This content is from: Corner Office
The 2015 Pension 40: Bruce Rauner
No. 1 Bruce Rauner, Governor / Illinois


Bruce Rauner, 58, inherited more than just a $4 billion unbalanced budget and imploding credit ratings when, backed by Chicago business interests led by Citadel’s Kenneth Griffin, he became governor of Illinois in January. He also got the most underfunded state pension system in the U.S., with only 43.4 percent of benefits bankrolled, compared with 55 percent in the second-worst state, Connecticut. Illinois has been operating without a budget since July because of a stalemate between the Republican governor and the Democrat-controlled legislature. In an effort to shrink the state’s now-$6.9 billion debt by “a couple of billion” dollars a year, Rauner, former chairman of Chicago private equity firm GTCR, released a 500-page pension reform bill in July that rattled many cages, from the Chicago Teachers Union to Democratic state senators. Rauner laid out plans to effectively reduce benefits for police, firefighters and teachers, and remove state and local workers’ pensions from collective bargaining. Critics howled, arguing that the plan was unconstitutional, just like former Democratic governor Pat Quinn’s 2013 pension revamp, which the Illinois Supreme Court knocked down in May 2014, and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s (No. 9) plan, which a Cook County circuit court voided in July 2015. A legal challenge undoubtedly awaits. Meanwhile, the state can’t release the $560 million November pension payment because of what the Chicago Tribune called a grotesque stalemate; the Illinois’ comptroller has warned that the debt could balloon to $8.5 billion by year-end if a deal isn’t reached. Rauner, a Harvard Business School graduate, was elected on a pro-business, antiunion platform. His campaign promised to cap the current pension system, shift to a defined contribution structure and check near-retirement wage hikes for government employees. Getting any of that done has proved to be difficult. And Rauner finds himself trapped in the no-win zone of a pension crisis.
![]() 2. John & Laura Arnold Laura and John Arnold Foundation ![]() 3. Chris Christie New Jersey ![]() 4. Randi Weingarten AmericanFederation of Teachers ![]() 5. Phyllis Borzi U.S. Department of Labor |
![]() 6. Kevin de León California ![]() 7. Alejandro García Padilla Commonwealth ofPuerto Rico ![]() 8. Laurence Fink BlackRock ![]() 9. Rahm Emanuel Chicago ![]() 10. Sean McGarvey North AmericanBuilding Trades Unions |
![]() 11. John Kline Minnesota ![]() 12. J. Mark Iwry U.S. Treasury Department ![]() 13. Damon Silvers AFL-CIO ![]() 14. Jeffrey Immelt General Electric Co. ![]() 15. Joshua Gotbaum Brookings Institution |
![]() 16. Robin Diamonte United Technologies Corp. ![]() 17. Mark Mullet Washington ![]() 18. Terry O'Sullivan Laborers' International Union of North America ![]() 19. Raymond Dalio Bridgewater Associates ![]() 20. Ted Wheeler Oregon |
![]() 21. Thomas Nyhan Central States Southeast and Southwest Areas Pension Fund ![]() 22. Karen Ferguson & Karen Friedman Pensions Rights Center ![]() 23. Randy DeFrehn National Coordinating Committee forMultiemployer Plans ![]() 24. Robert O'Keef Motorola Solutions ![]() 25. Caitlin Long Morgan Stanley |
![]() 26. Kenneth Feinberg The Law Offices of Kenneth R. Feinberg ![]() 27. Orrin Hatch Utah ![]() 28. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend Center for Retirement Initiatives, Georgetown University ![]() 29. Ian Lanoff Groom Law Group ![]() 30. Joshua Rauh Stanford Graduate School of Business |
![]() 31. Ted Eliopoulos California Public Employees' Retirement System ![]() 32. Edward (Ted) Siedle Benchmark Financial Services ![]() 33. Teresa Ghilarducci New School for Social Research ![]() 34. Denise Nappier Connecticut ![]() 35. W. Thomas Reeder Jr. Pension BenefitGuaranty Corp. |
![]() 36. Hank Kim National Conference on Public Employee Retirement Systems ![]() 37. Paul Singer Elliott Management Corp. ![]() 38. Bailey Childers National PublicPension Coalition ![]() 39. Amy Kessler Prudential Financial ![]() 40. Judy Mares U.S. Labor Department |