Court Opinion

ID: 9734086
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 17:25:03.408668+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:45.567138
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE UNDERWOOD, dissenting: I cannot agree that the court’s interpretation of section 6 — 140 of the Illinois Pension Code (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1979, ch. IO8V2, par. 6 — 140) either reflects the intention of the legislature or promotes its goals. The court asserts that it is unnecessary to consider the phrase “current annual salary” in the context of the statutory plan because the phrase is unambiguous. That conclusion is reached by isolating this language from the balance of the statute and ignoring the inconsistent provisions appearing elsewhere therein. When a controversy, as in this case, centers on a word or phrase, it is more important to determine the sense in which that word was used by the legislature than to ascertain its primary meaning. (City of East St. Louis v. Union Electric Co. (1967), 37 Ill. 2d 537, cert. denied (1968), 390 U.S. 948, 19 L. Ed. 2d 1136, 88 S. Ct. 1034.) Accordingly, the legislature’s intent must be garnered from an examination of the entire statutory plan. See Town of the City of Peoria v. O’Connor (1981), 85 Ill. 2d 195, 203; Chastek v. Anderson (1981), 83 Ill. 2d 502, 511; Winks v. Board of Education (1979), 78 Ill. 2d 128, 135. It is apparent from an examination of article 6 of the Pension Code that the legislature has created a comprehensive scheme of security for firefighters and their dependents. An important feature of this scheme is its stability, which is an advantage to both the beneficiaries and defendant, providing the necessary security to allow sound financial planning. The court concedes that funding and reserve requirements of the system will be substantially increased by its interpretation, but says these requirements are not shown to be beyond the city’s capabilities. Whether this is so I cannot ascertain, for the record does not resolve this question. It is clear, however, that when the legislature desired in other instances to provide benefits which would increase in the future, it expressly provided financing for those benefits. (See Ill. Rev. Stat. 1979, ch. lOSVa, pars. 6 — 164, 6 — 164.1.) Those provisions, by carefully delineating the methods of financing, further evidence the legislative goal of establishing a financially stable benefits plan. See M. Gelfand, Seeking Local Government Financial Integrity Through Debt Ceilings, Tax Limitations, and Expenditure Limits: The New York City Fiscal Crisis, The Taxpayers’ Revolt, and Beyond, 63 Minn. L. Rev. 545, 567 (1979). More persuasive, perhaps, is the fact that the court’s interpretation of “current annual salary” in section 6 — 140 will, I assume, also have the same effect in the other two sections which employ that phraseology. (See Ill. Rev. Stat. 1979, ch. lOSVz, pars. 6 — 148, 6 — 149.) If so, the court is then attributing to the General Assembly an intent to create the anomalous situation in which substantially greater benefits are provided to dependent parents or children of deceased firemen who had not died in the line of duty than to firemen who became disabled as a result of job-related injuries. (Compare Ill. Rev. Stat. 1979, ch. lOSVa, pars. 6— 148, 6 — 149, with Ill. Rev. Stat. 1979, ch. lOSba, par. 6— 151.) This seemingly anomalous result simply strengthens my opinion that the fixed-benefit interpretation of section 6 — 140 urged by the agency responsible for its administration is far more harmonious with the overall statutory scheme. (Cronin v. Lindberg (1976), 66 Ill. 2d 47, 63; Adams v. Jewel Companies, Inc. (1976), 63 Ill. 2d 336, 344-45.) “ Tt must be presumed that the several statutes relating to one subject are governed by one spirit and one policy and that the legislature intended [them] to be consistent and harmonious.’ ” People ex rel. Killeen v. Kankakee School District No. 11 (1971), 48 Ill. 2d 419, 423, quoting Scofield v. Board, of Education (1952), 411 Ill. 11, 20. Admittedly, firemen are exposed to greater hazards than the average governmental employee, and persuasive arguments can be made for generous treatment of the widows of those firemen killed in the line of duty. But other municipal employees are also exposed to uncommon risks with no corresponding benefits to their widows. Police officers, for example, are subject to dangers at least as great as those facing firemen, but no similar provisions are made for the widows of those killed in the line of duty. In fact, plaintiff is apparently unable to find in any of Illinois’ pension systems a provision for widow’s benefits such as those she argues the legislature has here provided. The reason for their absence is readily apparent, for in 1971 the Illinois Public Employees Pension Laws Commission rejected proposals to base a widow’s benefits on salaries of currently employed firemen because of the financial problems involved in funding such payments. The fact that the court’s interpretation provides benefits unique in the pension laws of Illinois, coupled with the internal inconsistencies in the Act produced by that interpretation, persuades me of the correctness of the Board’s position that the benefits are fixed at the date of the fireman’s death. Before I would attribute to our General Assembly the type of fiscal irresponsibility which has led the city of New York and our social security system to the brink of financial disaster, I would require more convincing proof than is here evident that the Board erred in its interpretation. JUSTICE MORAN joins in this dissent.