"While the finance and reserve sections of the [Code] are clearly designed to ensure the financial integrity of these pension funds, we do not believe it was [the legislature's] purpose to remove all discretion from the city council in determining the dollar amount to be levied for these funds in any particular year ***."
How later courts described this case
- "While the finance and reserve sections of the [Code] are clearly designed to ensure the financial integrity of these pension funds, we do not believe it was [the legislature's] purpose to remove all discretion from the city council in determining the dollar amount to be levied for these funds in any particular year ***."
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
Mr. JUSTICE LINDBERG, specially concurring:
While I concur in my colleagues’ well-reasoned opinion, I conclude that the Illinois Pension Code (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1979, ch. 108/2, par. 1 — 101 et seq.) explicitly commands this result. I find the language of section 3 — 127 (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1979, ch. 108M, par. 3 — 127) that “[t]he reserve shall not be less than $10,000 for each policeman and each beneficiary in each of the municipalities subject to this Article; provided that the reserve to be accumulated shall not exceed the estimated total actuarial requirements of the fund” (emphasis added), and a similar provision in regard to firemen’s pensions (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1979, ch. 108/2, par. 4 — 118), to be dispositive of the issues in this case. While those statutes say “[t]he city council * * * shall annually levy a tax * * *” (emphasis added), this language falls far short of precluding the exercise of the discretion mandated by the statutes in their next paragraphs which establish the levels of the respective reserves in the language quoted above.
A levy of an amount that will assure a reserve sufficient to provide $10,000 to each policeman or fireman and their beneficiaries is the minimum which the levy must provide. On the other hand, the levy shall not be in an amount that would cause the respective reserves to exceed the total actuarial requirements of the reserves. The city council may levy any amount which falls between those parameters.