Next stop for the Senator was far suburban Wood Dale, where he partnered with Rep. Kathleen Willis, of Addison, an Elmhurst College librarian recently elected for the 77th house district.

Twenty-five or so citizens turned up to hear them at Wood Dale City Hall On July 23, for the third and least contentious of the town hall meetings of 2013.

For instance, when questioned about the lack of urgency in solving the pension problem, the Senator was more circumspect than he’d been in a Wednesday Journal column, where he had put “crisis” in quotes. This time he called it a crisis “according to a tough standard,” namely “assuming pensioners live to 90” — which some of us consider a perfectly reasonable standard. By that standard, he said, the state had 32 years before the money would run out  — which some of us consider neither reasonable nor reassuring.

He also…