Opinion ID: 2103506
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Public v. Private Nature of the Questions

Text: Both issues above are questions of a public nature. Public Act 87-838, the Second Emergency Budget Act, as I detail later, amended several existing enactments in order to free revenue to balance the State budget. The amendments do not merely affect participants and beneficiaries of the State-funded pension systems. The possibility of other like challenges by affected individuals and entities across the State speaks to the public nature of the challenge to the act on the whole. As for the transfer, it was accomplished through legislation tailored by the General Assembly to empower the Governor to use funds from the systems to balance the State budget. The concern is whether, in that effort, there was disregard for other constitutional provisions. Questions involving the constitutional propriety of legislative action and executive authority, particularly those which touch on the financial affairs of an entire State, have long been recognized as reasons justifying the public interest exception. See 132 A.L.R. at 1190 (collecting cases). But perhaps most significant is the simple fact that the pension systems now stand $21 million poorer after the transfer. Given the systems' precarious financial healtha fact, much later noted, about which this court is well awarethe public interest is underscored by this truth: the tax-paying citizenry of this State will bear the eventual burden of bailing out the systems from insolvency, an outcome made all the more predictable by such legislative maneuvering. It would be no small burden. The annual report of all State pension funds shows that, as of June 1993, there were 282,555 active members and 111, 119 benefit recipients. Those numbers do not even reflect inactive members, that is, persons, not yet retired, owed pension fund benefits as a result of former membership, but who have not sought distribution.