Dive Brief:

• A legislative error that would have significantly cut pension benefits for Illinois state university employees who didn’t retire by June 30 has been fixed.
• The board that oversees state universities’ employee pension system approved the emergency measure in a unanimous vote Thursday, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.
• Left alone is the Illinois legislature’s lowering of the investment earnings rate for the pension to a market rate, now 4.5%, from a guaranteed rate, which was 7.75% — but that does not affect past earnings.

Dive Insight:

This gets the Illinois state legislature off the hook, as legislators had reportedly done nothing to fix the error as the June 30 deadline loomed. The University of Illinois Board of Trustees chairman, Chris Kennedy, declared that the fix will prevent the “brain drain” previously feared, with predictions of thousands of professors and other employees retiring early to avoid retirement benefit losses. It’s unclear how this will impact a court motion filed by advocates of Illinois state university retirees that asks for the law to be blocked, alleging that it is unconstitutional and has problems even beyond the error addressed by the pension system’s board.