Anyone who has any grasp of reality understands that Illinois’ public pension systems are in dire financial shape.

But the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago this week put it in terms more blunt than anyone else has to date:

“The pension crisis has grown so severe that it is now unfixable,” former state Attorney General Tyrone Fahner, the committee’s president, wrote in a memo to the club’s members. “We do not make that statement lightly. It is an honest statement that no one – not our legislators, nor our governor, nor labor leaders – is willing to say publicly.”