Viebrock gets tough with the City of Springfield.



In 2007, State Representative Jim Viebrock got tough with the City of Springfield by passing into law a forced fix of the Springfield Police and Firefighters pension shortfalls. “After three years of telling them you fix it or I will, it became clear that I was going to have to force them to fix it”, said Viebrock. The Police and Firefighters pension fund had fallen well below 50% funded and is continuing to decline.

“These men and women served us in harms way for an entire career, now there’s not enough money to pay them, and that’s just not right.” Viebrock explained, “I gave the city five years to bring the contributions up to par, if they don’t, we (the State) will withhold 25% of their collected sales taxes and make the payments for them”.

“It’s a hard spot to be in if you’re a City Councilperson”, Viebrock remarked. “ They will have to make some difficult decisions, I’ve been there, we had to make similar revisions in the State budget in 2003”. “Poor management and the excitement of new (downtown) projects pushed the desire to pay the regular bills aside, in this case, the emergency responders got the short end of the stick,” he continued.

Representative Jim Viebrock is the current Vice-Chairman of the State Retirement Committee. The Committee is charged with overseeing the State’s public retirement systems.

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