This week, the Illinois General Assembly voted to consolidate more than 640 local police and fire pension funds. An amendment also added provisions that ramp up Tier II benefits for those hired after 2011. Senate Bill 1300 will now move to Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s desk for signature. By creating one combined fund for police and another for fire, the pooled assets in the funds are estimated to bring in as much as $160 million to $288 million in additional annual revenue, according to Pritzker’s Pension Fund Consolidation Feasibility Task Force. This would amount to between eight percent and fifteen percent of total annual taxpayer contributions to the systems. However, the new Tier II provisions did not come with any public estimates of their cost. Experts from the nonpartisan Illinois Policy note that in addition to SB 1300 leaving 94.5 percent of the state’s total pension burden untouched, passing benefit increases without financial analysis is how Illinois’ pension systems were wrecked in the first place.