Combing through the Illinois political coverage today, we found ourselves frustrated by a handful of things.  Here's a rundown:

Stantis on early prisoner release

Tribune political cartoonist Scott Stantis published a brutal cartoon about the state's early prisoner release plan this morning (you can view it here).  It depicts a pack of snarling dogs leading a group of ominous-looking animals -- snakes, bats, etc. -- out of a prison cell. On a stool next to the door, a quivering piece of jello with the label "Quinn for Illinois" says "I'm pretty sure this will work ... unless it doesn't."

Where to begin ...

On the merits, the cartoon is wildly sensationalistic. The 1,000 inmates being released (62 this week) are nonviolent offenders serving sentences less than one year long. These are not hardened criminals -- many are likely in for drug offenses -- and they were scheduled for release anyway.

And why are the animals so darkly colored? "Without knowing the race of the prisoners being released," quips The Beachwood Reporter's Steve Rhodes, "it's never a good idea to depict criminals as dark animals when the incarcerated are disproportionately people of color." Indeed.

Sweeny on Jim Ryan

Next up is the latest column from the Rockford Register Star's Chuck Sweeny, which runs down Republican gubernatorial candidate Jim Ryan's "proposals to return the state to solvency."

Among Ryan's ideas is a constitutional cap on state spending pegged to population growth and the rate of inflation. Nowhere does the column note that restrictive spending gaps have devastated state services elsewhere and were voted down in two states more conservative than Illinois this past election.

Ryan also provides several pie-in-the-sky estimates about the potential savings his reforms would generate. For instance, Sweeny repeats his projection that instituting a two-tiered pension system would save "$1 billion to $2 billion annually" (in fact, such savings wouldn't be realized for several decades).  Sweeny also reports his estimate that "putting Medicaid patients on managed care" would save "more than $1 billion a year" (it wouldn't).

Next time, the Register-Star should just throw Ryan's name in the byline.

Greg Hinz on state pension debt

Finally, we have Crain's Greg Hinz, who outlines a new "study" on the state's pension system by the National Taxpayers United of Illinois. Our problem with the piece is two-fold. First, Hinz fails to mention that the report is basically just a rehash of the Sun-Times investigation published in September. This report only repackages old data.

Then there's this paragraph:

[T]he state's five big pension funds have $80 billion to $100 billion in unfunded liability, depending on when and how the total is computed. Groups like Mr. Tobin's argue that the base problem is excessively high benefits, but labor groups blame the Illinois General Assembly for grabbing money that was supposed to be set aside for pensions and instead blowing it on more popular things.

Instead of this he said-she said reporting, it would be helpful to look at the data.

In response to Tobin's claim that "excessively high benefits" are to blame for the debt, it's important to note that the average retired Illinois state employee takes in just $17,112 a year through their pension.  Much of that money is generated from employee contributions and interest -- rather than taxpayers.

Meanwhile, the General Assembly's responsibility for the growing debt is irrefutable and widely-accepted. For instance, BusinessWeek's 2005 article on state pensions cites the Civic Federation's finding that "since 1970 Illinois has not once paid its annual pension bill in full."  More from the piece:

Through bull markets, bear markets, and sideways markets, the state has consistently lagged, and over time those delays have become more and more expensive. The culprit: reverse compounding. A pension plan's obligations are determined in part by the expected investment return on its assets. In the case of Illinois, that is 8%. So for every dollar not added to assets in time, the state is effectively borrowing from the pension plan at 8% interest.

Last we checked, the Civic Federation doesn't qualify as a "labor group."