisions in it and you continue to work under contract b and c and so forth can the city course it can but the point is that your the city of k c didn't change a thing for mr niro while he was serving and by the time he reached retirement he had done his his duty he had completed project from his perspective from a contract concept point of view he has given his full consideration now if we look at the  i'm an employee i'm an office full i've been promised something i've delivered i've completed my work i've completed my work complete the man i've given my consideration the cities promised  no i think that if somebody retired with five years of service and then they changed it to six he's best she's the best no i don't think that or it could change somebody who's done everything they were called upon to do under the ordinance which were ordinances which granted them their pay their current compensation in their first stage which you work with what would be the best case for the best argument that someone who runs for office over whom the city has little or no regulatory control it's actually the opposite and he lacked it officeholder somehow becomes employee of the city simply because they receive some compensation in some benefits because they hold that life well i think that's because that's what th employees of businesses that have to have cars to perform their service that's a pretty important accoutrement of their employment but the city can change that without thinking about oh they can't because the statutes like health insurance is in the income tax code is something that you can get from an employer without a tax on your domestic relations law but we always say we don't really care what the i r s is about what's an asset position that there's not some way do that despite the distinction between equitable stoppel and it's set about limits they're really very much the same in this context identical to if we had a contract and you end up with the same question at the bottom of the page which is is th allow any relief for this guy they got caught in the middle there's a concurring opinion that with directed the legislature here or hey this isn't fair we can't apply it will stop because we're dealing with a statutory breach so  seven it is an older man any form of government has been automatic for years the plaintiffs in this case are alderman they're not employees of the city they that was just shortly before mr can here i'm about six months before mr greer went on the council now remember at the time you're going on four years of service was required participating in the way to pay their portion of the cost of coverage just like on july one of this year retired judges of our state now pay a portion of their  in many instances contractual rights that's under collective bargaining agreements but remember he's already had no collective bargaining agreement and that's significant in no contract at  the twenty five hundred people in easy did fund this one was this plan was funded by employees of the state of illinois all of the c m s people and terminal the case it is strictly limited to probably case at all not troubling to me in my position because i don't think it does is it changes the city's position all that case relates so went to the best of rights under a collective bargaining agreement and there is no dispute but that's not the case here and a collective bargaining agreement is an entirely different animal and it applies to employees employees people appointed to those positions are not employed as a boy they are not union members clearly collective bargaining agreement and the rights that tended to those people who relied on the employment rate is entirely different than any rights the alderman have to participate in insurance program there has to be an acceptance of that offer and there has to be no knowledge on the part of the offer re that the offer longer or shorter or that there's something about to happen to them if they rely upon continue insurance if they want to if they pay for it themselves there is no issue about testing in this instance the trial court was correct when it analyzed the contract when it analyzed the conduct of the of the have to write out a legislative action generally in the form of an ordinance in these cases some some extent motions that are but they have the same legal effect and there's no dispute that these are legally binding on the city so i think i come until the big decision comes up that we came up today with the point that the city can and did change these ordinances are these the programs wow as it existed at the time he retired if it changed it didn't change from four years to six years but he served more than the six years so the church the plan became more honor assigned him during the term of his being with the state that a minister to its health program keep in mind two things first of all that contract has been terminated and so the idea that maybe it could be and that could divest all of the participants and they have planned with whatever rights they have