What if the dependable disappeared?

2009 Local Government Week

-- by Louis W. Kosiba, IMRF Executive Director --

Pretend for a moment that you wake up tomorrow morning and when you turn on your faucet—nothing happens. What if all the street lights went dark? What if local schools, libraries and parks disappeared? What if potholes today became craters next winter, rendering roads virtually impassable? Well, you’d be living in a world without local government.

Local government works in ways big and small to make all of our lives better. From cleaning streets to planning our towns to providing emergency services, local government is an integral part of life in Illinois and across the nation.

But, for many of us, it’s out of sight. Local government services are pieces of our daily lives that we often take for granted. We expect potholes to be filled, we expect our schools to be adequately serviced, and most of all, we expect to be safe in our communities. These local government workers, from the people who staff the school lunch room to the people who make sure our sanitation systems work to the people who fix our roads, are all individuals we count on every day without even knowing it.

March 1-7 is the second annual Local Government Week, as designated by the Illinois legislature, and it’s a good time to reflect on the work your local government does to ensure the quality of day-to-day life in your community.

At IMRF, we’re well acquainted with the services local government provides. We offer modest retirement, disability and death benefits to municipal government employees all across the state. The units of government we cover include cities, villages, counties, parks, libraries, support personnel at school districts and some police officers and firefighters—in other words, the people who make our communities run.

Defined benefit public pension plans like IMRF are a form of deferred compensation, promises made to workers often in lieu of higher pay or bonuses these workers might receive in similar private sector jobs. As a result, public pensions help ensure that municipalities attract the quality workers they need to perform vital public services.

So, this week please take a second to appreciate the fact that you have clean running water at the turn of a faucet, your potholes aren’t craters and your neighborhood street lights come on at dusk. And, if you run across a librarian, someone patching a pothole or a police officer, take a second to thank them for making our communities tick

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