Its not a pretty situation, but a necessary one. The state has a massive budget shortfall that it needs to make up, and when you have pension and healthcare obligations that you cannot meet something has to give. Do you raise taxes like Illinois and risk losing jobs in your state or do you bite the bullet and reduce costs where they are the highest? Look, as a union member this doesn't make me happy to see occur, but even FDR didn't believe public service employees should belong to unions and we are seeing exactly why. Unlike private sector unions a public sector union doesn't have to worry about putting their employer out of business because their employer has the police power of government to collect and raise revenue, and better yet they have the power to help vote in or out their own bosses giving them even more leverage. The pay and benefits a lot of these workers enjoy is well beyond what a similar private sector job would be able to offer, and its the private sector that they derive the money to supply them with those benefits. We've seen government way over extend itself, and this exact situation was going to happen sooner or later, but atleast the sooner it plays out the sooner government can right itself financially so that it is not such a burden on the taxpayers of the future. Now only if the federal government would have the balls to do the same with its current entitlement programs could we start to get this country back on the right track.
